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Racial Characters In John Steinbeck's Of Mice And Men

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The book Of Mice and Men takes place in salinas valley on a ranch during the great depression. The book mainly focuses on the life of Lennie and george. Lennie and george have known each other for a very long time and they are traveling companions. Lennie has some sort of mental disability and this hinders how him and george earn money and get work. Lennie’s mental disability creates problems for him along with his strength. He does not know his own strength and he has the mental capacity of a child making him dangerous due. He does not mean to cause harm to anything but he does. As it takes place during the great depression there is even more racist and sexism present than there is today. Women and POC* are discriminated against pretty severely. In the book several minorities are dehumanized by being called derogatory names or not being given a name and being reduced to just a man 's wife. The book also does not pass the bechdel test, which shows that in this time period/in this book minorities are not valued. Curley’s wife was labelled a tart for trying to make friends after curley …show more content…

In the ‘30s people of colour were treated even worse than they are in today’s society. They made crooks sleep separately from the rest of the workers. They discluded him from games and festivities. Worst of all they called him a slur. A slur being a derogatory or insulting term applied to particular group of people, in this case being the n-word directed at crooks. The n-word is highly offensive and that is common knowledge so the ranch workers had to have known and kept calling him that. For example when slim is looking for crooks he calls out to him as the stable buck and then says, “Where the hell is that God damn n***er?” It is abusive and dehumanizing to call someone a slur like that. They call him the n-word so casually and easily that they must be using the offensive term

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Taking place in Of Mice and Men, there is a character by the name of Crooks who is an African American who is repeatedly said the n-word to. During a scene where Lennie, Crooks, and another character, Curley’s wife are having a conversation, Curley’s Wife attacks and threaten Crooks by defiantly saying, “‘Well, you keep your place then n*gger. I could get you strung up on a tree so easy it ain 't even funny,’” (OMAN 81). Calling him by the n-word, a racial slur, is the one of the most racist things one could say to an African American.

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The mice and men story starts at the great depression. Lennie is a large childlike migrant worker he has mental disability Lennie depends on George for everything. George is a small quick witted man who travels. George is devoted to Lennie. They both share a vision of the farm together.

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Of Mice And Men

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Some of the workers also called him derogatory names. More specifically, “nigger.” This was during the time of the 1930s and the Great Depression, so that word was commonly used to describe people of

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