Character Study on Crooks
In the novel "Of Mice and Men" the character of Crooks is used by John Steinbeck, the author, to symbolise the black community. Crooks is a significant character as he provides an insight into the reality of the American Dream and the feelings of all the ranchers: their “loneliness” and need for “company” and human interaction. John Steinbeck makes the reader to decide whether Crooks deserves sympathy, or if he is just a cruel, bitter and gruff stable-buck.
Crooks is a black man, but at the time the novel was written, blacks were referred to as "niggers." Being a nigger, Crooks is excluded by the whites at the ranch and he resents this. As he says" If I say something, why it's just a nigger sayin' it" and this shows his anger at being pushed to the side. Being oppressed has made him seem cruel and gruff, but also has turned him to self-pity and feels that he is a lesser human. He says to Lennie "You got no right to come in my room.....You go on get outa my room. I ain't wanted in the bunkhouse and you ain't wanted in my room." He continues by saying that the whites believe he stinks and one can interpret this as a way of saying that the whites would find it a disgrace that a nigger should breathe the same bunkhouse air as them. "S'pose you couldn't go into the bunkhouse and play rummy 'cause you was black...Sure, you could play horseshoes 'til dark, but then you have to read books." This shows that Crooks pities his own circumstances and weakness. When "his tone was a little more friendly" it gives us the impression that Crooks has a kind heart under his blunt exterior.
