The Spatial Politics of Crooks's Room in Of Mice and Men

Abstract

This article examines Crooks's room in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men through Henri Lefebvre's theory of the production of space, bell hooks's discussion of the margin, and an intersectional perspective. It argues that the room is not merely a setting for marginalized characters but a changing social space whose uses reveal how power is organized and reproduced on the ranch. Crooks's separation from the white bunkhouse materializes racial hierarchy as an everyday spatial order. Lennie's and Candy's entries briefly reappropriate this imposed margin and turn it into a site of conversation, affiliation, and a shared dream of land. Curley's wife's arrival, however, exposes the unequal positions that remain among marginalized subjects, as race, gender, class, age, and disability continue to shape who can speak, exclude, threaten, or withdraw. The room's eventual return to segregation shows that the resistant potential of marginal space depends on the social relations that sustain it. Steinbeck thus presents spatial marginality as both a possible site of resistance and a mechanism through which hierarchy is repeatedly restored.

Keywords

• John Steinbeck
• Of Mice and Men
• production of space
• marginal space
• intersectionality
• reproduction of power

References

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