"’Cause I’m black…"(Steinbeck ch.4). This is the only time that we see crooks discussing how everyone on the ranch degrades him and discriminates him. Crooks is so oppressed by the society that he lives in, that he starts to opress himself and he seems to be depressed. Crooks never talks back to any of the ranch workers when they call him racial slurs to his face. Crooks either has a strong will to keep working here, or, he knows that he has no other choice than to go out alone and starve.
We all may have had the feeling of loneliness and isolation, wanting companionship feeling abandonment. In John Steinbeck’s novella, Of Mice and Men, there are men living on a ranch having their own reasons for loneliness or being isolated. The three characters Crooks, George, and Lennie crusade dealing with own ways of loneliness and isolation. Crooks has no one that likes him because he’s black, Lennie struggles mentally and George struggles with always having to care for him. They all can’t decide whether it is that they want to be alone or not.
Loneliness is evident for most people at some point in their life. In a way it’s inescapable, whether you chose to live that way or forced into it. In the novel Of Mice and Men, written by John Steinbeck, it follows the story of two unlikely friends, George and Lennie and their journey through the Great Depression. Lennie has a mental disability that prevents him to think like a regular adult, so he depends on his friend George to protect him, in fact they always stay together. They find a job on a ranch and that’s where most of the story takes place and where the story follows the common theme of the “American Dream” and loneliness.
It is crystal clear that the loneliest character in Of Mice and Men is Crooks. He was rejected to play cards, and to enter the bunkhouse, just because he is colored. He also has an unwelcoming personality that repels people from getting close to him. John Steinbeck clearly expresses loneliness primarily through Crooks than the other characters who are also considered lonely. “People think being alone makes you lonely, but I don’t think that’s true.
As Steinbeck progresses through the book he creates a motif of loneliness is revealed throughout the book from various characters. Overall, the book shows how loneliness is threaded from beginning to the end, especially in the most crucial paragraph. In the beginning of the book on page 45 Candy has a dog that he 's “had from a pup” and he 's “so used to him,” but since the dog is so old, Carlson points out the fact the dog is incapable of doing anything. Ever since Carlson killed Candy’s dog he has been lonely because he 's one of the oldest members isolating him from the rest due to
A man of a different race is assumed to be treated justly, especially in this current generation. However, segregation unfortunately still is an enormous issue, although it was said to be resolved many years prior. The novella, Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, accompanies several ranchers who all are detached from one another in various manners. Precisely, Crooks, an African American stable buck who resides at the ranch, is segregated so extremely often that he never truly considers that he belongs anywhere. Society, using isolation and alienation as key components, can compel people to feel inferior and abandoned which can lead to a sense of despair or helplessness.
"Language has created the word loneliness to express the pain of being alone, and the word solitude to express the glory of being alone.” - Paul Tillich. With this intention, the only way to break isolation and loneliness is to become bold and put oneself out there. Of Mice and Men is a story about two men that are very different but comes together and shares the same dream. In the novel, Of Mice and Men, the author John Steinback shows that due to personal choices, social norms, and fear, characters including Crooks, Curley, and Curley’s wife experience isolation and loneliness.
Steinbeck’s characterization and setting expresses his belief that it is both social barriers and personal choice that causes the loneliness and isolation of the characters. Civil rights caused separation and isolation towards black people when Of Mice and Men took place. As Crooks mention himself “Cause I’m black. They play cards in there, but I can’t play because I 'm black.
"Of Mice and Men" essay on Loneliness is a basic part of human life. Every one becomes lonely once in a while but in Steinbeck 's novella "Of Mice and Men", he illustrates the loneliness of ranch life in the early 1930 's and shows how people are driven to try and find friendship in order to escape from loneliness. Steinbeck creates a lonely and blue atmosphere at many times in the book. He uses names and words such as the town near the ranch called "Soledad", which means loneliness and the card game "Solitaire" Which means by ones self. He makes it clear that all the men on the ranch are lonely, with particular people lonelier than others.
Without a chance to develop and learn in the school system, Forrest is already at disadvantage because the system itself believes that he is unable to learn effectively. Racism/Discrimination Believing that one race is superior to others, and using this ideology to deny “opportunities and equal rights to groups of people because of prejudice or other arbitrary reasons” (Class notes) The Alabama and southern culture is shown in Forrest Gump, particularly when the University of Alabama allowed black people to enroll at the university. Students are shown calling them “coons,” and the decision was met with a lot of controversy and riots.
Edmund Drago’s book provides a look into one of the first black educational institutions, The Avery Normal Institute in Charleston Virginia. This book discusses how this school was made too elitist, due in large part to the high-class nature of Charleston, Virginia, which segregated the students from the white people of the town as well as the black people of the town. They were separated from the white people because, while they were more elite than the common black citizen, and getting an education, they were also black, so many southern people did not want to socialize with them. Black citizens who did not attend the Avery Normal Institute were not fond of the students there because they struck them as too elitist. Drago’s argument is that the elite nature of this school allowed for the development of black leaders, who were crucial to the later transformation of the town and the destruction of racial barriers so many years later.
The theme of loneliness is developed in chapter four in Of Mice and Men by explaining the situations that the characters are in with great detail. Unquestionably, loneliness is shown in the chapter when the author shows how Crooks lives his life. When Lennie first enters Crooks’ room, it seems like Crooks doesn’t want Lennie to be there. Crooks says, “You got no right to come in my room. This here’s my room.
¨Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the most terrible poverty.¨-Mother Teresa. Seclusion is painful. There is nobody to open up to, nobody to help bear the weight of stressors, and nobody to empathise with. Almost everybody has experienced seclusion during their lifetime. While loneliness is less apparent in everyday life, it is a common motif in books.
I find it interesting the way the society in Black No More shifts throughout the story to continually uphold racist beliefs. The world in the book changes massively from beginning to end. It will never be the same again. As Crookman’s treatment changes more and more people, those in power struggle to stay at the top.
“What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens?”- John Marshall Harlan. On May 18, 1896, the Supreme court passed the separate but equal act on a vote of 7-1. This allowed separate facilities to be made for whites and blacks. This was the result of the Plessy vs Ferguson case, where a man was forced out of a whites-only car because he had African descent. The Supreme court couldn’t find any differences in the train cars, yet separate facilities for blacks had a decrease in quality.