Of Mice And Men Crooks Character Analysis

Although Candy and George deserve our sympathy because they both have hard lives and they have gone through a lot of things. Crooks is the most sympathetic because he is lonely and discriminated against, and like stated in the book being lonely is the worst thing that could happen to a man because a man needs someone to talk to no matter who that person is. v
Crooks is a very sympathetic character. At the beginning of chapter 4, the narrator describes Crook’s bunkhouse, and then the man himself. He cannot sit straight, because “his body was bent over to the left by his crooked spine” (67). Every night he rubs liniment into his muscles, which must hurt due to his injury. The author writes, “he flexed his muscles against his back and shivered” after he’s done putting on the ointment (67). Lennie sees Crooks’ light on and comes into talk, but Crooks is so bitter that he doesn’t want Lennie to visit. He tells Lennie, “I ain’t wanted in the bunkhouse, and you ain’t wanted in my room” (68). Crooks then starts talking to Lennie because he won’t leave and he tells Lennie, “They play cards in there, but I can’t
play because i’m black” (68). Crooks thinks that if he can’t go to their bunk house then they should not go to his room. While Lennie is there Crooks decides to have some fun with him since he’s bored and doesn’t really talk to anybody. Crooks starts supposing to Lennie that George might not come back from the town telling him “s’pose George went into town tonight and you never heard of him no more”, and once Lennie started to question it “Crooks’ face lighted with pleasure in his torture” (71) because Lennie can so easily be manipulated. After a while Candy appears and goes into the room and they all start talking about how George, Lennie and Candy are going to get their piece of land. After a while Curley's wife appears trying to talk to them but they just want her to leave them alone so Crooks tells her that she needs to get out of his room, but it backfires because she tells him “Well, you keep your place then, nigger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain’t even funny” (81). That only made him mad and it proves to the point that Crooks is treated badly because of his race.
Candy is also a sympathetic character although not as much as Crooks he too has a hard life and deserves our sympathy. When Candy is first introduced in the book he is described as old and with only one hand when the author says, “And out of the sleeve came a round stick- like wrist, but no hand”(18). Later on in the book Candy emphasizes that he is not very strong and good at much things since he only has one hand when he says, “ I ain’t much good with on’y one hand” (59) when George and Lennie talk about how they are going to get their own piece of land and how they will be able to work without worrying about getting kicked out. When George and Lennie first got to the ranch George and Slim were talking about Lennie and how even though he is not very clever he is strong when George says, “I ain’t nothing to scream about, but that big bastard there can put up more grain alone than most pairs can”(34).
George is another character that deserves our sympathy although not as much as Crooks and Candy.
In the book when George and Lennie are introduced right in the beginning the author introduces them with a problem, the problem that the bus driver left them far away from their destination making them stay the night outside. While George and Lennie are in their camping spot George starts to tell Lennie how he wishes he did not have Lennie to worry about saying, “If I was alone I could live so easy. I could go get a job an’ work, an’ no trouble”(11) because Lennie is always getting them both in trouble like in their last job and how Lennie “can’t keep a job and you lose me ever’ job I get”(11) making him get angry telling Lennie, ”I could get along so easy and so nice if I didn’t have you on my tail”(7) because Lennie “do bad things and I got to get you
out.”(11)