In my paperback edition of the novel published by Penguin Books, Lennie's offer of the hypothetical ketchup is found in the first chapter on page 14. Lennie says:
"I was only foolin', George. I don't want no ketchup. I wouldn't eat no ketchup if it was right here beside me. . . But I wouldn't eat none, George. I'd leave it all for you. You could cover your beans with it and I wouldn't touch none of it."
Poor Lennie doesn't understand that the issue isn't really ketchup. George can hardly be mad about that, since there isn't any ketchup for either of them. George is mad about what happened in Weed. Lennie's mentioning that he liked ketchup with his beans triggered an outburst from George which shows that George has all sorts of pent-up feelings about his partner. George likes him and feels responsible for him, but Lennie is a heavy burden for a man like George who has a hard enough time surviving as an itinerant agricultural worker in the Great Depression era.
Lennie is softhearted, easily hurt, willing to do anything to please his friend and mentor, even willing to go away and leave him alone, if that's what he wants. George doesn't know exactly what he wants. He would like to be free, but he doesn't want to be alone. And he has a heavy sense of responsibility. Circumstances are impinging on this relationship. Lennie is causing George so much trouble with his impulsive behavior that George may have to break with him whether he wants to or not. The ketchup scene might be said to foreshadow the time when George resolves his problem by killing Lennie with a stolen handgun.
George was really scared in Weed, when Lennie molested a girl on the main street of that little mountain town and they had a whole mob of men chasing them with the intention of lynching them both. They are now camping more than three hundred miles south of Weed. It looks as though they haven't stopped running ever since. All they have left is three cans of beans. George wanted to get as far away as possible before seeking another job. He hopes to leave the past behind, but he is afraid that Lennie will do something similar again regardless of how far they flee. He can't be watching him all the time. And, of course, his fears are justified. When Lennie is alone in the barn with Curley's wife he ends up killing her in what looks to everybody like an attempted rape. George could be considered an accessory, since he has assumed responsibility for this giant and has brought him to the scene of his crime and gotten him his job.
George's tirade is useless. Lennie doesn't understand. He thinks it has something to do with ketchup and that George doesn't want him anymore because he is not satisfied with plain beans. Lennie has a short-term memory. George has to repeat the same things over and over, and he never can be sure that Lennie will remember anything he tells him.
The author uses this technique of recriminations, explanations and repetitions in order to provide exposition through dialogue. Steinbeck called it "a playable novel." He intended to adapt it as a stage play immediately, and he wrote it in such a way that the adaptation would be easy and there would be no need for expensive stage settings. Everything takes place in an campsite, a bunkhouse, and a barn. All he had to do was use the same dialogue and add a few stage directions. The play came out in New York in 1937, the same year the novel was published.
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