Quote Detail

Crooks abruptly turns from theorizing about Lennie's relationship with George to a hypothetical that introduces sadism into the conversation, testing what abandonment would mean for Lennie.

The anaphoric 'S'pose… S'pose…' enacts the very mechanism of dread the line is designed to produce: hypothetical syntax allows Crooks to inflict pain while disclaiming responsibility for the pain inflicted. The colloquialism 'took a powder' (slang for slipping away) introduces a casual idiom for desertion that makes George's loyalty seem one trivial decision away from collapse—the language deliberately trivializes what Lennie holds sacred.

Support a thesis that Crooks weaponizes hypothetical grammar to redistribute the suffering of his own exclusion onto another marginalized figure—this line demonstrates that powerlessness does not automatically produce solidarity, but often produces lateral cruelty.