Most of the characters in 'Of Mice and Men' are social misfits in one sense or another. Discuss the consequences of their social inadequacies.

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Most of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’ are social misfits in one sense or another. Discuss the consequences of their social inadequacies.

Most of the characters in ‘Of Mice and Men’ are social misfits. Some of them have consequences because of their social inadequacies. Some of the characters are outcasts because of their appearances rather than their nature or personalities. A classic example of this is crooks.

     Crooks  is a man of a black race and he is discriminated by the other men on the ranch because of this. On the ranch race is an important factor among the workers. All the other workers on the ranch are white but crooks is black. This important fact is one of his social inadequacies. Some of the workers believe that if you white you have more power and status than if you are black. Because of his race he is not called by his name but by the name ‘nigger’. He is not allowed in the bunk house but he has to stay by himself in the harness room.

     A consequence of his difference is that he is not bothered or talked to by anyone until Lennie comes along and shows everyone that race does not matter. When something goes wrong the boss shouts at him and blames him for things he has not done by him doing so this degrades him and puts Crooks down. But when he was a child he never felt like this.  When crooks was a child he lived in a mixed race community and he used to play with white children all the time until one day his father stopped him and told him not to play with them ever again. As crooks was only a child he did not understand and just did what his father told him.

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      The workers on the ranch degrade him by telling him that he smells and this shows that they have no respect for their feelings what-so-ever. Some people use their race and status against him like Curley’s wife. She tells him that he is nothing and she tells him to keep his place.

     Crooks also has a disability. He has a bent back which means that he cannot do much and that is why he is just a stable buck. Just like things in the harness room he is in the ‘process of being mended’. There ...

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