This also shows that he is treated with disrespect. The fact that people treat Crooks with cruelty it has made Crooks a bitter and hostile man. This shows how people in the bunkhouse treat him they isolated him which makes him bitter to others. Loneliness haunts Crooks deep down. But Crooks accepts things the way they are.
Crooks attitude is being closed off from the rest of the workers. He feels as if he isn't good enough to be with the other ranch hands. They don't want him in the bunk house, so he in turn doesn't want them in his room. He feels threatened by the others on the ranch. Most of the people on the ranch treated Crooks unfairly just because he was black.
Although Lennie is accused of being the cause of Curley’s wife’s death, the dialogue between these two characters in chapter five shows Curley’s wife is equally to blame. The reader can see in this chapter, Lennie tried very hard to get rid of Curley’s wife because he knew she would cause him trouble. The book states, “Lennie glared at her. ‘George says I ain’t to have nothing to do with you-talk to you or nothing.’” (Steinbeck 86). This quote is one of seven attempts Lennie made to try and get Curley’s wife to leave.
Curley’s wife was not the first, nor is she the last woman to experience objectification and isolation due to her anatomy. Steinbeck displayed the vicious cycle of sexism and how the demands of man conspire against morality of man. Curley’s wife was pretty and sought after by some, but seen as dirty and dangerous to others. Her appearance made her desirable but her resistance in submitting entirely deemed her unattractive or dangerous, just as many real women are
Through Curley’s wife, Crooks, and Candy, John Steinbeck had used his way to state how those characters had endured their loneliness throughout the book “Of Mice and Men”. Curley’s wife would not be a pleasant character in many ways. As a wife of manager’s son, she was described as a charming and flirty woman and treated others with scorn. However, her appearances later had shown actually she was just an immature, innocent and lonely woman who missed her chance to be a successful movie star in Hollywood and compelled to marry Curley. “If I’d went, I wouldn’t be livin’ like this, you bet” (Steinbeck 84) Accordingly, she felt unfair for her life and doesn’t want to get stuck on the ranch but she knew she could do nothing about it.
The death of Curley’s wife is foreshadowed by Lennie's roughness, what happened in weed and that he killed both his puppy and Curley’s wife the same way. Another example is the loss of their dream
He tries to get at Lennie by saying what would you do if George never returned/ how would u like staying all alone in a barn. In conclusion John Steinbeck symbolizes his characters in certain ways like how Lennie depends on George. John wants the American dream to seem foolish by having George and Lennie talk about owning their own land and living off of the land. Candy wanted to go in on the plan because he was going to have to go somewhere else because they might have kicked him off of the ranch because he couldn’t sweep any more. Crooks had to live in the barn because he was black and he wanted to go in with Lennie and George’s dream.
“‘Lennie-if you jus’ happen to get in trouble like you always done before, I want you to come right here an’ hide in the brush’”(Steinbeck 15). John Steinbeck included this in the story because where Lennie goes after he had killed Curley’s wife is an important part because George knows where to go after Lennie had gotten into trouble and is able to get there before the other men on the ranch find him. The inconvenience that Lennie causes prior to Lennie and George getting their new jobs foreshadows the ending because the readers and piece together that if Lennie causes trouble everywhere that he goes, he is bound to cause trouble at the ranch. A point in the story where the author uses foreshadowing to lead us to the ending is when Candy has to kill his dog. The men on the ranch tell Candy that he should get rid of his dog because it isn't any good to itself or anyone on the ranch.
When Curley’s wife tries to call for help Lennie muffles her cries and starts to get angry with her. “ "Look out, now, you'll muss it." And then she cried angrily, "You stop it now, you'll mess it all up." She jerked her head sideways, and Lennie's fingers closed on her hair and hung on. "Let go," she cried.
She was only written with negative character traits which made it so characters or readers were never able to sympathize with her. Next, no character ever had a turning point where they saw Curley’s wife as more than exactly that, Curley’s wife. And finally, he never gave her a name. There was a great imbalance between sexism and making the readers question the sexism. If Steinbeck had chosen to give the woman some justice the message against sexism would have been stronger.