Where It All Goes Down
Tortilla Flat, Just after World War I
Well, for once, we've got truth in advertising: Tortilla Flat takes place in—wait for it—Tortilla Flat, a real neighborhood in Monterey, California, and is all about its quirky inhabitants and their adventures. It's a poor neighborhood, racially defined by the paisanos who live there:
Monterey sits on the slope of a hill, with a blue bay below it and with a forest of tall dark pine trees at its back. The lower parts of the town are inhabited by Americans, Italians, catchers and canners of fish. But on the hill where the forest and the town intermingle, where the streets are innocent of asphalt and the corners free of street lights, the old inhabitants of Monterey are embattled as the Ancient Britons are embattled in Wales. These are the paisanos. (Preface.3)
So the city of Monterey is one thing, and Tortilla Flat, a wild, frontier-like suburb, is another. When the narrator mentions the "old inhabitants," he's referring to the paisanos, the descendants of the Spaniards, Native Americans, and Mexicans who lived in the area long before anyone else arrived.
The fact that this neighborhood lacks street-lights and asphalt shows us that the city doesn't consider Tortilla Flat to be under its jurisdiction. Either that, or the people there aren't important enough to get the city's attention.
By confining the story to this one area, Steinbeck gives us the feeling of being immersed in the neighborhood, of really getting to know a certain place at a certain time, with all of its peculiarities.
Now, the time period is also crucial here. This isn't just Tortilla Flat; it's Tortilla Flat as it was in the years after World War I. Danny and his pals are coming back from the army, and although they weren't actually sent to Europe (they were stationed in Texas, Oregon, and, well, jail), they have a hard to readjusting to life back home. As soldiers seem to find out after every war, it's really tough to return to normal life after you've gone through the upheaval of army life.
For Danny, this is symbolized by the fact that his grandfather dies on him and leaves him two houses, forcing him to become a landowner even though he's not mature enough to handle that responsibility.
For Danny and his friends, there's also a Great Depression to contend with. There's very little work and even less money, so the friends are left to fend for themselves and try to make a life for themselves. What kind of lives can they possibly make? Danny doesn't even make it to the end of the novel. What about the other guys? What opportunities do they have? What can they do with themselves? Where can they find some meaning in their lives?
Danny's House
Within Tortilla Flat, there's one little square of living space that gets the most attention from Steinbeck's pen. It's Danny's house, where the gang crowds in to live together. Danny's house is the scene of some spectacular fights and parties (sometimes simultaneously), and it's also the headquarters for the gang's activities:
The main room was just as it had been when the viejo had lived there. The red rose calendar for 1906, the silk banner on the wall, with Fighting Bob Evans looking between the superstructures of a battleship, the bunch of red paper roses tacked up, the strings of dusty red peppers and garlic, the stove, the battered rocking chairs. (2.4)
The inside of Danny's house has obviously not had much TLC in the past few decades. His grandfather couldn't even be bothered to change the calendar, and the dustiness and junk from wars long past show a sort of timelessness about the setting.
It's also a stifling environment: living here, Danny will eventually start to feel just like those rocking chairs and strings of peppers, both dusty and battered. The house, with its unchanging nature, drags him down and makes him feel like he's collecting dust: they both end up destroyed in the end.