Crooks and Curley's Wife
How does Steinbeck present Crooks’s and Curley’s Wife’s relationship?
Steinbeck shows us how people become stronger with the support and companionship of others through Curley’s Wife’s relationship with Crooks.
After hearing Candy’s speech about the dream they now all share this hope of a better life together. This dream includes Crooks, who before was irritated by the other men’s company, is now realising how lonely he had been before and this almost reachable dream could become a reality for him, an escape from the isolation he has to endure everyday on the ranch. Steinbeck writes, ‘She looked from one face to another, and they were all closed against her.’
This relationship Crooks has built with Lennie and Candy immediately reflects on to Curley’s wife as they all shut her out of their dream. She has no faith that they will reach it because she’s seen men with the same goal before, always longing to leave the ranch, but she knows that eventually these men will lose their money to a brothel or a poker game just like her husband has.
Crooks builds his confidence dangerously high with the help of Candy and Lennie because in that moment he feels equal to them, he becomes angry and powerful and shouts at Curley’s wife, “You got no rights comin’ in a colored man’s room.”
Crooks is different to the other men on the ranch, he has his own room and possessions showing us that he will stay on the ranch for a long time and he takes pride in his little room because it’s all he has. He doesn’t want any trouble and he sees Curley’s Wife as a threat to him and his new friends so it’s appropriate for him to banish her from his property. Steinbeck writes Crooks’ lines carefully and when he says “colored man” in this quote the reader can imagine him saying it with authority because after all he is the only man with his own belongings and when he says this he’s probably remembering the rights a coloured man has from the ‘California Civil Code’ that he keeps in his room.
Steinbeck shows us how people become stronger with the support and companionship of others through Curley’s Wife’s relationship with Crooks.
After hearing Candy’s speech about the dream they now all share this hope of a better life together. This dream includes Crooks, who before was irritated by the other men’s company, is now realising how lonely he had been before and this almost reachable dream could become a reality for him, an escape from the isolation he has to endure everyday on the ranch. Steinbeck writes, ‘She looked from one face to another, and they were all closed against her.’
This relationship Crooks has built with Lennie and Candy immediately reflects on to Curley’s wife as they all shut her out of their dream. She has no faith that they will reach it because she’s seen men with the same goal before, always longing to leave the ranch, but she knows that eventually these men will lose their money to a brothel or a poker game just like her husband has.
Crooks builds his confidence dangerously high with the help of Candy and Lennie because in that moment he feels equal to them, he becomes angry and powerful and shouts at Curley’s wife, “You got no rights comin’ in a colored man’s room.”
Crooks is different to the other men on the ranch, he has his own room and possessions showing us that he will stay on the ranch for a long time and he takes pride in his little room because it’s all he has. He doesn’t want any trouble and he sees Curley’s Wife as a threat to him and his new friends so it’s appropriate for him to banish her from his property. Steinbeck writes Crooks’ lines carefully and when he says “colored man” in this quote the reader can imagine him saying it with authority because after all he is the only man with his own belongings and when he says this he’s probably remembering the rights a coloured man has from the ‘California Civil Code’ that he keeps in his room.