George patted a wrinkle out of his bed, and sat down. “Give the stable buck hell?” he asked.
“Sure. Ya see the stable buck’s a n****r.”
“N****r, huh?”
“Yeah. Nice fella too…The boss gives him hell when he’s mad. But the stable buck don’t give a damn about that.”
– John Steinbeck
Of Mice and Men, Chapter 2, George and Candy talk about Crooks. The boss makes Crooks the whipping boy of the ranch and lashes out at him whenever he is angry. In this novella, Crooks is the symbol of 1930s racism and prejudice.