Explore How Steinbeck Develops Our Impressions of Crooks

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The Character of Crooks is shown as a seemingly minor character in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men”, however being the only black man in the novel and through all the attitudes shown towards him, he plays a major role in representing how ‘coloured’ men were abused and discriminated during the Depression-era by racism. Due to the racist behaviour towards him we are shown that he is the lonliest of characters. Also, throughout the novel we are shown different sides of him by the author to develop our impressions. From the first time we are introduced to Crooks through Candy, he tells George ‘He [the boss] was sure burned when you wasn’t here this morning. Come right in when we was eatin’ breakfast and says, “where the hell’s them new men?” An’ he give the stable buck hell, too’ this quote conveys that for being dark skinned, Crooks is physically abused by others as he would have not been able to speak up as he has as much lesser social standing than a woman (in this case curley’s wife). Another thing that Candy says is ‘Ya see the stable buck’s a nigger,’ we get an insight of how he is degraded verbally by the white men, on the ranch, unintentionally as well as intentionally for being black because after Candy has said that he feels inclined to say ‘ Nice fella, too’ this also highlights that at the time a majority of people had stereotyped black people as being not nice and etc, because of the colour of their skin. From this Steinbeck makes us feel sorry for the black stable buck as he has to put up with all the verbal and physical abuse projected towards him. Another thing that readers would have noticed in the intro is that he is told to be crippled, ‘Got a crooked back where horse kicked him,’ through the quote it can be deduced where the name the author gave the character originates from. Following that Candy implies that Crooks is an intelligent man because ‘he reads a lot’ you can tell this because at the time for a person to be literate was indeed a big...
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