Crooks

Crooks

Crooks is the black stable-hand. He is very lonely because he is a „negro“ and the other workers totally ignore and reject him. That's why he normally hates it if other workers come into his room, the place where he can relax and hide and where he feels safe. He withdraws because he thinks: „What others do to me I'll do to them.“

So when Lennie comes into his room he wants to protect his own little realm and tries to throw him out. When Lennie doesn't want to leave he invites him in and they start talking. But as soon as he realizes that Lennie is mentally inferior, he starts to exploit this to his advantage. He tries to make him feel as lonely and lost as he feels all the time, so he tells him that George wouldn't come back. At first he enjoys Lennie's fear. But when Lennie is freaking out and gets mad, wanting to attack Crooks, he has to admit that he may be superior to Lennie mentally but when it comes to physical strength he is absolutely inferior. Immediately he tries to appease Lennie to save his own skin.

At this point you see that he doesn't know anything about human connections. If he had known how Lennie would react when he heard that George was in danger he wouldn't have made fun of him.

Crooks is one of the saddest characters in the book because he always experienced the exact opposite of love, sympathy and friendship in his whole life. So the bound between Lennie and George amazes him and he is a little jealous of that.

Crooks has accepted his destiny as a negro because he knows that he doesn't have any other choice. But when Lennie tells him about the farm Crooks sees a person who tries to change his own way of living. But Crooks got too pessimistic in all these years to believe that fairy tales like the plan of Lennie and George can come true.

Alisha & Alexandra