They’ll take ya to the booby hatch. They’ll tie ya up with a collar, like a dog.
Chapter 4 · Crooks
Context
Pressing his sadistic hypothetical further, Crooks describes for Lennie what would happen to him without George's protection.
Analysis
The simile 'tie ya up with a collar, like a dog' borrows the animal-husbandry vocabulary that has surrounded Lennie since the novel's opening (the bear, the terrier, the pup he has just come to see) and turns it into an instrument of confinement. The juxtaposition with 'booby hatch' couples institutional psychiatric incarceration with bestial restraint, suggesting the two systems of removal converge for those who fall outside the protective bond of a companion.
How to Use in Essay
Argue that Steinbeck systematically figures unprotected vulnerability as proximity to the animal—this line clarifies that what George provides Lennie is not love alone but the social standing that keeps him recognizably human in the eyes of institutions.