흑인 크룩스의 고독에 담긴 패러독스 현실

Abstract

Of Mice and Men, one of John Steinbeck's famous labor novels, has been studied mostly as to its tragic conclusion that George shoots his best-friend Lennie. However, the work describes how the writer treats the racism of the American 1930s, which Crooks, a stable man and an African American, experiences. This paper discusses Steinbeck's interest and art about the character's loneliness in the light of Charles Johnson and Michael J. Meyer's articles. For the research method, I review the story from Crooks's angle and study the reality of his loneliness. Through the analysis, Crooks seems to live in the limit of racial discrimination, which is revealed in the scene where Curley's wife threatens to attack him. However, his solitude has a duality of positive and negative meaning, which leads to Steinbeck's art of paradox and idea of breaking through or holism. This attempt is expected to extend the literature study of the 20th century American novels saying African Americans and their humanitarian context.