How Does Steinbeck Use The Character Of Crooks To Highlight Certain Issues Which Were Prominent At The Time The Novel Of Mice And Men Was Written?

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How Does Steinbeck Use The Character Of Crooks To Highlight Certain Issues Which Were Prominent At The Time The Novel ‘Of Mice And Men’ Was Written?

1930’s hit, America lay in financial ruins and deep devastation as the great depression strikes. Causing economic depression throughout the 20th century and leaving many lives in tatters as American citizens face losing money, stock, homes, savings and more importantly jobs. Dealing with unemployment men turn helplessly to migrant working. Moving away from home (if they have one) and getting into manual labour on farms for low pay and a place to stay although it wasn’t structured employment and they found themselves moving from place to place.

As Poverty led to working on ranches ‘of mice and men’ was born, a novel written in the late 1930’s to unravel the issues and unfair ways of the 30’s and the great depression. Highlighting poverty, loneliness, sexism and more importantly Racism, the main theme of the story.  

Being a major issue Racism swarmed America and started taking over most white peoples heads. Black slavery was behind them but unfortunately racism/discrimination towards different races wasn’t and the Jim Crow laws were soon introduced quickly segregating coloured people and making them outcasts in there own countries. So we were 100 years after slavery, but we were smack bang in the middle of segregation and this, was also not a nice experience for the black race. In a bid to stop the black Americans from being equal, the southern states passed a series of laws known as Jim Crow laws which discriminated against blacks and made sure that they were segregated from whites. Blacks were gradually fired from most jobs and had to use different transport, bathrooms ect. To white people, whites started to rule America.

‘Crooks’ Is a character Steinbeck created to highlight how unfairly this time was and with no real importance to the story crooks has a major importance in the book as he was put there to show us how wrong segregation really was and how lonely and miss treated these people were. We first get an idea of crooks in chapter two where he is first bought up, not being on the scene yet we get a little picture of what he’s like and what his role is. Candy explains how when the boss is in a bad mood it’s always taken out on the stable buck stating “An’ he give the stable buck hell, too’” meaning Crooks, Instantly the first time Crooks is mentioned in the whole book its in a negative way as through innocence he’s treated as if done something wrong. Candy informs George and Lenny why the stable buck gets hell by simply adding on “ya see the stablebucks a nigger” in those days racial slurs such as the language used towards black people wasn’t looked upon as bad but looked upon as normal, they were allowed to say things like that whereas now days you’d get in a lot of trouble as racism isn’t accepted.

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Candy goes on to tell them how Crooks isn’t allowed in the bunk house, the small typically western and simple room full of beds were they all sleep. He isn’t allowed in simply because he’s black and segregation prevents him from doing so as its mixing with white people which was frowned upon at the time. He says “they let the nigger in that night” reminiscing  one Christmas when Crooks was allowed in the bunk house “smitty took after the nigger, done pretty good too” he tells of how a white man called smitty decided to beat crooks up just ...

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