During the 1930s, the United States literature thrived inter alia through such increasingly popular sub-genre as strike novel. At the time when the Great Depression spread its stifling embrace over the country, the working part of the population found itself at a dead end: in order not to remain jobless, people agreed to such low pay that in economic terms it did not really matter whether they were working at all. As a result of Industrial Revolution, there emerged an overflowing amount of workers who were not provided with workplaces by industries and thus were driven to seek income at farms which remained the only establishments that needed a large work force. Driven by despair, whole families moved from state to state attracted by rumors of decently paid workplaces available at the farms there, often only to discover that the employers had cut the wages so much that the amount was far from sufficient for maintaining one’s family.
Restrained and exhausted by such unfavorable conditions, workers were seeking a way out, and that was the period when alternative systems to capitalism attracted their attention. The situation of human struggle against capitalistic system by taking a more communistic attitude, and the contradictive nature of that struggle is reflected in one of John Steinbeck’s most celebrated novels, In Dubious Battle (1936), which is singled out by its startling naturalism and at the same time a humanistic approach to presenting the tragedy of human life.
The story is set in a once proliferious region, California, which is no longer seen as the Promised Land but presents the domain for the drama of survival. A young man called Jim Nolan decides to introduce a change to his miserable existence: he has recently lost his job at a department store after having been detained by police when listening to a radically set orator; he lost both parents, his father having fallen the victim of a riot gun and his mother having died because of life being too harsh on her; his sister went missing; and on the whole life did not have a meaning for him any longer. In his strive to leave the system that has kicked him around way too much to tolerate it any longer, Jim decides to join the Party, a radical organization which is not definitely named but indirectly alludes to the left-wing structures.
The Party accepts Jim and seeing his devotion decides to train him for ‘field work’. As a means of his initiation, a task is set before Jim: to accompany an experienced man, Mac McLeod who knows the rules of the party action, to Torgas Valley and to help workers there arrange a strike against the orchard owners who played their usual trick of reducing the pay for fruit-pickers labor when the latter had already arrived at the scene. The party activists’ job on such locations mainly consists in handing out provocative leaflets, leading ideological talks with working men and as a result stirring up and reinforcing the already emerged among the masses anti-capitalist sentiment. So does Jim, guided by Mac’s endless lessons of how to move and manipulate people in order to direct them in the way the Party needs. The occasion when an elderly apple-picker falls out of a tree appears as one of the last drops exhausting the patience of workers who no longer want to risk their health at their workplace. Eventually a strike begins during which Jim is killed by an explosion that blows off his face.
The novel on the whole can be characterized by a sharp contradiction between the idealistic views of people striving for protection of their ultimate rights and the disappointing reality which provides nothing more but failure of all the undertakings despite the effort and zeal put into their realization. The conflict in In Dubious Battle deploys between an objective and impartial communistic organizer Mac, who is dominated by the Party ideas so much that he loses his sense and trust in value of individual and believes that any means are good on the way of achieving the aim on the one hand, and on the other hand — the simple unsophisticated goodness of the fruit-pickers, who are ‘organized’ and manipulated into gory strikes, bloodshed, starvation and ultimate defeat. Initially the fruit-pickers present a purely democratic group of society who go along with their natural leaders, Dakin and London. In order to organize a strike, Mac has to destroy their primordial arrangement and set up a rigid unified structure with himself heading it.
Being an expert of turning everything to his own ends, Mac uses every little opportunity to gain influence and authority. In this respect a very demonstrative scene is the Lisa’s labor: employing an obvious lie and offering himself as an experienced midwife, Mac takes command of the situation. Everyone is involved in the process of helping the parturient woman — and this cannot but arouse the feeling of belonging and importance of separate people’s actions for the general success of the situation. With the successful birth of the child, the chances of the strike being ‘born’ are high as ever, and this moment is symbolic as the childbirth symbolizes the birth of a future riot. Having risked the life of a woman, Mac implemented one of his main principles of using every opportunity to make progress in reaching the Party objective, and on his way he is unscrupulous in ways and means using people around him as simple revolutionary ‘clay’.
Thus emerges the idea of dubiousness of human battles, however well-intentioned the latter may be. In the character of Jim the reader can observe an example of commitments that are impossible to carry out: being endlessly devoted to the ideas of the Party proclaimed by Mac and captivated by his powerful charisma, Jim loses the opportunity to develop his talents which are thus adroitly exploited by others. His dreams are frustrated due to his unwise actions and therefore he is doomed to destruction as a personality — and ultimately, as a human being. Falling the victim to the system, the character of Jim Nolan teaches a lesson of necessity for individual development, for no matter how good the general strategy of a party may sounds, the party leaders would never care for the collapse of anyone who perishes in a struggle for the party interests. Much more important to Steinbeck is the tragedy of a wasted life, of a promising young person whose talents and energies are not properly recognized or directed.
However straightforward and at times crude the novel may read, it is distinguished by a marked sense of development and dynamism. The story moves rapidly via well-arranged, at times Socratic dialogues of Mac and Jim, reflecting the key events, and Steinbeck manages to create vivid and convincing personages and atmosphere characteristic of the time and place by means of specific language, marked by appropriate stylistic locutions. Lacking in deep development of characters as such, the novel doubtlessly constitutes an artistic success, as it captivates and thrills by a personally felt-through atmosphere and the authors inspirational determination which shows at every point of narration.
Providing a trustworthy atmosphere of the Great Depression period, In Dubious Battle represents a unique piece of writing, in all its crudeness and naturalism bringing forth the message of necessity for preserving and recognizing the value of personal individuality even in the most difficult times; no party can resort to walking on corpses for its own benefit, otherwise the society it creates can never be called a humanistic one.
Works Cited
Steinbeck, John. In Dubious Battle. Ed. Warren French. Penguin Books Ltd, 2006.