domingo, 27 de mayo de 2007

The greatest quote from Of Mice and Men











In Lost, my favourite TV program – and the only one I watch – one of the characters said a quote taken from the book I read in 1st polimodal, Of Mice and Men and I liked it a lot and remembered it. I quickly wrote some key words I could keep in my mind in order to look up for the whole quote later. But I never found the exact quote. I must say that after some weeks of not trying, today I decided to find the quote, and I did. So here it is: the best quote and the most important lines from the book Of Mice and Men, by John Steinbeck.

Crooks says, on a black man's loneliness:
"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. A guy goes nuts if he ain't got nobody. Don't make no difference who the guy is, long's he's with you. I tell ya, I tell ya a guy gets too lonely an' he gets sick" (Page 80).

I remember how Crooks, the guy who used to take care of the horses, was highly discriminated for being black. He had to be alone, out there, with the horses, and the only company he had was books. He was not allowed to talk with anyone, to enter to the bunk house, to play with the other men; he could only play horseshoes, which was outside.
I remember that I said that it would be wonderful to be alone, in silence, with anyone around you and with peace to read books. I saw that atmosphere as something interesting, something I would like to have. With no worries, an infinity bunch of free time, just to read. But I think that because I am surrounded by people and I don’t find the time to read peacefully, in that atmosphere. But just imagine, being with all that conditions all your life. That would be really terrible! The characteristics told there for me sound good, as I live the other way round. But for Crooks, continuing living like that was a horrible nightmare; he didn’t want it anymore.
The negro gets to the point of sayings that ‘books ain’t no good’ because of this reason. Then he says that he wants company, no matter from whom, he just needed it. We can easily figure out how depressed, lonely and hopeless he felt out there, surrounded by horses, books and discrimination. It is surely a terrible feeling. The image shown in the book of Crooks, and the way people treated him is really touching and makes every reader to think and realize about the reality that discriminated people live. It is obviously something we don’t want, even if we had so much free time, peace and silence only to read. We might want all that, but I’m sure nobody on earth wants the situation Crooks was living in, and what’s more, nobody on earth deserves it.

I’m glad to have found the quote! =) And it inspired me to write something, so I decided to post it.

Vale

1 comentario:

CAL dijo...

Yes! Please, make sure you write any comment that comes to your mind when you relate it to any reading you may have done.