Some questions---of mice and men---chapter four?

Question

Why did chapter four appear in the book? My teacher said it had huge significance. what I have deducted is that all the people who convened in Crooks's bunk were disabled in some way and that has to do with America during the depression or something.

Answer 1

Quick response:
It is the scene where we note cruel tendency most when Crooks criticizes Lennie’s dream of the farm and his dependence on George. Having just admitted his own vulnerabilities—he is a black man with a crooked back who longs for companionship—Crooks zeroes in on Lennie’s own weaknesses.
It is here whereby Steinbeck records a profound human truth: oppression does not come only from the hands of the strong or the powerful. Crooks seems at his strongest when he has nearly reduced Lennie to tears for fear that something bad has happened to George.
You are also right. As George realizes, Crooks was right: such paradises of freedom, contentment, and safety are not to be found in this world.

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Detailed response:

Chapter 4.

overview:

Saturday night at Crook's room in the barn. All but Candy and Lennie go to town. Lennie drops in on Crooks who philosophizes about companionship. Candy drops by and talks of their dreams. Curley's wife shows up and insults them all. Candy brags of their ranch. She infers that Lennie is the machine which got Curley. She threatens Crooks with a lynching. George arrives and all leave Crooks' room.

Social Realism/Naturalism:

John Steinbeck's work is most often considered in the literary tradition of Social Realism, a type of literature which concerns itself with the direct engagement with and intervention in the problematic (usually economic) social conditions in society. The height of Social Realism—and of its close relative, Naturalism, which blends social critique with a tragic narrative structure wherein a sort of natural fate irresistibly propels the characters toward their downfall—dates from the end of the nineteenth century.