Essay: The American Dream

Sample Essay

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Another character who dreams the American dream is “Crooks the negro stable buck” (Steinbeck 65). Crooks is called ‘Crooks’ because of his crooked back. He got the crooked back as result of a horse at the farm kicking him (Steinbeck 20).

Crooks being Black is shunned by everyone else; all he wants is to be accepted in the society of the other farm workers, he says to Lennie “Maybe you can see now. You got George. You know he’s goin’ to come back. S’pose you didn’t have nobody. S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk house and play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’d you like that? S’pose you had to sit out here an’ read books. Sure you could play horseshoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books. Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody—to be near him.” (Steinbeck 71).

The precariousness of Crooks existence in the social order of the farm is revealed when Curley’s wife threatens him with lynching when he attempts to get her to stop flirting with them (Steinbeck 78, 79).

Lennie’s naïve belief in the dream briefly entrances Crooks and old Candy, the one-armed ranch worker, in reply to Curley’s wife’s threats Candy says, “S’pose you get us canned. S’pose you do. You think we’ll hit the highway an’ look for another lousy two-bit job like this. You don’t know that we got our own ranch to go to, an’ our own house. We ain’t got to stay here. We gotta house and chickens an’ fruit trees an’ a place a hunderd time prettier than this. An’ we got fren’s, that’s what we got. Maybe there was a time when we was scared of gettin’ canned, but we ain’t no more. We got our own lan’, and it’s ours, an’ we c’n go to it.” (Steinbeck 77).

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