Carlson, one of the workers on the ranch, represents the average, common American worker during the Great Depression. Carlson is described by Steinbeck as a powerful, big-stomached man, which is what a man doing physical labour everyday, should typically look like. He also symbolises the negative aspects of American workers at the time, for example, Carlson, in a conversation with Candy about his dog, said,

“He ain’t no good to you, Candy. An’ he ain’t no good to himself. Why’n’t you shoot him, Candy?”

Carlson was saying this about Candy’s dog because the dog is old and crippled and that reflects what people at the time thought of, about old and crippled people. This quote suggests that disabled people were looked down on at the time and thought as useless and that they should be shot. Steinbeck uses Carlson as a character to impose that idea on the readers, to show that that’s what people at the time thought of disabled people as.