An' it'd be our own, an' nobody could can us. If we don't like a guy we can say, 'Get the hell out,' and by God he's got to do it.
Chapter 3 · George Milton
Context
George continues describing the farm to Lennie, moving from material features to imagined social conditions. He emphasizes the autonomy of ownership.
Analysis
The grammatical key here is the modal verb 'can' repeated against the imperative 'Get the hell out': the dream is articulated almost entirely as a redistribution of agency, the right to issue commands rather than receive them. The verb 'can' (the slang for being fired) being inverted into 'nobody could can us' is Steinbeck's pun—the same word that names their current vulnerability becomes the verb the farm would neutralize. The dream of ownership is thus less about property than about reversing the direction of speech-acts.
How to Use in Essay
Support a thesis that Steinbeck conceives freedom in Of Mice and Men as the right to issue rather than receive imperatives—George's vision of the farm is ultimately a linguistic utopia where the migrant worker recovers the speech-act of dismissal, the very power that currently dismisses him.