Crooks takes pride in his room as is it one of the only things he can call his own, “you got no right to come in my room.” Crooks is at first reluctant to let Lennie into his room. He is aware of the strict segregation on the ranch, but he is also grateful for the company. Crooks often refers to his rights, “A coloured man gotta have rights even if he doesn’t like ‘em.” despite his desire for companionship, Crooks is aware of his rights and his lack of rights that he wants to make sure he doesn’t lose the few things he does have control over. Crooks taunts Lennie, telling him George might not come back, “Crooks’ bored in on him.” He sees this causes Lennie pain and enjoys having power over, and being the one inflicting the pain as opposed to receiving it. Through this Steinbeck conveys the effect of racial oppression on a person who has been segregated and lonely for so long he grasps any chance of having the upper hand over someone. Crooks’ goaded Lennie in this way because he wanted him to understand what it’s like to be alone, “S’pose you didn’t have nobody.” Although he realises Lennie will never understand he is saying he just wants to seize the opportunity to talk to someone and share with them how he feels.
Crooks represents the black population of America in the 1930’s. Steinbeck uses him to demonstrate the racism and prejudice of the time. At the beginning of the section his room is described carefully, his bed for example is described as a “long box filled with straw on which his blankets were flung.” Because of his ethnicity, Crooks is not allowed to sleep in the bunk house with the white workers. He is placed in the harness room which was not intended for human inhabitation. Candy’s first mention of Crooks reveals the misunderstandings that occur, “The stable buck don’t give a damn.” Candy just assumes that’s Crooks his perfectly fine about the way he is treated when the boss is mad, however we see later on the Crooks certainly is not fine but because of the racial segregation that surrounds him, Crooks can’t speak up about how he feels and just has to accept it, which Candy misunderstands. The casual way characters use racist terms when referring to him suggests that this attitude is regarded as acceptable on the ranch, “Nigger, huh?” Even George refers to him as a ‘nigger’ as do the other ranch workers, who we are told often use Crooks as entertainment. Slim is the only one, other than Lennie who does not understand racial prejudice, who offers Crooks the respect of calling by his name.
Racial Oppression has destroyed Crooks’ dreams so that he has given up hope in any chance of having a life without prejudice however when the idea that Lennie and Candy are actually so close to achieving their dream he gains hope again, “You say you got the money?” He seen so many workers with this dream that is literally no more than ‘just a dream’ so he finds it difficult to grasp that these guys are only months away from being able to achieve their dream, the same dream that fills the heads of so many others. He lets his guard down temporarily and is swept along with the dream. “I ain’t so crippled I Can’t work like a son-of-a-bitch if I want to.” Lennie unwittingly soothes Crooks into feeling at ease, and Candy even gets the man excited about the dream farm, to the point where Crooks could fancy himself worthy and equal enough to be in on the plan with the guys. Crooks drops his characteristic cynicism and offers to help on the farm that George and Lennie intend to buy. He is enticed by the dream, just as Candy was earlier on, and by the idea of being able to work in a place with no discrimination. Crooks begins to hope again.
However Crooks’ little dream of the farm is shattered by Curley’s wife’s nasty comments, slotting the black man right back into his "place" as inferior to a white woman. As a white woman, she abuses her power over Crooks to torment him with the threat of getting him “strung up on a tree.” Just as Crooks enjoyed wielding power over Lennie, Curley’s wife does the same to Crooks relentlessly. Crooks is jolted into that era’s reality by Curley’s wife’s harsh treatment, and Crooks refuses to say the woman is wrong. Instead, he accepts the fact that he lives with ever-present racial discrimination. And “he had reduced himself to nothing” This is the way Crooks copes with the discrimination by retreating into his protective shell building up a hard wall just as he had at the beginning of the section. He dismisses the other men, saying he had "forgotten himself" because they’d treated him so well. It seems Crooks defines his own notion of himself not based on what he believes he’s worth, but on knowing that no matter how he feels, others around him will always value him as less. As quickly as he got excited about the dream, he abandons it, telling Candy he was "Jus foolin" about being interested in his own freedom and happiness. As the section ends we see that Crooks wouldn’t have been allowed on their ranch anyway, “you hadn’t ought to have been here.” because of Georges upbringing to racial discrimination he still segregated Crooks like he others and we see that it would be most likely that Crooks would not be accepted by George on the ranch anyway.
Crooks sleeps in the harness room and is segregated from the other ranch workers. He has become hardened and embittered by the way he is routinely treated. However, when he is swept along by Lennie and Candy’s dream, he lets his guard down temporarily. Nonetheless, after Curley's wife remind him that he is still racially inferior to the others, he retreats back to his bitter shell. Crooks represents the plight of the disenfranchised, disempowered blacks caught in the economic poverty and racism of 1930’s America. Crooks’ situation is made worse by his social isolation as the only black worker on the ranch and by the fact he is disabled by his crooked spine. Crooks reveals to us things that help the reader understand the lives of men and women in the 1930’s. He tells how so many itinerant workers all have the same dream but he knows they all have no hope of getting it. We also see how minority groups especially black people were harshly treated in an attitude regarded acceptable. Crooks although he is not one the major characters in the novel, has a strong role in portraying how racism was dealt and also reveals the loneliness and isolation those in the 1930’s had to endure.
Charlotte Withell 10H
