Crooks: Mice and Men 2026 IGCSE Analysis

Beginning point: 

Absent; the ranch is already a white-only world.

Crooks has not appeared yet. But the world he lives in is already fully built. It is a world that does not include him, and it will not change.

Crooks’s absence reveals the ranch as an all-white world:

Crooks does not appear in the opening. The bunkhouse is full of white workers. Steinbeck shows us a world that has no space for a Black man before we have even met one.

The men share the bunkhouse, the yard, and Slim’s room freely. Nobody questions why. This tells us that keeping Black and white workers apart is completely normal to everyone on the ranch.

His exclusion is structural, not personal:

Nobody mentions that a Black worker is missing from the bunkhouse. Nobody thinks it is strange. His exclusion is not one person’s choice. It is just the way things are.

When something unfair is never questioned, it becomes invisible. Steinbeck shows us that racial segregation (keeping people apart because of their skin colour) works this way. It does not need to be violent to do its damage.

Steinbeck establishes racial hierarchy before Crooks speaks:

Steinbeck builds the whole world of the ranch without Crooks in it. By the time Crooks appears, readers already feel the shape of the gap he fills. His absence is itself a statement.

Everything Crooks says and does later in the story only makes sense because of this opening. Without it, his loneliness would look like a personal problem. With it, we see it is a social one.

Why does Steinbeck present this moment this way?

Social Realism: Social Realism means showing life as it really is. Steinbeck shows that segregation does not need drama or violence to hurt people. It just needs to be the normal way of things.

Historical Context: In 1930s California, the colour bar was a real and common rule. It meant Black and white workers lived and ate in separate spaces. Steinbeck did not invent this. He is describing what he saw.

Steinbeck’s message: Steinbeck’s point is this: racism does not always shout. Often it is quiet, built into daily life, and accepted without question. That is what makes it so hard to fight.

Middle 1

PONT:  Defined by others before he has even spoken.

The men have already decided who Crooks is before he walks through a door. That label is fixed. Steinbeck’s question is whether anything can break through it.

Crooks is defined by others before he can define himself:

Old Candy tells George and Lennie about Crooks before he appears. He says Crooks is the stable buck, that his back is bent from a horse’s kick, and that he keeps to himself.

Every fact Candy gives is about Crooks’s job or his body. Nobody mentions what Crooks thinks or feels. He is described like a piece of equipment, not a person.

He is presented as useful but separate from the male community:

Candy tells us Crooks is part of the ranch. But he is not part of the group. He is someone the men know about, not someone they know.

Candy also mentions that Crooks once won a fight at Christmas. This is said like a curious fact, not a reason to respect him. It is the way someone might talk about a strong working animal.

Crooks’s reputation is filtered entirely through white voices:

Everything we know about Crooks at this point comes from Candy, who is white. Crooks has not spoken. He has no chance to tell his own story.

Steinbeck does this on purpose. In 1930s America, Black people were described and judged by white society. Their own voices were rarely heard. This introduction mirrors that reality exactly.

Why does Steinbeck present this moment this way?

Social Realism: Steinbeck shows how communities reduce people without meaning to. Candy is not cruel. But his description of Crooks strips away everything that makes Crooks a full human being.

Historical Context: During the Great Depression, Black workers had the lowest status on ranches. They were given the hardest, dirtiest jobs and kept out of shared social spaces. Candy’s description reflects this accurately.

Steinbeck’s message: Steinbeck is saying that racism works through words as much as through actions. When one group controls how another group is described, that is its own form of power.

Middle 2

PONT:  Useful to the men; never one of them.

Crooks has done his job and disappeared. Being needed does not mean being included. His bigger scene, later in the story, will show what years of this treatment have done to him.

Crooks is functional to the men but not included by them:

Crooks puts his head into the bunkhouse to fetch Slim. He has warmed tar for a mule’s hoof and wants to warn Slim that Lennie is mishandling the puppies.

Both of his tasks involve animals. He cares for mules and watches the dogs. On this ranch, Crooks’s job puts him closer to the livestock than to the men.

He performs his role and immediately withdraws:

Crooks delivers his message and leaves. He does not stay. He knows the bunkhouse is not his space. Staying would cost him something he cannot afford.

This quick exit builds on what we learned earlier: he keeps to himself. But it is not a choice he was born with. It is a habit he has learned for survival.

His brief appearance confirms his status as a peripheral figure:

Slim takes the information Crooks brings and walks out without thanking him. The scene moves on. Crooks is not mentioned again. He is used and forgotten in the same breath.

Steinbeck’s point is clear. Crooks is close enough to be needed but too far away to be seen as a person. He exists at the very edge of the white community.

Why does Steinbeck present this moment this way?

Social Realism: Steinbeck shows that being excluded does not always mean being invisible. Crooks is called on, given tasks, and responded to. But he is never truly seen. That gap between being used and being valued is what Steinbeck is exploring.

Historical Context: On 1930s Californian ranches, Black workers were often given jobs caring for animals. They were kept out of the spaces where white workers relaxed and socialised. Their value was economic, not personal.

Steinbeck’s message: Steinbeck is making an important argument. Being useful is not the same as being respected. A person can be needed every day and still be treated as less than fully human.

Middle 3

PONT:  Both victim of racism and capable of cruelty.

He has shown his pain and his cruelty in the same scene. The tiny hope of the dream farm is already gone. Nothing has changed. He knows exactly how little power he has.

Crooks is forced to defend his humanity on his own territory:

Lennie wanders into Crooks’s harness room. Crooks tells him to leave. His room is neat and private. It has books and a copy of the California civil code. It is the only space that truly belongs to him.

Crooks explains to Lennie that he is banned from the bunkhouse because he is Black. The bunkhouse men are not allowed in his room either. The colour bar (the rule separating Black and white people) controls every part of his life.

He uses cruelty as a weapon against someone even more vulnerable:

Crooks taunts Lennie. He asks what Lennie would do if George never came back. He describes the feeling of having nobody. Then he admits he is really talking about himself.

Crooks is cruel to Lennie, who has a learning disability and cannot defend himself. This shows something important: victims of cruelty do not always become kind people. Sometimes they pass their pain onto someone weaker.

Crooks briefly imagines a life beyond racial exclusion:

Candy tells him the dream farm is real. The money exists. Crooks quietly asks if there might be room for him. This is the only moment in the novel where he hopes for something better.

He remembers his father’s chicken ranch in California and the white children he played with as a boy. Before the colour bar hardened around him, he had a different life. That memory still lives inside him.

He is crushed back into powerlessness by Curley’s Wife’s threat:

Crooks tells Curley’s wife to leave his room. She threatens to accuse him of rape and have him lynched (killed by a mob without a trial). He goes completely silent. He shrinks. He does not speak again.

This moment shows how little protection Crooks has. A single sentence from a white woman can destroy him. The one space he owns can be taken from him instantly. He has no defence and nowhere to turn.

Why does Steinbeck present this moment this way?

Social Realism: Social Realism means showing real, complicated people. Steinbeck does not make Crooks a perfect victim. He is also capable of cruelty. Both things are true at the same time.

Historical Context: Lynching was a real danger for Black men in 1930s America. The threat Curley’s wife makes is not just nasty words. It is a reference to actual violence that happened regularly. Crooks’s fear is completely rational.

Steinbeck’s message: Steinbeck is saying that unfair systems do not always produce innocent victims. People who are treated badly sometimes treat others badly too. That is one of the most damaging things an unjust system does.

Middle 4

PONT:  Hope collapses; he retreats into familiar isolation.

He has gone quiet and gone back to the liniment. The novel gave him one moment of hope and then took it away immediately. That is Steinbeck’s clearest and most painful point about race.

Crooks withdraws the offer without explanation or protest:

George arrives and takes Lennie and Candy away. Before they go, Crooks quietly tells Candy to forget his offer to join the farm. He does not argue. He does not explain. He simply closes the door on hope.

His withdrawal is instant. He does not try to negotiate or keep even a small part of the dream alive. Curley’s wife’s threat has reminded him, very clearly, of exactly where he stands.

He accepts his powerlessness as a permanent condition:

Crooks says nothing more after this. The section ends with him rubbing liniment into his bent spine. This is the same action that opened the scene. Nothing has moved. Nothing has changed.

Every time power has been used against Crooks in this novel, he has gone quiet. Not because he has nothing to say. But because speaking costs him more than silence does.

His return to the liniment is Steinbeck’s most devastating image:

The liniment is for the real pain in his back. But it also stands for something bigger. Rubbing it in alone, in private, with nobody watching, is the image of a man who has only himself for comfort.

Steinbeck ends Crooks’s key scene with this quiet image on purpose. The dream was never really his to reach for. The cost of trying was a sharp reminder of that fact.

Why does Steinbeck present this moment this way?

Social Realism: Steinbeck does not give Crooks a moment of dignity that lasts. Social Realism means telling the truth even when the truth is bleak. The conditions win. That is what actually happened to people like Crooks.

Historical Context: The Great Depression hurt Black workers far more than white workers. Government programmes that helped white Americans largely left Black Americans out. The colour bar on the ranch reflects conditions across the whole country.

Steinbeck’s message: Steinbeck’s argument is that the American Dream was never built to include Black people. Crooks does not give up his dream because he is weak. He gives it up because he is being realistic about a system that excludes him.

Ending Point: 

Invisible by necessity; racism has the final word.

He watches from the edge at the end, just as he did at the beginning. The colour bar has not moved. Steinbeck’s message is quiet and devastating: for men like Crooks, nothing changes.

Crooks stays at the edge, invisible and unremarked:

After Curley’s wife is found dead, Crooks follows the men into the barn. But he hangs back. He stays out of the way. He watches from the edges. This is exactly where he has been all novel.

Nobody speaks to him. Nobody calls on him. He adds nothing to what is happening because nobody expects him to. His presence at the edge of this final scene is a last confirmation that nothing has changed.

His silence in the final scene completes his arc of exclusion:

In his own section, Crooks argued, spoke bitterly, and reached for hope. Here he says nothing at all. The journey from difficult speech to total silence shows what the colour bar does to a person over time.

Every silence in this novel has built on the last. He went quiet after Curley’s wife threatened him. He went quiet when he withdrew the offer. Now, at the end, silence is all that is left.

Steinbeck gives Crooks no resolution because society offers none:

George ends the novel with an action, however terrible. Lennie ends it with death. Even Candy has a moment of grief and rage. Crooks simply fades from the edge of the scene. There is no moment for him.

This is Steinbeck’s final point about race. The novel ends exactly as it began: a world where Crooks is on the outside. The distance between his life at the start and his life at the end is zero.

Why does Steinbeck present this moment this way?

Social Realism: Steinbeck gives Crooks no kind exit. No dignity, no last line, no recognition. Social Realism means not softening the ending. The world moves on without him, and that is the whole point.

Historical Context: For Black Americans in 1930s rural California, the conditions Crooks lives in were completely normal. Segregated housing. Constant threat of violence. No real legal protection. Steinbeck does not invent this. He reports it.

Steinbeck’s message: Steinbeck ends by saying this: one person’s suffering inside a racist system cannot be fixed by individuals alone. The system itself has to change. And in this novel, it does not.