“Say—what you sellin’?” “Huh?” “I said what stake you got in this guy? You takin’ his pay away from him?”
Chapter 2 · The Boss
Context
The boss has noticed George answering for Lennie and grown suspicious. He stops his bookkeeping mid-entry and confronts George directly.
Analysis
The boss's questions translate friendship into the only frame his world recognizes: economic transaction ('sellin'', 'stake', 'takin' his pay'). The progression from 'what you sellin'' to 'takin' his pay' moves from generalized suspicion to specific accusation, each phrasing tightening the assumption that one man's care for another must be a scam. George's monosyllabic 'Huh?' registers genuine non-comprehension—he does not yet inhabit the boss's idiom, though by Chapter 3 he will himself confess he stays with Lennie partly out of habit, not pure altruism.
How to Use in Essay
Support a thesis that the boss articulates the dominant ideology against which the novel measures every relationship—his presumption that solidarity must be exploitation establishes the baseline of suspicion that makes George and Lennie's bond legible as anomaly rather than norm.