List 15 important points in chapter 1 of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

In chapter 1 of Of Mice and Men,
Steinbeck introduces the major characters and themes of the
novel:

1. Chapter 1 begins with a painstaking
   description of California's Salinas
   River Valley. 


2. Steinbeck lingers over the details of the
   river valley for one critical reason. He wants to be sure that when his migrant ranch
   labourers George and Lennie appear, they are authentic constituents of this
   setting.


3. Into this tranquil setting step the principal
   characters of the novel: George, "small and quick," and Lennie, "a huge man," as rabbits
   scurry into the brush and a heron lifts off over the river.
   


4. As Lennie laps up the water thirstily, George orders him
   not to drink so much. In this scene we become aware of George's authority over the
   larger man as Lennie carefully mimics his guardian's manner of
   drinking.


5. In George's irritation with Lennie's
   forgetfulness - he can't remember that they're heading to a ranch in Soledad - we learn
   that the latter is slow-witted.


6. As George primes
   Lennie's memory, he learns that the big man has picked up and hidden a dead mouse in his
   pocket.


7. Angrily, George throws it into the brush to
   Lennie's consternation who only wanted something soft to pet while he walked along. His
   obsession with 'soft things' is a critical motif in the remainder of the
   novel.


8. While pretending to gather firewood, Lennie
   retrieves the dead mouse which George promptly confiscates again. Lennie protests and
   recalls a lady who used to give him mice to pet. She was Lennie's Aunt Clara, George
   explains, and we learn that there is a familial connection between the two
   men.


9. When Lennie expresses a desire for ketchup with his
   dinner of beans, George, angry again, ruminates on the kind of life he could have had
   without Lennie: "...you lose me ever' job I get....You do bad things and I got to get
   you out."


10. In his angry tirade, George reveals the latest
    'bad thing' Lennie did. The two had to run away from their last workplace, in Weed, when
    a girl whose dress Lennie touched because it was pretty, brought a charge of assault
    against him.


11. Faced with Lennie's threat to go off into
    the hills to live by himself, George softens, promises to keep watch over Lennie, and
    tells the dream "about the rabbits." Thus, in this first chapter we are introduced to
    the incantatory story of every ranch hand in America - to own a piece of property, and
    earn a living by it.


12. To Lennie's delight and
    word-for-word recollection of the dream, George describes how he and his companion are
    not like other ranch hands, who drift from place to place. No, they have a future and
    each other. One day, with enough money saved, they will buy a farm, settle down, "an'
    live off the fatta the lan'."


13. Lennie's role in the
    dream is to tend the rabbits. Thus, the essential tragedy of the novel is set from the
    beginning: George cannot fulfill his dream with Lennie at his
    side.


14. Lost in a reverie, George impatiently interrupts
    himself to return to more practical matters: Finishing dinner, getting some sleep, and
    reminding Lennie to let him talk to the boss on the
    morrow.


15. The first chapter ends with the novel's most
    significant foreshadowing: George instructs Lennie to return to the quiet spot on the
    river in the event he encounters trouble at the
    ranch.