What is the significance of the name of the nearest town?

The town
closest to the ranch where
is set is Soledad, California. This word means

loneliness in Spanish, and corresponds to the characters isolation and alienation. It is
located
near the Salinas River Valley, which Steinbeck knew
intimately.

The setting
is significant because the town of
Salinas, in Monterey County, was s hometown. Born there in
1902, he lived in
and around the area for about 20 years. His vivid descriptions of the

agricultural land, mountains, and nearby ocean are all based on his personal

experience.

Even more so, Steinbeck knew firsthand about the life of
the
itinerant workers. Like them, he had worked on farms and ranches in the
area. Some of the money
earned went to pay his expenses at Stanford
University, which he attended for a few years but
did not graduate. Traveling
and living elsewhere in the United States, he frequently returned to

California and saw firsthand the impact of the Great Depression, including the arrival
of
migrants from the Dust Bowl, chronicled in
.

During his
lifetime, many area
residents objected to what they perceived as overly negative portrayals of

the area and its people. Today, literary tourists from around the globe go there to
learn about
the Nobel Prize-winning author. The National Steinbeck Center is
located in Salinas.

href="https://www.steinbeck.org/about-john/">https://www.steinbeck.org/about-john/