Don´t come in a place where you´re not wanted

There were still the noses of the males perceiving the smell of female when the narrator introduces us to Crooks. Crooks is a stable buck and also cripple, therefore he was the worker who spent more time in the same job. Steinbeck makes a correlation of the most naive? natural? between being disabled and moving from one ranch to another, from one city to another. Also, as he was accumulating personal belongings — he had a room for himself — this was a real nuisance every time he had to undertake a transfer.

We are already in the fourth chapter and the voice that guides us makes a fairly complete description of how Crooks is and how his room is. Tools, books, spectacles and ‘a mauled copy of the California civil code for 1905’, which I can't resist highlighting in this paragraph. As the pages run, we come to this wonderful tool to disarm anyone:

‘Crooks scawled, but Lennie´s disarming smile defeated him.’

Can anyone name a weapon more powerful than a clean smile? This single phrase is well worth spending the twelve euros that the book costs, and I would even dare to say that the author could have economise the remaining 120 pages. I bet I won't find a so wise choice like this from here until the end of the story. Am I exaggerating? 78 blank pages. Lennie's disarming smile on page 79. 41 pages left blank.

The Californian also has oakum to burn when he puts on the woman's mouth that the men of the farm have gone whoring but have left the morons, physically or psychically, at the ranch.

From my Borstal.

LDR

Of Mice and Men. John Steinbeck. Pocket Penguin Classic. London, 2006.