'Of Mice And Men'

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Bearing in mind the social, cultural and historical content how does John Steinbeck portray the black American in his novel ‘of mice and men’?

     John Steinbeck’s novel ‘of mice and men’ was published in 1937. This was in the middle of the Great Depression. When the novel was written in the 1930’s America was a deeply racist society, despite the fact that slavery had been abolished in 1864 at the end of the civil war. Steinbeck uses Crooks (the black stable buck) to expose racist attitudes and protest against the injustice shown towards black people.

     Steinbeck puts across the message that racism towards Crooks is both mindless and deeply ingrained in American society, because of the way he has scripted Candy saying the word ‘nigger’ to Crooks or calling him a ‘nigger’ so casually even though he likes Crooks. ‘Nigger’ is a nasty strong word that could shock or insult black people. Remember the Christmas party where the white Americans ‘let’ Crooks in to the party. ‘Let’ is a very patronising word it’s basically saying that Crooks is only in the party because they said he could come in as a treat, but the real reason was that they wanted someone to have a fight with Crooks and beat him up. Why should Crooks be treated different? And why is he only allowed in the party because they said so?

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     Steinbeck presents Crooks in a positive light. This suggests that it doesn’t matter if Crooks is black; he is still just a normal human being. Steinbeck also presents Crooks as a nice man on the outside, but when he gets a chance to take advantage of others he will. This is supported by the scene when crooks tells Lennie that George could be hurt and might not come back from town, this got Lennie really nervous and scared. Reading more into the chapter, we realise that Crooks is like this because of his past, the way he ...

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