Of Mice and Men essay on Crooks character.

Of Mice and Men essay on Crooks character.

Of Mice and Men essay

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I am doing my essay on Crooks the 'Stable buck' who is black, 'the

nigger'. I have chosen to do Crooks as I feel he is a defined

character, different to the rest so I thought it would be interesting

to go into him with more detail.

He has a crooked back, hence the name Crooks, he has a crooked back as

a horse kicked him when he was younger.

'Stable buck' means he tends the horses on the ranch, and this is

where he sleeps. He is not allowed to sleep in the bunkhouse with the

rest of the ranch workers, as they are afraid that they might catch a

disease off him, so instead he has to sleep in the barn with the

animals. He lives a life of solitude, being alone in the barn with

no-one coming in to talk to him, 'You got no right to come in my

room', 'I aint wanted in the bunkhouse and you aint wanted in here'.

Among his possessions, in his room he has some books, including "a

tattered dictionary and a mauled copy of the California civil code for

1905" This tells him his rights as a black man, so he obviously does

not want to get on the wrong side of the law, so he keeps to his

limits. Him having books suggests to us that he may have been well

educated as a child. When he was young boy he lived on a smallholding

with his father, so he was probably treated with a bit of respect,

however, now he is just a black man working on a ranch with a lot of

white men, and now he is treated with no respect at all, he is an

outcast which nobody wants to know, 'If I say something it's just a

nigger talking'. So from having people liking him to no-one liking him

at all is quite a big jump.

The other ranch workers see him as entertainment, as you can easily

win a fight against him if you were put up to it, when the boss comes

along Crooks knows to get out of the way, "The boss gives him hell

when he's mad" and he goes and finds something to do so he is not

noticed. So if the ranch workers see the boss having a go at him they

must think that it is right to push him around. At the time when this

was set, black people were still seen as an inferior race to whites.