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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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Tarik Adenwala 7.3 Lit Response An “Incident” that has happen to me, and still sometimes does to this day, is very similar to Countee Cullen. He was just minding his own business when someone decides to budge in and give their racial comments, and to this day this occurs more than you may know. Cullen was called the N word for his skin tone, while I get called a terrorist for my first name and my heritage.

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Since Curley's wife never received a letter back from the movie director who promised her a role in Hollywood. However that barrier isn’t changeable, and the only barrier she has is her inability to move on from her dead dream. Crooks is in a similar position to Curly wife. He is crippled which hinders is working ability ,and the color of his skin hinders his ability to be hired. Since this book takes place in 1937, the people living in this time are racist to people of color.

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840 Words | 4 Pages

Archetypes are a manifestation of how our minds envision the roles of characters, these characters come in the form of the hero, villain, temptress, damsel, monster, and mentor. In the book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck, we follow the story of two men who struggle to pull through to survive horrible times, on their journey they come across other characters that fulfill the roles of the archetypes. The archetype in discussion is the villain archetype which is the evildoer of a story usually a person who commits a crime against society or against a couple of people. One character in particular that fills the archetype of the villain is Curley, he has an aura of evil that resonates from his attitude and his actions, which triggers people

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1030 Words | 5 Pages

The constant usage of the n word can be demeaning and harmful to African American students — in 1995, a group of African American students in Cherry Hill, NJ suddenly began failing tests and quizzes in their English class. This happened as a result of an incompetent teacher, who forgot to mention the 200 plus instances of the n word and the fact that the book was controversial. And to make matters worse, the white students would snicker and stare at the African American students when the n word was read aloud. (Document E) This should not be the case — I was lucky enough to have a teacher who would make sure to make reading Huck Finn as comfortable as it would aloud.

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109 Words | 1 Pages

The oxford dictionary had much to say about the word “nigger.” The oxford dictionary said, slave masters got the name “nigger” from the Latin word “Niger” meaning black. They also got the word “Negro” from the meaning of the Spanish diction meaning “black” also. They used the word “black” to describe African American’s instead of letting them have their names or giving them an actual name. It wouldn’t be so bad

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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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1791 Words | 8 Pages

An example of this is when the inmates get into a brawl with the black boys (the guards/workers are named this not because of their race). The specific black boys Chief Broadman and McMurphy are fighting were African American. McMurphy uses a derogatory word n****r (Kesey 273). However, this is historically accurate.

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337 Words | 2 Pages

Black people were also called harsh names, such as the "n" word. Black people must have felt left out, only having what white people weren’t using.

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745 Words | 3 Pages

Crooks is an African American farm worker that works with horses on the land. Being a colored person in this era was harsh, and the color of your skin automatically determined the amount of power you would have, so African Americans did not have power compared to everyone else in society. “Lennie watched her, his mouth half open. Crooks had retired into the terrible protective dignity of the negro.” (79;ch.4).

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740 Words | 3 Pages

Imagine having a younger sibling who gets anything they want no matter what they do. This would make most people dislike that sibling, similar to the way the workers would eventually feel about Curley’s wife. Many of the workers believe that “a ranch full of guys ain’t no place for a girl”(51) and also that “she’s gonna make a mess”(51). This indicates the original bias against Curley’s

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In the dictionary nigger is defined as a contemptuous term for a black or dark-skinned person. During slavery it was used as a way for white people to oppress slaves, and after slavery was ended it was still used to oppress and demean black people. This is why the word nigger is such a loaded word. After the civil rights movement, the black community reclaimed the n-word.

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196 Words | 1 Pages

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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876 Words | 4 Pages

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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654 Words | 3 Pages

When America was founded in 1776, slavery was widely practiced and accepted, and the n-word was frequently used as a way to address African slaves. Most, or at least all Americans at that time believed that Africans were sub-humans that had no rights to their names whatsoever. The word itself evolved from the Spanish word negro as well as from the French word nègre, both which have the meaning of the color black. Even after slavery was abolished in 1865, African-Americans still lacked rights and were frequently called the n-word as well. The word holds a heavy connotation which brings up terrible memories from history as well as times of rebellion and the civil rights

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977 Words | 4 Pages

The men treat Curley’s wife the same way they treat Crooks, but they treat her this way because she is a women. Due to the fact that Crooks is black, the other guys exclude him from many things. Crooks is a perfect example of how racism can cause loneliness.

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