Of Mice And Men Chapter 4 Summary | Junior Cycle English

Of Mice and Men Chapter 4 Summary: Where we are

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Saturday night, in Crooks’s room in the harness shed. Most of the men have gone into town. The four people left behind end up in the same small room. None of them chose to be left behind.

What happens

Crooks is the black stable buck. He sleeps in the harness room, apart from the bunkhouse, because he is not allowed in with the white workers. He has books, a dictionary and a battered copy of the California civil code. He rubs liniment into his back, which was damaged by a horse.

Lennie appears in the doorway, looking for company, because he has seen the light. Crooks tells him to get out. He points out that Lennie has no right to be in his room. Crooks has no right to be in theirs either.

Crooks then lets him stay, and starts talking. He explains the segregation of the ranch plainly. He asks Lennie to imagine what it would be like to be shut out of the bunkhouse for something he cannot change.

Crooks turns cruel for a moment. He asks Lennie what would happen if George never came back. Lennie becomes frightened and angry, and Crooks backs off quickly once he sees real distress. He was testing an idea, not attacking.

Candy comes in looking for Lennie, and the talk turns to the farm. Crooks has heard men describe the same dream hundreds of times and says none of them ever get the land. Then, for a few lines, he asks whether he could come too, and work for nothing but a place to live.

Curley’s wife arrives, looking for Curley. She knows he is not there. She stays because these three are the only people who will listen to her, and she says so.

The mood turns. Candy tells her to leave. She mocks the three of them as the weak ones left behind. When Crooks tells her to get out of his room, she threatens him with lynching, and the threat is entirely credible. Crooks goes silent and shrinks back into himself.

George returns and sends everyone away. Crooks calls Candy back and takes back his request to join the farm, saying he was only joking.

One key quote

“‘Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I’m black. They say I stink.”
Crooks, explaining to Lennie why he sleeps alone.

Crooks states it flatly, without self-pity, which is what makes it land. He is not describing an argument he had. He is describing the ordinary arrangement of every day of his life.

The detail about the smell is the cruellest part. The men have invented a reason that makes the exclusion sound practical. Crooks repeats their excuse back, and by repeating it he shows he knows exactly what it is.

Set this against what he says later. He calls himself not so crippled that he could not work hard for a place of his own. Then set it against the moment he takes that back. In one chapter he asks for something and withdraws it, and nothing has happened in between except a threat.

What this chapter is doing

Steinbeck gathers his outcasts and shows they cannot help each other. One room holds a black man, a disabled old man and a lonely woman. The fourth is a man with the mind of a child. Instead of forming an alliance, they attack each other.

The chapter also tests the dream and finds it thin. Crooks has watched hundreds of men carry the same idea across the same roads, with their bundles on their backs. His verdict is that nobody ever gets the land, and it is only ever in their heads.

Then watch the power move at the end. Curley’s wife is the most powerless white person on the ranch. She has no name of her own in the whole novel. She still outranks Crooks absolutely, and both of them know it the moment she says so.

Steinbeck’s description of what happens to Crooks afterwards is the point of the whole scene. He reduces himself to nothing, so that there is no personality left to like or dislike. That is what survival costs him.

Themes that show up

Racism. Not background detail. Crooks explains the segregation himself, then a threat of lynching silences him completely.
Loneliness as damage. Crooks says a man who gets too lonely gets sick. The novel treats isolation as an injury, not a mood.
The dream challenged. The most realistic voice in the book says the land never happens. He is arguing with George’s Chapter 1 speech.
Power among the powerless. Every person in this room is at the bottom, and they still find someone to stand on.
Curley’s wife as a person. She says directly that she is stuck in the house and wants somebody to talk to.

Common questions that come up

For a question on a character who is treated badly, Crooks is the strongest answer in the novel. Use his own explanation of the segregation, then the moment he withdraws his request to join the farm. The retraction is the evidence, not the insult.

A question on an important social issue in your studied text can use this chapter almost on its own. Racism, disability and the position of women all appear in one room in one evening.

If a question asks about a scene that changed your view of a character, Curley’s wife works well here. She admits her loneliness and then makes the cruellest threat in the book. Both are true at once, and saying so is a strong answer.

For CBA2, this chapter is a good focus. It has a clear setting, four characters, and an argument that shifts three times in a few pages.

Common mistake

Students often write that Crooks is simply a victim, and stop there. That flattens him. Crooks is intelligent, well read and sharp enough to bait Lennie about George not coming back. He is also cruel for a moment, and he knows exactly what the ranch is. Then he is silenced by a single sentence. Show him as a full person who is then forced to shrink. That is far stronger than presenting him only as somebody things are done to.

Quick recall

1. Where does this chapter take place and why is that significant?

In Crooks’s room in the harness shed. He sleeps separately from the other workers because he is black and is not allowed in the bunkhouse.

2. What does Crooks keep in his room?

Books, including a dictionary and a battered copy of the California civil code. They show he is educated and that he has thought about his own rights.

3. Why does Crooks first tell Lennie to leave?

Because he has no right to be there, in the same way Crooks has no right to enter the bunkhouse. Crooks is making a point about the rule before he decides to ignore it.

4. How does Crooks frighten Lennie?

He asks what Lennie would do if George went away and never came back. Lennie becomes distressed and angry, and Crooks stops as soon as he sees it.

5. What is Crooks’s opinion of the dream?

That it never happens. He has watched hundreds of men carry the same idea along the road, and says nobody ever gets the land. It stays in their heads.

6. What does Crooks ask for, and what happens to that request?

He asks whether he could join the farm and work for nothing but board. By the end of the chapter he takes it back and says he was only joking.

7. Why does Curley’s wife stay in the room?

Because these three are the only people who will listen to her. She says outright that she is stuck in the house and never gets to talk to anybody.

8. How does Curley’s wife silence Crooks?

She threatens to have him lynched. As a white woman accusing a black man in 1930s California, the threat is real, and Crooks stops speaking immediately.

9. What does she call the three men left behind?

The weak ones. It is an accurate description, and it includes her, which is part of why she says it with such contempt.

10. What does Steinbeck say has happened to Crooks by the end?

That he has reduced himself to nothing, with no personality left to like or dislike. He makes himself invisible because that is the safest thing to be.

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