The Character of Crooks and Racism in the USA

Of Mice and Men part 4
Crooks and racism: answers
Subject: / English
Age groups: / 11-14, 15-16
Topic: / Of Mice and Men

The character of Crooks and racism in the USA

Novelists often use individual characters to tell us about the conditions under which a larger group of people live. The character of Crooks in Of Mice and Men tells us about the life of black people in the USA in the 1930s.

Look up the following words and insert them in the texton the following page that explores this in more detail.

abolition
commonly accepted
denial
illustrates
intend
is disillusioned
is referred to
prevailed
prevalent
prides
segregation
states
strikes
underlines

The character of Crooks and racism in the USA

Fill in the words from the list above:

The character of Crooks illustrates racism in the USA in the 1930s. Although racism has always been more prevalent in the American Deep South[1] than in California, where the novel is set, it was commonly acceptedall over the USA that black Americans did not have the same rights as whites.

This strikes us as particularly unfair in a country like America that prides itself on being a nation of immigrants. The Declaration of Independence of 1776 states that everybody is considered to be ‘created equal’ and has ‘certain unalienable Rights’ such as ‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’. It is a contradiction that despite these guaranteed rights, slavery prevailed in the USA until 1863 and former slaves and their descendents were treated as second class citizens for more than a hundred years after the abolition of slavery.

Racism was expressed through segregation (e.g. black Americans had to use separate waiting rooms at train stations and separate toilets), and also through the denial of education and of constitutional rights such as the right to vote.

Crooks is not allowed to stay in the bunk house and is referred toas ‘the nigger’ or ‘negro’ by the other workers. Even though not all of them intend to offend him, this means that he is defined by the colour of his skin and not his personal name or his character. Being literate and possessing a dictionary and a copy of the California civil code underlines that Crooks is interested in and informed about legal rights. He sees the injustice around him and is disillusioned. This explains why he is cynical about other people’s dreams.

Vocabulary builder

The following list contains words that are from the same family as the words on the previous sheet. They are linked together because they come from the same root, but are different parts of speech, e.g. as a noun instead of a verb.

Add in the middle column what part of speech the words in this list are. You should find six nouns, three verbs, one past participle of a verb and two adjectives.

In the right-hand column, write the word from the text about Crooks and racism that is from the same word family.

segregate / verb / segregation
deny / verb / denial
intention / noun / intend
proud / adjective / prides
common / adjective / commonly
acceptance / noun / accepted
disillusionment / noun / is disillusioned
illustration / noun / illustrates
struck / past participle / strikes
abolish / verb / abolition
prevalence / noun / prevalent
reference / noun / is referred to

[1]Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and other states.