Crooks, The Negro Stable Buck: Character Analysis

Crooks, The Negro Stable Buck

Murder, betrayal, friendship, passion these are just some of the things you would get from reading Of Mice and Men. Of Mice and Men has characters other than just George and Lennie that have a very deep purpose within the book. I choose to examine one of those side characters in Crooks. My thought after reading the book about Crooks is that, Crooks is separate yet actually equal but the separation makes him isolated and miserable.
Crooks pushed others away because they are not alike himself. Crooks is very sealed of the author had described him as the following. “Crooks kept his distance and demanded others keep theirs,” (Steinbeck 67). Crooks has trust issues because of how sealed of and private he is. His

We get some background to Crooks childhood and we can see why he might push people away. “I was born right here in California. My old man had a chicken ranch, ‘bout ten acres. The white kids came to play at our house, an’ sometimes I went to play with them, an’ some of the was pretty nice. My ol’ man didn’t like that. I never knew till long later why he didn’t like that. Now I know.” (Steinbeck 70) We see in this quote where his stubborn attitude to the status quo From the previous paragraph comes from. I think this was pretty common for people to share the same beliefs that their parents hold and it probably got passed down from the slave days when the white man was the sworn enemy even though in this quote we see a glimpse of unity. I guess that’s why it took 100 Years since The Emancipation Proclamation for someone to emerge prolifically Like Dr. King and make a public

Crooks tells us this here. “There wasn’t another colored family for miles around and now there ain’t a colored man on this ranch” (Steinbeck 70) The Brotherhood that would exist between African Americans post-Plessy v. Ferguson because of the separation wasn’t there for Crooks because nobody else was there for him. Despite being “better off” because he had privacy and more personal space it didn’t matter because he had no one there for him to share it with. It is not in human nature to be in Isolation feeling included and united with another is a basic human psychological need and Crooks has been denied that right be segregating him and driving him away.
The Segregation Crooks faces Isn’t nearly as a harsh as it would be in Jackson or Birmingham However, The isolation is ten times worse. Crooks pushes others away just as much as others push him away this is because he was taught this as a child that, he must relate with his own ‘kind’ though there isn’t another black family for miles. Crooks has a very lonely life because he doesn’t have any person that can completely understand what he feels. He can prattle on to people like lennie all he wants but it doesn’t satisfy him