Crooks Character Analysis | Of Mice And Men

Of Mice and Men Crooks Character Analysis: Who he is in one sentence

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Crooks is the black stable buck who sleeps alone in the harness room because the bunkhouse is closed to him, who understands the ranch more clearly than anyone in it, and who is silenced completely by one sentence from the most powerless white person on the place.

What he does

Crooks is mentioned in Chapter 2 before we meet him. He is named as the stable buck who lives apart. The men refer to him casually and cruelly, and the arrangement is presented as ordinary.

Chapter 4 is his chapter and almost everything he does happens in it. He is rubbing liniment into his back when Lennie appears in his doorway.

He tells Lennie to get out, then lets him stay. He explains the segregation of the ranch plainly. He asks Lennie to imagine being shut out of a room for something he cannot change.

He turns cruel briefly, asking what Lennie would do if George never came back. When Lennie becomes genuinely distressed, Crooks stops immediately and reassures him.

Candy arrives and the conversation turns to the farm. Crooks dismisses it, then asks whether he could join and work for nothing but a place to live.

Curley’s wife arrives. When Crooks tells her to leave his room, she threatens to have him lynched. He goes silent. By the end of the chapter he has withdrawn his request and told Candy he was only joking.

What he wants

Crooks wants company, and he knows exactly what its absence has done to him. He has books, which is how he fills the time, but books are not the thing he is short of.

“A guy needs somebody to be near him.”
Crooks, to Lennie in Chapter 4.

Six words that carry the whole theme. Short enough to drop into any sentence about isolation, so learn it exactly. It is more useful in an exam than a long quote you half remember.

For a few minutes in Chapter 4 he wants the farm. That is the most dangerous thing he does, because wanting it in front of witnesses is what gets punished.

Key quotes

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

The best opening quote for a paragraph on racism. He states it flatly, with no self-pity, describing the ordinary arrangement of every day. Note that the men have invented a reason that makes the exclusion sound practical, and he repeats their excuse back at them.

“I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an’ he gets sick.”
Crooks, in Chapter 4.

Loneliness presented as an illness rather than a mood. Strong evidence that Steinbeck treats isolation as the real subject of the book. Use it when you want to argue the theme is doing more than describing a feeling.

“Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no land. It’s just in their head.”
Crooks, on the farm.

The flat contradiction of the dream, spoken by the man with the least reason to hope. Set it directly against George’s speech in Chapter 1 to build an argument. Then note that George says the same thing himself in Chapter 5.

“I didn’t mean it. Jus’ foolin’. I wouldn’ want to go no place like that.”
Crooks, at the end of Chapter 4.

The saddest retraction in the novel. Nothing has happened between his asking and his withdrawing except a threat. Quote this rather than the insult itself, because the retraction is the evidence of what the threat costs.

What he stands for

Crooks stands for the fact that the ranch has a hierarchy even at the bottom. Every person in his room in Chapter 4 is powerless. They still find somebody to stand on, and Crooks is at the end of that line.

He stands for how quickly a person can be erased. Steinbeck writes that Crooks reduced himself to nothing, with no personality left to arouse either like or dislike. That is not a description of his character. It is a description of what he does to survive.

He stands for intelligence with nowhere to go. He keeps a dictionary and a battered copy of the California civil code. He has thought carefully about his own rights, and none of that reading protects him for a single second in Chapter 4.

Above all he is the novel’s realist. He has watched men carry the same dream along the same roads for years. He says none of them ever get the land. The book proves him right.

Two strong essay angles

1. Crooks and the price of survival. Use this for questions on a character treated unfairly, or on an important social issue. Track him across one chapter. Proud about his room, explaining the segregation, hopeful about the farm, silent, then taking it back. Five stages in a few pages. The argument is that he is not naturally withdrawn, he has been made that way.

2. Crooks as the voice that tests the dream. Use this for questions on hopes and dreams. He is the one character who states plainly that the land never happens. Set his verdict against George’s Chapter 1 speech and Candy’s Chapter 4 definition. Then show that George agrees with Crooks by Chapter 5.

Common mistake

The common mistake is to write about Crooks purely as a victim. That flattens him and loses marks. He is well read, sharp and observant. He is also deliberately cruel to Lennie for a moment, before thinking better of it. He is also the most accurate judge of the dream in the whole book. Show a full person who is then forced to shrink. That is much stronger than presenting him only as somebody things are done to.

Quick recall

1. What is Crooks’s job and where does he sleep?

He is the stable buck, who looks after the horses. He sleeps in the harness room off the barn, separately from the white workers.

2. Why does he live apart from the other men?

Because he is black and is not allowed in the bunkhouse. He explains that the men play cards there and he cannot join them.

3. What books does Crooks keep?

A dictionary and a battered copy of the California civil code, along with other books. They show he is educated and has thought about his own rights.

4. Why does Crooks first tell Lennie to leave?

Because Lennie has no right to be in his room. Crooks makes the point about the rule before deciding to ignore it himself.

5. How does Crooks frighten Lennie?

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

6. What is Crooks’s view of the farm?

That it never happens. He has watched hundreds of men carry the same idea along the road with their bundles on their backs. None of them ever get land.

7. What does Crooks ask for?

To join the farm and work for nothing but board. It is the only time in the novel he asks for anything.

8. How is Crooks silenced?

Curley’s wife threatens to have him lynched. As a white woman accusing a black man in 1930s California, the threat is entirely credible, and he stops speaking at once.

9. What does Crooks do at the end of Chapter 4?

He takes back his request to join the farm and tells Candy he was only joking. Nothing has changed except that he has been threatened.

10. What does Steinbeck say has happened to Crooks?

That he has reduced himself to nothing, with no personality left to like or dislike. Making himself invisible is the safest thing available to him.

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