Both set a slow, heavy pace as we read on, as if we were living in these times with this ambiguous community. (Then they asked: What will we do? And the men answered: I don't know, but everything was fine. The women and children knew deep down that no misfortune was too great to bear if their men went away to their homes to work, and children began to play, but cautiously at first. As the day advanced, the sun blazed over the dust-covered earth. The men sat in the doorways of their houses; their hands were occupied with sticks and small stones to think and imagine." There was a shift in tense and description. The opening pages of the book set the scene with imagery and personification of the environment, then we shift focus to the community as a whole. Note the lack of quotation marks . John Steinbeck didn't use them for a reason, and that was to make the point that he wasn't quoting anyone. These are the questions every family in the community asks