“It wasn’t nothing,” said Slim. “I would of had to drowned most of ’em anyways. No need to thank me about that.”
Chapter 3 · Slim
Context
Slim and George enter the bunk house after Slim has agreed to give Lennie one of his bitch's new puppies. George has just thanked him, and Slim deflects the gratitude by explaining he would have had to drown most of the litter regardless.
Analysis
The double-negative deflection ('wasn't nothing') paired with the brutal calculus of 'would of had to drowned most of 'em' establishes Slim's moral register: economic necessity governs life and death even for animals, and sentimentality is something the speaker refuses to perform. Steinbeck plants the logic of culling here in casual conversation, so that when the same reasoning is later applied to Candy's dog—and ultimately to Lennie—it arrives as the ranch's settled ethic rather than an aberration.
How to Use in Essay
Support a thesis that Steinbeck normalizes a utilitarian ethic of disposability early in Chapter 3 so the human deaths that follow appear continuous with ordinary ranch labor—this offhand line establishes the moral grammar the novella will later turn on humans.