What is Steinbeck's view on racism in 'Of Mice and Men'?

Answer 1

by getting into crooks life and showing that black people weren't as bad as people said they were.

by the end of chapter 4 we see candy standing up for crooks in front of curleys wife, showing that crooks was worth protecting and wasn't that different

even the conversation crooks has with Lennie shows how as children you are inocent and don't realise racism and treat everybody kindly but as they grow up they feel it is the norm to follow everyone else and abuse people who are different and maybe at one time they might have played with as children.

Answer 2

In Of Mice and Men, the racial issue was between Crooks and the other men on the ranch because Crooks was African American. He wasn't allowed to go into their bunk-room nor them into his and also wasn't allowed to play cards or horseshoes with them.

Answer 3

Read the novel again, and then make connections yourself! Here are my notes on realism:

Realism in Art & Literature

Accurate or realistic portrayal of life

· Ordinary occurrences and/or ordinary characters

o peasants,

o businessmen,

o housewives

· Deals with daily struggles and/or disappointments of ordinary characters

· Not always a happy ending; things don't always work out

· Detached observation,

o recording facts to describe their characters

o Objective descriptions

· Upper class characters portrayed with faults, rather than idealized (unlike heroism in Romanticism)

Answer 4

Steinbeck presents the lives of the ranch workers as very lonely.

• Of mice and men takes its name from a Robert Burns poem. The eighteenth-century Scottish poet wrote the following apology when he accidentally destroyed the nest of a field mouse whilst ploughing a field. He had also destroyed the mouse's chances of surviving the winter.Back then everything was expensive, so the boss wouldn't spend a lot on his workers because he can replace them easily. Farmers had the upper hand in 1931 in America.

Answer 5

Because it was simply an accepted fact of life during the period in which the story was set. Not to have included it would have been to try to hide one of the important aspects of man's cruelty to man, which is the overall theme of the story.

Answer 6

Steinbeck portrays racism subtly in "Of Mice and Men" through the character of Crooks, the African American stable hand. Crooks is isolated due to his race and experiences discrimination and loneliness on the ranch. Steinbeck shows the pervasive effects of racism on individuals' lives, highlighting the challenges faced by marginalized groups in a society that discriminates against them.

Answer 7

He doesn't have a racist view, but he tries to state how racism was socially acceptable in the time the novel was set it.