Crooks room was “swept and fairly neat”, implying he like things to be clean, tidy and in place. He is a “proud and aloof man”, showing however small his room is or whatever the way he is treated, he takes pride and in the things he does and doesn’t care what other people’s impressions are of him. It seems quite difficult to maintain this attitude because the way the black people were treated, it would probably make them down-hearted, upset or discouraged. It indicates maybe he is a strong character and the images that he has in his head of himself contrasts to the image other people have of him. When he “keeps his distance” and “demands other people to keep theirs”, he is against the idea of the whites and black’s mixing and wants to avoid them. He may be mentally strong, but he is an extremely lonely man because he doesn’t have anyone to communicate or share ideas with, even take out his anger or complain on.
Moving onto physical features, he has a “crooked spine”, by which his body is “bent over to his left”. He is defined by that crooked spine of his, which is why everyone calls him Crooks. “His eyes lay deep into his head” form an image of intense face, with the depth of his eyes representing the deepness of his loneliness, since he, in my opinion, is the most lonely and isolated character in the novel. He has “deep black wrinkles”, implying his old age and he has “thin, pained tightened lips”. Good word choice is used here because the word ‘pain’ gives an impression of how he might’ve lived his life before. He would’ve had a horrible, hard working, harsh and a stressed life, in which he had to do a lot of work and go through pain. Overall, imagery is formed, where he has short, sharp facial features which are intense as well as implying his old age.
Through the open door, on Saturday night, come various different sounds. There came the “sound of moving horses”, reminding you how time is precious and always passing by smoothly. “Feet stirring” imply movement, action or progress, which again imply how time is slowly ticking away. And the “rattle of halter chains” makes the reader think of someone imprisoned who is trying hard to escape desperately. They could be trying to escape the circles of loneliness from which they are suffering from. After these negative associations, Steinbeck’s goes on to describe how “a small electric globe threw a yellow light”. Immediately, the reader’s attention is drawn to the light, which then brings them into a positive mood, because the ‘light’ outweighs the negative associations. This is an example of light/ dark connotations.
While Crooks is rubbing his spine and applying liniment, he “shivers”. You usually shiver when it is cold or when you have a bad feeling of something. Steinbeck uses the technique of foreshadowing to hint that something bad or unexpected might happen, because of the sudden shiver. At this point, Lennie enters the room, surprising Crooks a little, that “upon raising his eyes, he stiffened and a scowl came to his face”. ‘Stiffening’ shows his sudden surprise, because no-one enters his room, so he is shocked that some-one has actually come inside his room that he changes his posture to show amazement. “Scowling” is certainly a negative link, and it is an unwelcoming gesture that he might be implying to go away, but Lennie doesn’t understand what he means. It is almost similar to frowning and implying something is unwanted.
When he tells Lennie “sharply” that he doesn’t have any right to be in his room, he makes it absolutely clear he doesn’t want him in there. He may be referring to how the blacks and whites are supposed to stay separate from each other and should not communicate or make any attempts to socialize with each other. The phrase “I ain’t wanted in the bunk house and you ain’t wanted in my room”, is a pretty immense and offending statement. It clearly demonstrates the idea of the segregation of white and black people in the 1930’s. He goes on to explain he can’t do things like play with the other men just because he is black. “They say I stink” imply he is unwanted. Stinking is a negative smell that is not very pleasant is wanted to get rid of.
“Don’t come into a place where you’re not wanted”, he says to Lennie. He is clearly a frustrated man who is so used to being alone that he is shocked to see someone enter his room. But isn’t it amazing to think that being such a lonely man, he is refusing company that came by itself and driving it away! I think he is so irritated that he himself wants to keep away from the white people and this indicates he is against the thought of the whites and black’s blacks being together. The phrase that he just said to Lennie may well have been said to him by the other men. It seems like he is sort of taking out the anger of these men onto Lennie, for entering his room. Since they didn’t like Crooks entering their ‘space’, Crooks wants to take revenge by not letting anyone come into his ‘space’.
He scowls again as Lennie advances into the room. But this time, his smile sort of ‘melts’ him and he is almost forced to let Lennie “come in and set a while”. He follows it with “Long as you won’t leave me alone”. This is significant because it shows he may not like the whites and blacks mixing, but he does want some company or someone to talk to. He just took him a little while to figure out the type of person he was –He wasn’t one of them that were rude, offensive and those who hated black people.
He joins in quite well with him, in a conversation. The author shows us the talkative side of him, because we haven’t seen him talk to anyone yet. When he “comfortably” settles himself on the bunk, it shows us he is getting engaged into the conversation and it making him comfortable to listen and he also invites Lennie to “set down on a nail keg”, intending to carry on the conversation.
As he continues to interlock into the conversation, he makes some very clever observations about George and Lennie’s relationship. This shows he is an educated yet as isolated person. He may be strong, educated and clever, but despite having all these great qualities, he continues to being unwanted and is hated just because of the colour of his skin.
As he is talking to Lennie, he talks from experience and remembers some of his moments from when he was a child. He compares the child naivety to the adult cynicism, saying how he now understands the white children stopped playing with him after one point. Racial discrimination was a common thing in the 1930’, even within children, because their parents of a white child didn’t want them to mix with a black child. As the conversation goes on, Crooks makes up stories of how George will not return, just to scare Lennie. It seems like he wants to take his frustration out from someone, from back into his childhood, because the white children stopped playing with him. So he just wants to take it out on someone and since Lennie is childlike, he seems the right person.
Going on to the theme of loneliness, Crooks is the person who’s got the main experience on loneliness and isolation. He explains how a man would go crazy “if he ain’t got nobody”. He says it “make no difference who the guy is, long’s he with you”. This shows just how narrow-minded people were in those days, because they just stayed with a person to look as if they’re not lonely but really, you don’t even though them, because they’re a complete stranger and you had to stay with them. But really, inside, you’d still be lonely because you don’t have real friendship between you and you can trust that person or rely on them. This implied how desperate they were. But it’d make ‘no difference’, because that person will still be lonely from the inside. “No difference” on its own would be Crooks talking from his experience, because he knows whatever he say or does will make no difference to anyone, since they don’t care about him, because “it’s just a nigger saying it”. This was the impression the men had of him, in his own words. Basically, this is what they thought of him.
He also describes loneliness as a type of disease/infection/illness because it can get you “sick”. It’s like a permanent disease you have to carry around with you for life. Crooks is an independent man, who is more isolated than lonely because he has practically no-one.
When Lennie carries on talking about the dream and “tending the rabbits”, Crooks says he seen lots of men who come with great expectation to the ranch, who expect to fulfil their hopes and dream. But he says it’s impossible. This shows he has been there long enough to tell us that many people come by and go, with the same old dream, but none of them get to fulfil it. In simple words, he means what in a guy’s head, he can’t get on his hands.
But as Candy, who just entered, and Lennie talks about American Dream, it seems that company changed his mind about the dream. He says he, too, could “lend a hand”, which represents how he is starting to believe in it too, and it trying to get involved, because he wants to have something of his own and do something with his life.
But the dream gets interrupted as Curley’s Wife comes in. They don’t want her in, after she talks nonsense. Candy makes an attempt of getting rid of her, but when she doesn’t listen, Crooks gets angry and tries to drive her away. But she won’t go and instead find excuses on how she could land Crooks into trouble. She says if she just did one thing, his alreasy ruined reputation would get even worse. This shows about the life in 1930’s, how if a woman said something against a black man, who he did something to her, like harassed or rapes, everyone would instantly listen to her, and the black man would unconditionally be in trouble. No-body would believe him because he was black.
When she leaves, Crooks decides to withdraw back his decision in being involved in the ‘dream’. It seems like Curley’s wife just killed the moment, and reminded Crooks of his position, that he is Negro and can never do anything in life. She came and killed the brief hopes of Crooks. So the dream is built up throughout the Chapter but shattered at the end. This got Crooks no-where. He even ended in the same position he started off with, so it seems like he just went in a circle, but go nowhere.
I think Steinbeck wants the reader to feel sympathy for Crooks because he is the loneliest and isolated man in the book, he has been racially discriminated all his life, his is unwanted by the other men in the novel, he can’t even share a room with them and he is shown a lack of respect and talked to in a rude manner. This makes the reader feel sorry for Crooks.
