Crooks declares to Lennie "You got no right to come in my room.....You go on get outa my room. I ain't wanted in the bunkhouse and you ain't wanted in my room." He continues by saying that the whites believe he stinks and one can interpret this as a way of saying that the whites would find it a disgrace that a nigger should breathe the same bunkhouse air as them. "S'pose you couldn't go into the bunkhouse and play rummy 'cause you was black...Sure, you could play horseshoes 'til dark, but then you have to read books." shows that Crooks commiserates his own situation and helplessness. However when Crooks observes how Lennie is intimidated by him he tells him "I didn't mean to scare you." This begets the impression that he is amiable at heart.
Crooks introduces the perspective of the lonesomeness endured by the majority of the characters in "Of Mice and Men" as he states "Sure, you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain't no good. A guy needs someone - to be near him. A guys goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, a guy gets too lonely, an' he gets sick." He is telling of the need for human interaction, the need for company and the need for someone to care and provide security. The oppression Crooks experiences in living in a barn and not in the bunkhouse where he could play rummy as one of the group leads him to this desperate plea to be realised as equal. Just because when he cuts himself, the blood he bleeds is looked upon as different from a white perspective, this does not mean he is not entitled to benefit from human nature. John Steinbeck is illustrating the emotional state of Americans in the life of John Steinbeck: their solitude and their salvation of the non-existent American Dream.
Steinbeck employs an omniscient perspective in Of Mice and Men. He also denotes certain projections that might go unnoticed if the reader is not attentive. Steinbeck's technique is for the most part stylised; the descriptions are resonant, vivid and detailed and he utilises adjectives that give a description to everything. The dialect between characters illustrates how the characters speak instead of just what they say. It is through speech, the characters are revealed, we are never informed by Steinbeck of any of the characters personality; only their appearance. Furthermore, All the characters have their own distinct speech pattern – They are idiolect.
His diction
Like all the characters in Of Mice and Men Crooks has the typical American colloquialism his speech. However, it could be disputed that it is the dialect because it is acknowledged he is somewhat of an erudite because of all the books he reads in his time where he is coerced to endure isolation. John Steinbeck has written the book with the dialect to maintain its social realism and authenticity of an itinerant worker in Salinas Valley, California. Multiple negations are also common in the novella. For instance, “We ain’t got no ketchup.”All the characters use them including the boss of the ranch who presumably would be affluent enough to be educated. This all conveys the way in which the characters speak.
….twentieth century women were regarded as inferior to men so naturally her husband’s name was used instead. In contrast, the prostitute, Suzie is named. It appears that the men have more respect for a woman who owns a brothel than a lonely wife. It could be argued that Curley’s wife is as nameless as the mouse Lennie picks up off the road in the opening section of the novel. Lennie says to George “I’d pet ‘em and pretty soon they bit my fingers and I pinched their heads a little and then they was dead.” The reader later discovers that Curley’s wife follows the same fate because Lennie is not aware of his strength thus the name of the novella is ‘Of Mice and Men.’ In addition, it also ultimately leads to the tragic conclusion when Lennie is shot by George. However, the reader is prepared for this by the use of the theme of Lennie petting mice all the way through the novel. This illustration is one that reappears throughout the novel, and is reinforced when Lennie kills his new puppy in section five. At no point does Lennie realise that he is strong enough to kill the things he likes most. This foreshadows the inevitable death of Curley’s Wife.
Curley’s wife treats Lennie as a vent and reveals her emotions and life in the same way Crooks does. She tells him: “I never get to talk to nobody. I get awful lonely.” They both know that he will not comprehend their predicaments yet it appears to be a release for them to inform another human being of their sentiments and perceptions. They yearn for a companion. This becomes evident when she says, “Think I don’t like to talk to someone ever’ once in a while? Think I like to stick in the house all time?” Furthermore, she admits to Lennie she is experiencing a shameless discontent with her life. When she confesses of her dream of becoming a movie star, the reader understands her vulnerability in her current position and it also informs us that she is almost infantile and ingenuous. However, the reader also comprehends her humanity and she instantaneously becomes much more stimulating than the orthodox ‘jail bait’ who throws her body forward for attention. This also reinforces the novella’s ugly reality. During her moments of utmost vulnerability, Curley’s wife pursues to discover flaws in the other characters, preying upon Lennie’s disability, Candy’s elderly age, and the colour of Crooks’s skin in order to fortify herself against any affliction with him.
When Steinbeck introduces Curley’s wife, her attire appearance and sex is widely divergent to that of everyone else. She does not integrate with the ranchers: “She had full, rouged lips and wide-spaced eyes, heavily made up. Her finger nails were red. Her hair hung in little rolled clusters, like sausages. She wore a cotton house dress and red mules, on the insteps of which were little bouquets of red ostrich feathers”.
The fact that she is the only female on the ranch is reinforced by the description of the clothes she wears, which are completely inappropriate for a ranch. Her makeup is also unbefitting and excessive for a secluded ranch, and John Steinbeck depicts the extravagance of the ostrich feathers on her mules, which make her unnecessarily prominent. Steinbeck omnisciently displays how she exhibits her femininity, but a ranch consisting mostly of workers passing through is not the place to practice this. It is patent that she is disadvantaged for being the only woman on the ranch although the reader discovers that she adds to the adversity she is obliged to endure because she is persistently attracting attention and creating an all-round negative persona.
She is disadvantaged both by Candy’s description of her only as Curley’s Wife, which deprives her of any identity of her own, and also by the critical way he speaks of her – she is viewed by Candy as someone who is flirty, despite being recently married to Curley. This sets her up to be judged by the reader when they do meet her as only a sexual asset, not as a person with an identity or personality. This is reinforced when Candy says, “Jesus, what a tramp. So that’s what Curley picks for a wife.”
The disadvantages that affect all the characters are varied although it is very revealing
and symbolic of the complications that people in the era experienced. What Steinbeck has achieved is to make the people of the time, and the concerns that affected their lives become animated through the characters he creates, and who the readers become very involved with.
Curley’s wife may be a ‘tart’ on the surface yet Steinbeck intended her to be a much more complex character as Steinbeck envisioned her to be a faithful and amiable girl who grew up in an atmosphere of fighting and suspicion yet on the surface she is pitiless and acrimonious. However, this is the personality that surfaces only as consequence of her isolation and imprisonment with Curley. This is manifests when she finally begins to talk to a human being and her real traits resurface somewhat despite Lennie having the mind of a child.
Crooks is the most disadvantaged character in Of Mice and Men because what Crooks wants more than anything else is a sense of belonging—to enjoy simple pleasures such as the right to enter the bunkhouse or to play cards with the other men. This desire would elucidate why, even though he has reason to doubt George and Lennie’s talk about the farm that they want to own, Crooks cannot help but ask if there might be room for him to come along and hoe in the garden. He yearns for the simple things in life that most do not detect the magnitude for they have never been absent from their life and it is this that makes him truly disadvantaged.
