From Lennie talking to Crooks in the harness room to
after Curley’s wife threatening Crooks
Summary
The next evening, Saturday, Crooks sits on his bunk in
the harness room. The black stable-hand has a crooked back—the source
of his nickname—and is described as a “proud, aloof man” who spends much
of his time reading. Lennie, who has been in the barn tending to
his puppy, appears in the doorway, looking for company. Crooks tells
him to go away, saying that if he, as a black man, is not allowed in
the white quarters, then white men are not allowed in his.
Lennie does not understand. He innocently reports that everyone
else has gone into town and that he saw Crooks’s light on and thought
he could come in and keep him company. Finally, despite himself, Crooks
yields to Lennie’s “disarming smile” and invites him in.
Just like heaven. Ever’body wants a little
piece of lan’. I read plenty of books out here. Nobody never gets
to heaven, and nobody gets no land.
(See Important Quotations Explained)
Soon enough, Lennie forgets his promise to keep the farm
a secret and begins to babble cheerfully about the place that he
and George will buy someday. Crooks does not believe him, assuming
that the fantasy is part of Lennie’s mental disability. He tells
Lennie about his own life, recounting his early days on a chicken
farm when white children visited and played with him. Still, he
says, he felt keenly alone even then. His family was the only black
family for miles, and his father constantly warned him against keeping
company with their white neighbors. The importance of this instruction
escaped Crooks as a child, but he says that he has come to understand
it perfectly. Now, as the only black man on the ranch, he resents
the unfair social norms that require him to sleep alone in the stable.
Feeling weak and vulnerable himself, Crooks cruelly suggests that
George might never return from town. He enjoys torturing Lennie,
until Lennie becomes angry and threatens Crooks, demanding to know “Who
hurt George?” Crooks hastily backs down, promising that George will
come back, and begins to talk about his childhood again, which returns
Lennie to his dreams of owning the farm. Crooks bitterly says that
every ranch-hand has the same dream. He adds that he has seen countless
men go on about the same piece of land, but nothing ever comes of
it. A little piece of land, Crooks claims, is as hard to find as
heaven.
Candy eventually joins them, entering Crooks’s room for
the first time in all of the years they have worked together. Both
men are uncomfortable at first but Candy is respectful and Crooks
pleased to have more company. Candy talks to Lennie about raising
rabbits on the farm. He has been busy calculating numbers and thinks
he knows how the farm can make some money with rabbits. Crooks continues
to belittle their dream until Candy insists that they already have
the land picked out and nearly all the money they’ll need to buy
it. This news piques the black man’s interest. Shyly, Crooks suggests
that maybe they could take him along with them. But Curley’s wife
appears and interrupts the men’s daydreaming.
Curley’s wife asks about her husband, then says she knows
that the men went to a brothel, cruelly observing that “they left
all the weak ones here.” Crooks and Candy tell her to go away, but
instead she starts talking about her loneliness and her unhappy
marriage. Candy insists that she leave and says proudly that even
if she got them fired, they could go off and buy their own place
to live. Curley’s wife laughs at him, then bitterly complains about
her life with Curley. She sums up her situation, admitting that
she feels pathetic to want company so desperately that she is willing
to talk to the likes of Crooks, Candy, and Lennie. She asks what
happened to her husband’s hand, and does not believe the men when
they insist that he got it caught in a machine. She teases Lennie
about the bruises on his face, deducing that he got injured in the
scuffle with Curley.
Fed up, Crooks insists that she leave before he tells
the boss about her wicked ways, and she responds by asking if he
knows what she can do to him if he says anything. The implication
is clear that she could easily have him lynched, and he cowers.
Candy says that he hears the men coming back, which finally makes
her leave, but not before she tells Lennie that she is glad he beat
her husband. George appears, and criticizes Candy for talking about
their farm in front of other people. As the white men leave Crooks,
he changes his mind about going to the farm with them, calling out,
“I wouldn’ want to go no place like that.”
Analysis
This section introduces the character of Crooks, who has
previously only made a brief appearance. Like the other men in the
novella, Crooks is a lonely figure. Like Candy, a physical disability
sets him apart from the other workers, and makes him worry that
he will soon wear out his usefulness on the ranch. Crooks’s isolation
is compounded by the fact that, as a black man, he is relegated
to sleep in a room in the stables; he is not allowed in the white
ranch-hands’ quarters and not invited to play cards or visit brothels
with them. He feels this isolation keenly and has an understandably
bitter reaction to it.
