INTRODUCTION
And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or govt.
which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am
and what I am about.
– John Steinbeck
It is universally known and acknowledged that pen is mightier than
the sword. The mighty and sustaining power of pen has often been proved
since the ancient times by a multitude of writers and thinkers. Right from
Aristotle the master of all subjects, up to the present writers, pen has been
the potent weapon both for exposing the conditions of the prevailing
society and also for finding remedial steps for getting rid of the ills which
beset therein. The writers by virtue of their vision and mission were able
to set right the social order then and there whenever the wheels of society
got out of their ruts. This kind of social responsibility and the
commensurate action on the part of the writers was construed as the very
purpose and poise of literature. It is obvious that literature itself is nothing
but the mirror of human life, the society and the age in which it was
created.
Writers had the option to choose any one or more of the genres of
literature up to their interest, experience, and talents and find suitable
footings in which they could express themselves with flair. The genres or
forms of literature did vary with the passage of time. Resultantly we come
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to have poetry, prose, drama, short story, novel, epic and the like based on
the calls of time. Novel is defined as the prose story of book length about
imaginary people and events. Choosing novel as the fitting vehicle of
expression, a number of British, French, German, Russian, and American
novelists have accomplished their creative endeavours and brought laurels
to their countries and their native languages.
It is deemed that literature itself is a kind of protesting tool which
kindles people to grasp and form opinions on a subject or an prevalent
social condition. The manner in which words are employed in literature
charges the people with stimulating ideas, fiery rage and intensive
emotions leading even to violent outburst at times. Expression of
discontent with the existing inhuman conditions in a society through
literary accomplishments pave the way for finding concrete solutions by
means of resorting to protesting measures. Protest literature has therefore
a decided and definite aim of changing the social set up with a view to
achieving the desired goal. The Satanic revolt in Paradise Lost is of
a protesting kind though the underlying motive is egocentric and the
purpose of protest is meant for personal gratification by power seizure.
Social protest involves larger scope for human consideration and
welfare. The Machiavellian Policy that “means do not justify the end, but
the end justifies the means” may look rather a fair dictum where there is
a kind of eruption among the protestors for something good or bad.
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Whatever it be, these kinds of tenets and tendencies have been identified
in literature as belonging to a separate and marked genre namely social
protest literature. Neither are they kept underrated nor relegated to
forgetfulness as they involve themselves with human causes irrespective
of gain or loss in the process.
Many a definitions are put forth as to the nature and motive of
protest literature. The one by Ethelbert Stauffer holds good when he
defines it as having a language that changes the society and self. He
regards
protest literature as catalyst; guide or mirror of social change
presupposing three needs namely empathy shock value, and
symbolic action. Empathy encourages. Shock value inspires
emotions and desires. Symbolic action promotes interpretation. (6)
Protest literature has an eye on social change or change in the individual.
There are varied nomenclatures for social novel such as problem novel,
propaganda novel, working class novel, industrial novel, thesis novel,
sociological novel and young adult problem novel, the last one being the
latest addition. The earliest origin of social protest novel may be traced
back to the first century England. Since then many countries took interest
in this literary genre.
A social novel as defined by M.H. Abrams “which emphasizes the
influence of the social and economic conditions of an era on shaping
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characters and determining events” (256). If it also embodies an implicit
or explicit thesis recommending political and social reform, it is often
called a sociological novel. Examples of social novels are Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852); John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of
Wrath (1939); Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1979); Nadine Gordimer’s
Burger’s Daughter (1979) and etc., A Marxist version of the social novel
representing the hardships suffered by the oppressed working class, and
usually written to incite the reader to radical political action, is called the
proletarian novel. Proletarian fiction flourished especially during the great
economic depression of the 1930s in America. An English example is
Walter Greenwood’s Love on the Dole (1933). American examples are
Grace Lumpkin’s To Make my Bread (1932), about a mill strike in North
Carolina and Robert Cantwell’s Laugh and Lie Down (1931) about the
harshness of life in a lumber mill city in the northwest.
Encyclopedia Britannica defines social novel or social protest
novel as a work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem such as
gender, race, or class prejudice is dramatized through its effect on the
characters of a novel. Social problems addressed generally in literary
works include poverty, violence against women, plight of the workers in
factories and mines, conditions of child labour, criminal activities raising
heavily, dearth of sanitary facilities and the consequent epidemics.
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Social novel or social protest novel is said to have its origin in the
nineteenth century though we come to understand that there were
predecessors in this regard in the eighteenth century itself. Instances are
numerous. Henry Fielding’s Amelia, William Godwin’s The Adventures of
Caleb William, and Elizabeth Inchbald’s Nature and Art are some among
them. There is a marked difference between social novel and social protest
novel. Social novel places its importance on social change while social
protest novel lays its emphasis on revolution. A peep into the nineteenth
and the early twentieth century novels in Britain, America and Europe
would reveal the significant thematic outputs of the novels.
Thomas Carlyle in his Condition of England Novels (1839) sought
to engage directly with the contemporary social and political issues with
a focus on the representation of class, gender, labour relations, social
unrest, growing antagonism between the rich and the poor, and the plight
of the working class. Benjamin Disraeli in his novel Sybil or the Two
Nations (1845) dealt with the horrific conditions under which the majority
of the working class lived in England. Charles Kinsley’s Alton Locke
(1849) set out to expose the injustice done to the workers in textile trade
in addition to dealing with the tribulations of the agricultural labourers.
In the novel In North and South, Elizabeth Gaskell (1854-58) deals
with the pathetic condition of the workers and their relationship with the
industrialists. The industrial depression resulting from the Napoleonic
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wars in the early part of nineteenth century has been the focus of Jane
Eyre a novel by Charlotte Bronte. Charles Dickens was unparalleled in the
portrayal of poverty, exploitation, and the unhygienic living conditions
prevailing in the Victorian society. The words of Karl Marx eulogizing
Dickens deserve special attention at this juncture. He pointed out that
“Dickens issued to the world more political and social truths than have
been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists
put together” (321).
The European literary scene is no different from that of Britain and
America in the matter of writing social protest novels. Victor Hugo’s Les
Miserable’s was the acme of the social protest novels of the nineteenth
century. Upton Sinclair considered it as one of the half dozen greatest
novels of the world. The degradation of man by poverty; the ruin of
women by starvation; the dwarfing of childhood by poverty - all these
should altogether be done away with, according to Hugo. Yet another
significant social protest novel is Emile Zola’s ‘L’Assommoir. Margaret
Harkness’ Out of Work (1988) had taken upon itself the task of social
degradation, poverty and oppression of women. Mark Twain’s
Huckleberry Fin is an early American social protest novel (1884). The
Jungle a novel by Upton Sinclair (1906) is acclaimed as the Uncle Tom’s
Cabin of wage slavery. It is based on the stockyard worker’s strike in
Chicago. Richards Wright’s Native Son (1940) is a protest novel on
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racism. Theodore Dreiser’s novel Sister Carrie (1900), a major American
novel exposes how industrialization affected the American people.
Literature served as an important instrument at the hands of
protesting groups in the bygone centuries in the world arena. It fringes to
the forefront that some of the reputed protest literatures have come from
the American authors like Thomas Paine, Thomas Nast, John C. Calhan
and Martin Luther King. These writers became the spokesman of protest
literature. Born in England Paine invited controversy and rebellions trends
where ever he travelled by his telling writings. He stood for the three great
causes viz., American Revolution, religious reformation and the natural
rights of man. He out rightly denounced government saying that “we
furnish the means by which we suffer.” His famous pamphlet named
“Common Sense” (1775) was one of the pioneers in protest writings. In
which he wrote that government is like, dress is the badge of lost
innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of
paradise. His scintillating prose style stirred the blood of the people.
Thomas Nast by his political cartoons did yeoman service to the
cause of protest literature. He revolutionized the art of political caricature.
He attacked corruption in government and the political lobbying groups.
John C. Calhan is considered to be one of the American giants in the
genre of political literature. He wrote for the nullification of
unconstitutional federal laws.
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According to Martin Luther King, there are two types of laws
namely just laws and unjust laws. Unjust laws ignited the emotions of the
American people towards the goal of granting equal rights to the Negroes
on par with the whites. Since then many a writers have taken upon
themselves the trash of giving exposure to social problems by means of
their powerful writings, so as to ameliorate the sufferings of humanity up
to their might.
We came to understand that the protest writers of the European
contexts laid emphasis on individuality and the social structure. But the
American protest literature had for its task the political issues such as
slavery, corruption in governmental spheres, women’s equality,
distribution of we all and the like. Certain instances in this regard are
having the thematic output, Mark Twain’s Hackle Berry Finn (1885) and
Edward Bellamy’s Looking Forward (1988) pronouncing social changes.
Historical facts and figures reveal around ten prominent protest
movements that shook and change the face of America. The movements
are mentioned below
1. The Anti Tax Movement (1765)
2. The American Revolution (1775 - 1783)
3. The Abolition Movement (1830 - 1865)
4. The Women’s Right Movement (1848)
5. The Temperature Movement (1851 - 1938)
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6. The Labour Movement (1930)
7. The Environmental Movement (1950)
8. The Civil Rights Movement (1955 - 1968)
9. The Anti-War Movement (1965 - 1973)
10. The State’s Rights Movement (2008)
The nineteenth century is considered to be the efficacious period
for the harvest of protest literature in Europe. Its aftermath can be
witnessed in America and other countries in the said and the subsequent
centuries. Charles Dickens, in his novel Bleak House had a critical
exposure of the inefficient English legal system. Russian novelist Fydor
Dostoevsky’s novels Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov,
House of the Dead are all criticisms of government policies and the
resultant social factors. French writer Victor Xiao’s Les Miserable’s
(1862) is the most powerful and popular depiction of corruption and
depravity. George Eliot unfolded the degraded face of political dispute in
Felly Hall (1866). Degradation poverty and oppression of women were
the thematic elements in Out of Work by Margret Harkens (1888).
Theodore Dresser’s Sister Carrie had for its task the evil efforts of
industrialization. The evils of capitalism have been delineated by James
T. Ferrel in the novel Judgment Day (1935). The Invisible Man written by
Ralph Ellison (1952) dealt with problems of the Afro-Americans in the
mid twentieth century (1952). Nadine Gardiner’s Burger’s Daughter
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(1979) was exclusively concerned with the apartheid on individuals in
South Africa. There are many other writers in the international arena who
have contributed themselves to the mighty stream of social protest
literature with committed aim and end. It is obvious that while the
European writers concentrated themselves on the philosophical questions
of individual and social spheres, the American protest literature laid
emphasis on issues related to slavery, bureaucratic corruption, and
equality of women and distribution of wealth.
James Baldwin’s Go Tell it on the Mountain (1953) is regarded as
his best known novel and which had protesting theme that is,
homosexuality. It is said that protest novels do directly deal with the
experiences of working class life’ and are essentially an intended device
of revolution. Michael Gold was identified as a proletarian writer with his
publication of Jews without Money (1930), U.S.A Triology by John Dos
Passos saw the United States as two different nationsnamely one rich and
one poor. The decline of the American progressive spirit into avarice is
depicted in the above novel. Evils of capitalism are the central theme of
James T. Ferrell’s Triology. Ernest Hemingway’s To Have and Have not
(1936) is a novel committed to be a social commentary. Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s monumental novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin had set a new literary
record in the genre of social protest novel dealing with the problem of
slavery. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1857) the first of this kind made its debut as
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a moving literary document against the practice of slavery in America.
This novel dealing with the laborious and pathetic life of a Negro by name
Tom was instrumental in mobilizing Abraham Lincoln to wage war
against slavery.
For humans’ the greatest enemy throughout history has not been
disease nor hunger, but humans themselves. Humans have been
profoundly cruel towards each other throughout the ages, from the
persecution of Hebrews in ancient Biblical times to the ‘Jim Crow’ laws
of the pre-Civil Rights era. Nowhere has this discrimination been more
evident than in the United States. Ever since the beginning of the nation,
there have been Americans persecuting others, either for land, money, or
simply prejudice. The many ways that humankind can be cruel towards
itself is sometimes astounding and even shocking.
There are many more novels in the world literary arena geared
towards exposing social problems with a genuine consideration towards
alleviating the prevailing sufferings of the have-nots, burst of anger,
heated verbal outbursts, assemblage instigated by the thought of safe
guarding ‘the group men’, strike, lock out, and so on. Fearing excessive
elaboration they have not been brought into the purview of this study.
Being a socially responsible writer with an originality of his own in
the matter of theme, style, message and manner, vision and verbal
delineation, Steinbeck, the twentieth century American writer unlocked
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the capabilities of literature more than ever and extended its bourns of
social commitment through his tireless and timeless verbal expressions
spanning about four decades. It is therefore immensely useful to delve
deep into his labyrinthine mind concerned with the themes of social
protest as they are found represented in some of his select novels herein
taken up for the purpose.
It is clear that literary writings alone do not serve as the panacea for
all the evils existing in the human society. Yet it cannot be denied that
they have certain positive and plausible roles to play. The Aristotelian
dictum that “Poetry instructs by pleasing” may well be applied to other
genres of literature also as well. It is obvious that ‘novel’ as a pleasing and
instructive literary form has had its say and sway on literary endeavours
since the past centuries.
In the World arena, American novelists are not lagging behind in
discharging their literary duties taking into consideration the call of time,
social milieu prevailing then, and the progress of humanity overcoming all
obstacles. Many American novelists in their works have translated the
pleasures and bitterness of the people of their time. It is history that
Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel has been hailed as a milestone which was
instrumental in bringing about the American Revolution and the resultant
emancipation of slavery. In fact the social, political and economic
conditions of the society got reflected in the fiction of abler writers.
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Novelists in fact, have gone further in discharging their social
responsibility not only by means of imaginative representation of people
but also of actual realities as and when they were happening. Steinbeck
once put forth that he wanted to write history while it was happening and
definitely he would not go wrong. He handled the weapon of literature
particularly fiction, with all its potentials in an uncompromising manner
for the awareness and well-being of the society and for the benefit of
humanity at large. With an enormous sympathy for the people, he in his
novels had projected their life as it was and thereby he held a faithful
mirror up to his times in his creative works which still have their lingering
effect and efficacy in the minds of the multitudes throughout the world.
Among the novels of John Steinbeck the theme of social protest is
markedly manifest in some of his novels such as, Tortilla Flat, In Dubious
Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, The Pearl, East of Eden,
and The Winter of our Discontent, though other novels contain the above
trait in a lesser degree. Therefore the above seven novels have been taken
up as primary sources for the present study. Further the biography of
Steinbeck, reviews, remarks, criticism, explanatory notes, on him and his
works written by a host of writers ranging from his times to the present,
have been resorted to as secondary sources for the purpose of
substantiation, illumination and exemplification for this study.
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An understanding and insight into Steinbeck’s novels will
therefore be of considerable use to the present day society pitted against
petty quarrels, mounting tensions and chauvinistic tendencies. Even the
very human existence itself is being turned into a kind of
“Androhumanoidic” insipid exercise wherein sympathy, kindness,
understanding, mutual help and all kinds of noble and desirable qualities
and values of life have been lost substantially.
It has therefore been attempted in this study to discuss the theme
of social protest in the aforesaid select novels of Steinbeck in the light of
various factors at the background, and thereby to arrive at certain useful
findings combined with necessary suggestions which it is hoped would
augment the horizons of human understanding and good will, in
a substantial level. The fundamental motive of dealing with the above
novels is that they contain the themes and expressions pertaining to social
protest considerably and in a virulent manner more than other works of
this writer.
A number of writers have dealt with Steinbeck, his letters,
achievements, techniques, critical outlook, his times, his personality, entry
into film medium, and his works. Numerous books have seen the light of
day on the novel The Grapes of Wrath alone. Many were the critics and
biographers of Steinbeck who made a considerable contribution to the
study and understanding of Steinbeck and his writings in myriad ways.
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Among them Warren French, Peter Lisca, Joseph Fontenrose, Howard
Levant, John H. Timmerman, Frederic Carpenter, Chester Eiseinger,
Louis Owens, Jackson Benson, Thomas Kiernan, Richard Astro,
Tetsumaro Hayashi, Pascal Covici, Jay Parini, and Sylvia Cook need
special mentioning. It is but natural that some of Steinbeck’s novels had to
undergo bitter critical onslaughts as witnessed in the case of In Dubious
Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. The pith of such
attack was along the following lines: Jackson J. Benson remarks that
“Steinbeck had created an artificial world, of which his knowledge was
little and indirect” (78).
And there are other critical pronouncements by very many critics
which are also to be taken into consideration in the light of healthy
dialogue essential for the betterment of the novel, mechanism, mode and
its creative mission. However, time the ruthless preserver of truth,
disproved Lewis’ remarks, and the novel The Grapes of Wrath turned out
to be a remarkable success as the “layers of the novel continued to offer
them up to careful study.” Angry business men and politicians called the
book a pack of lies and the controversial novel was banned by a number
of school boards in states from New York to California. Edmund Wilson
declaimed that
Steinbeck’s character were highly melodramatic and excessive,
unwarranted of them. Steinbeck always in his fictions is dealing
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with human beings so rudimentarily. He is at the bottom of the
relative un-success at representing human beings. (64)
He also criticized him for having animalized human beings. This
critical remark has been dismissed by subsequent critics on the ground of
being shallow and not based on truth. Warren French observed that “there
is one thing that Steinbeck’s admirers and detractors agree upon is that
there is a marked decline in artistry of Steinbeck’s works after 1945”
(“Introduction” v-xi). Levant voices out against attributing these causes
for the decline to the events in the author’s private life.
It is known from the critical mass of writings that has appeared
since 1940 that some more exclusive attention has yet to be paid towards
unearthing Steinbeck’s protesting tenor as gleaned from his fiction. His
artistic representation of the social protest has found brilliant expression in
his novels. It has therefore become imperative to concentrate on this
dimension so as to have a comprehensive and deeper understanding of
himself and his works, which is conducive towards understanding
humanity greatly.
Nothing was remarkable concerned with the birth of John
Steinbeck, the man who carved a niche for himself in the annals of
twentieth century American literature, except that he was born on 27 Feb.
1920 at Salinas, California. His father John Ernest Steinbeck was the
treasurer of Monterey county, and his mother Olive Hamilton Steinbeck
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was an amicable and informed lady in the society. Monterey was the first
capital of California which originally was the land of Indians, Mexicans
and Spaniards and a land of great forests, mountainous ridges hiding
mines of gold and silver, and fertile valleys that eventually yielded the
richest load of all-vegetables (Timmerman 133).
John Steinbeck was a common man’s man. “I never wrote two
books alike”, once said John Steinbeck (qtd. in Gray 10). He often
focused on social problems, like the “haves” verses the “have nots”, and
made the reader want to encourage the underdog. Steinbeck’s back ground
and concern for the common man made him one of the best writers for
human rights. John Steinbeck was born in Salinas, California and spent
most of his life there or around Salinas, because of that he often modelled
his stories and the characters around the land he loved and the experiences
he encountered. He lived in Salinas until 1919, when he left for Stanford
University, he only enrolled in the courses that pleased him-literature,
creative writing and majoring in Marine Biology. He left in 1925, without
a degree. Even though he didn’t graduate his books showed the results of
his five years spent there. His books display a considerable reading of the
Greek and Roman historians, and the medieval and Renaissance fabulists
and the biological sciences (Benson 11). He then moved to New York and
tried his hand as a construction worker and as a reporter for the American.
Steinbeck then moved back to California and lived with his wife at Pacific
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Grove. In 1934, he wrote for the San Francisco News, he was assigned to
write several articles about the 3,000 migrants flooded in at Kings county.
The plight of the migrant workers motivated him to help and document
their struggle. The money he earned from the newspaper allowed him to
travel to their home and see why their reason for leaving and travelled to
California with them, sharing in with their hardships. Because John
Steinbeck was able to travel with the “Okies”, he was able to accurately
portray them and their struggles. Each book that he wrote had settings in
the places where he has either lived or wanted to live.
Being a vagrant boy Steinbeck developed innate interest in nature
but did not fare well in his educational pursuits. Even though he left his
academic career without obtaining a degree, his passion for creative
writing did not diminish. He dabbled his hands variously at literature and
his stories did appear initially in ‘Stanford Spectator’ a prestigious journal
at that time. He took upon sundry jobs to support himself which
substantially left open the gates of human experiences to him in no less
efficacious manner and which was conducive towards his calibration in
fiction.
Steinbeck married Carol Henning and developed friendship with
Edward Rickett and the latter to a certain extent shaped his writings. Right
from his boyhood “he was sensitive to every feature of his region.” He
puts in his novel East of Eden, “I remember my childhood names for
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grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what
time the birds awaken in the summer - and what trees and seasons smelled
like” (7).
He was such a passionate lover of nature and humanity, the love of
which blossomed into powerful delineations in his literary works with the
passage of time. He had also interest in books, music, science, religion
and sports which all shaped his sensibilities and paved the way for
scintillating verbal renderings in his fictions. He had already widely read
in English, American and European literature and he had greater interest
in Milton, Browning, Thackeray, George Eliot, Hardy, D.H. Lawrence,
Jeffers, Flaubert, and Dostoevsky. He had tasted intensely the bitter fruits
of poverty but later, settled well in life when his writings brought him
immense fame and material benefits.
Steinbeck travelled widely, in Europe, England, United States,
Israel and etc., Many of his novels were filmed. He became prominent
when he was awarded the much coveted Nobel Prize though he was
already in receipt of many prizes including the Pulitzer, President Medal
etc., This celebrity of American literature was not an exception to bitter
criticism relating to his themes, treatment and style. Having gone through
all such vicissitudes, he breathed his last on 20 Dec. 1968 in New York
“a continent away from the place of his birth and settings of his greatest
fictions!”
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Steinbeck’s unflinching creative fervour spanned around forty
years- a saga in American Literature. He tried his hands variously at
various genres of literature namely fiction, short story, plays, film scripts,
travelogue etc., Though his writings are extensive in output and outlook,
he is forever remembered for his extraordinary fictions the names of
which are arranged chronologically and given as under:
S. No.
Title
Year
1.
Cup of Gold
1929
2.
The Pastures of Heaven
1932
3.
To a God Unknown
1933
4.
Tortilla Flat
1935
5.
In Dubious Battle
1936
6.
The Red Pony
1937
7.
Of Mice and Men
1937
8.
The Long Valley
1938
9.
The Grapes of Wrath
1939
10.
The Log from the Sea of Cortez
1941
11.
The Moon is Down
1942
12.
Cannery Row
1945
13.
The Wayward Bus
1947
14.
The Pearl
1947
15.
Burning Bright
1950
16.
East of Eden
1952
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S. No.
Title
Year
17.
Sweet Thursday
1954
18.
The Short Reign of Pippin IV
1957
19.
The Winter of our Discontent
1961
20.
The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights
1976
In the words of John H. Timmerman, a notable Steinbeck’s scholar,
“Writing was an instinct with him like breathing” (1). He had a clear
vision of the literary road he wanted to take. In his fictions, interest
centers on the thematic content, then characters and other connected
elements. A born story teller, his writings are nourished by first hand
experiences with men and matters combined with the environmental
conditions prevailing in his country during his time. It was the firm belief
of this writer that a novelist not only puts down a story but he is the story.
He is each one of the characters in a greater or lesser degree. As he is
usually a moral man in intention and in honest approach, he sets things
down as truly as he can. In Steinbeck’s ideology, a novelist is a teacher
and his duty is to lift up; to extend and to encourage. Steinbeck unlike
other idealistic writers had a clear-cut vision, purpose and poise about the
very aim and end of fiction writing.
The experiences ingrained in his mind right from his early age
would have certainly catered to the blossoming of his self into a fruitful
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and truthful writer. Further his own involvement and entrepreneurial
efforts towards getting access to the labyrinthine living conditions of the
common people of his country might have brought him rich dividends in
the field of his creative writings especially connected with the problems of
the people pitted against penury and unexpected natural calamities. John
H. Timmerman observes,
At a time when the Americans were all engrossed into their own
self, Steinbeck was exceptionally un-autobiographical in his
writings, as he was a lover of life and life in the very fallibility of
the act. (81)
A journal note made by Steinbeck in 1938 brings forth to the limelight his
mental make-up and his avocation as a committed writer: “Try to
Understand man. If you understand each other, you will be kind to each
other. Knowing a man always nearly leads to love” (qtd. in DeMott x). He
was not an active communist. In fact he sympathized with the oppressed
migrant labourers. He had even possessed inimical thinking about
corporate agriculture. Steinbeck created men and women whom we can
never forget. In Jackson J. Bensons’ words,
Tom Joad and Ma, Cal and Cathy, Joady and Billy Buck, Lennie
and George, Danny and Pilan, Doe and Mack- They live with us,
and for some of us they are a part of what we are. This man wrote
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a lot of good books and that after all, is what a writer
should do. (1)
He had broad perspectives. He never used his works to declare his own
superiority. He claimed himself not even as an author but a writer only.
His humanitarian qualities are exposed greatly in his work. He took each
and every thing as wonder, as a child. A sense of fun, a curiosity, and
wonder all these lasted throughout his career. The Child in Steinbeck, as
the child in Mark Twain, was very often the writer’s best part.
Animistic features find accurate and brilliant expressions in many
of his novels. An instance in this regard is given from Of Mice and Men as
follows
On the sandy bank under the tree, the leaves lie deep and so crisp
that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them.
Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and
the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of coons and with
the spread pads of dogs from the ranches and with the split wedge
tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark … For a moment the
place was lifeless and then two men emerge from the path. (3)
Quotes from Joseph Fontenrose, John H. Timmerman,
To the animist, sky and earth, wind and storm, tree and rock are
living entities. Out of animism springs myth and so Steinbeck‘s
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biological interpretation and his mythical interpretation of the
human conditions flow from one and the same source. (18)
Having innately imbibed the sense of Pantheism, Steinbeck was able to
look at the whole world with all its animate and inanimate entities as
belonging to one and the same creative force and having one and the same
living linkage. Animism itself is part of his interest in animate beings and
inanimate objects. Throughout the novel The Grapes of Wrath, animals
and animal tropes permeate every paragraph. The proliferation of figures
of speech involving animals is inevitable. He writes about the farming
people who live with animals and earn their livelihood with animals.
Steinbeck makes use of animal earth and vegetable imaginary to identify
his characters either as complementary to or, ironically contrasting with
the nature of the character.
One is reminded of Rousseau’s familiar dictum that ‘man is born
free, but everywhere he is found in chains’. Aspirations for freedom from
political, social, economic, communal and religious shackles have found
extensive expressions in the writings of many visionary minds since the
ancient times. However still the goal is not reached substantially. Writers
may come and writers may go. But the problems persisting in the midst of
the populace are not mitigating at all. Poverty is not eradicated. Prejudices
are not wiped out. Ill treatment of fellow beings has not been reduced.
25
Hunger is not given good-bye. Exploitation is not put an end to. Hatred
and vested interests are not altogether given death blow.
Suppression of the ill-fated, ill equipped, common mass by the
haves and autocratic forces continues and the humanity at large is devoid
of fair and reasonable dealings and living conditions. These and other
related issues would normally be the pivotal points for the verbal
expressions by socially conscious and committed writers. And Steinbeck
a socially conscious and committed writer wielded his mighty pen to do
something good to the ill fated people. He had unshakable faith in the
potentials of literature to bring about the desired result if it has definite
motive and honest means of expression. When asked in Berlin as why he
had turned from being a Marxist to a Puritan, Steinbeck replied, “I have
never been either! My novels of social reform were stories of people-not
political treatises!” (qtd. in Owens xv).
Steinbeck’s association with his friend Edward Ricketts,
stimulated his interest in biology, out of which came the biological view
of man which pervades his best novels. Ricketts was the model for
important characters in Steinbeck’s, In Dubious Battle, Cannery Row, and
Sweet Thursday. According to Peter Lisca,
Steinbeck’s works exhibit his persistent interest in biology and also
myth, forming part of human heritages. He has drawn from
Arthurian legends and tales from Bible. Faust, Troy and Helen,
26
Virgin whore – Legends of city founding, all these and more have
had their poetic and semantic uses in his fictions. (140)
In Steinbeck’s novels biology takes the place of History, mysticism takes
the place of humanism. He was to a certain extent influenced by the
vedantic ideas of India as evident in his novel To a God Unknown.
Steinbeck developed a taste for scripture during his school days which left
an impact upon his literary works. Fairy tales, myths and legends have
influenced his imaginative powers greatly. His work experiences in his
early years had a considerable impact upon his writings (Benson 53).
Mythical usage has been a favourite matter to Steinbeck. His
novels contain mythological influences and references, the motive of
which has been to have effective aesthetic and interesting interaction with
method and mode of character delineation in addition to having more
semantic bearings to his writings. The following fictions have resorted to
mythological treatment in a lesser or greater degree depending upon the
exigency. Cup of Gold has the influential reminiscences of Henry Morgan
the Pirate. Fisher King are the Fables of King Arthur have left their
influence on the novels To a God Unknown and the Tortilla Flat plus
Cannery Row respectively. We find the traces of the Biblical story of the
Fall of Angels from Eden in In Dubious Battle. Profuse Biblical
references crisscross in The Grapes of Wrath. The Cain and Abel Story
have found its concrete traces in East of Eden.
27
A renewed awareness about class consciousness was prominently seen
among the Americans during the beginning of the twentieth century and
the intellectuals had imbibed an intense interest in Marxism or
Communism. Certain remarkable factors which were responsible for
shaping the mind and the creative faculty of Steinbeck should be
noticeable. The Dust Bowl otherwise called the ecological terror that blew
across fifty million acres of the midwest and southwest which sent around
four lakhs Americans in search of new lives in California left an indelible
mark on the impressionistic sensibility of Steinbeck, the result of which
culminated into his arduous and authentic creative capabilities. Further,
Steinbeck’s soft natured warp of mind and its sympathetic realization of
humanity at large had its own say on his outlook and his creative output.
Joseph Fontenrose points out that
The writing of Steinbeck was meant to help people understand one
another. He endeavoured to enlist our sympathy for men of all
degrees be they wise or feeble minded; beggars or kings. His
enduring themes happened to be the superiority of simple, human
virtues and pleasures to the accumulation of riches and property; of
kindness and justice to meanness and greed; of life asserting action
to life denying. (141)
Many of his novels deal with the family that is, relationship
constituting husband, wife, parents, children and etc., he has written
28
continuously on the transplanting family-with all its beauties and
gruesome aspects as evident in the case of Joads, Joseph Waynes and
Adam Trasks. Steinbeck looks at human beings in their fray, from
a different angle. In him the individual entities submerge into the ‘group
organization.’ Joseph Fontenrose observes:
Here is life as it is lived by hurrying, fighting, feeding, breeding
animals – valuable just because they are alive. Every creature is
related to every other in the act of living. In the struggling mass,
not only cruelty and terror are exhibited but also symbiosis, sexual
attraction, and rudimentary intelligence which are the sources of
love, friendship, mutual aid and wisdom. (139)
Steinbeck is not a Saviour to redeem the common people from the
clutches of bitter elements in their day to day affairs, but he is a wielder of
words so as to throw sumptuous light on the gloomy spots of human
existence especially when a notable section of migrants was subjected to
utter penury, substandard living conditions, ruthless exploitation by the
land owners and the insurmountable natural calamity in the form of “Dust
storm.” This is witnessed in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. He always
stood with the side of the sufferers. He gave vent to their plight. His
indignation found expression in the form of protest.
Being a creative artist of high caliber, Steinbeck had an unshakable
faith in the responsibility of an artist. He thought that an artist could or
29
should be very much involved in his subject matter. A strong conviction
like the above and the continuous and concrete output in writing, would
have paved the way for his development as a fine novelist of first order.
Steinbeck’s mind seems to have been rife with a fascination for selecting
meaningful and attractive titles to his novels. He believed that naming was
knowing. Many of his novels namely, The Grapes of Wrath, East of Eden,
In Dubious Battle, and Cannery Row are titled accordingly. The titles
besides being scintillating with sensuousness are also laden with deeper
semantic nuances.
A compassionate human being will not fail to take part in the distress of
the fellow beings. Possessed with a remarkable group consciousness,
Steinbeck identified himself with the toiling masses. This element found
its brilliant verbal expressions even when he was dealing with persons
who were well off in life. Evidently Danny, the protagonist of Tortilla
Flat is depicted by the author differently. Though a landlord, Danny
always takes sides with the miserly. In the words of John H. Timmerman,
When acting as a group, men do not partake of their ordinary
natures at all. Some unique force empowers group so that it
becomes a new living organism which subsumes its individual
parts. (24)
30
This group consciousness with which Steinbeck was obsessed with,
right from his early age reveals in an exemplary manner the background
for his identification with the masses more than the individuals.
In his younger days Steinbeck did sundry jobs on ranches, road
gangs, and sugar mills. He thereby acquired knowledge of the lower strata
of the American society. He could get on well with all sorts of persons,
and discovered the genuine human qualities of humble people. While
working with them he had no snobbery in him. Steinbeck campaigned for
the rights of the little people. He has been described by Carlos Baker as an
extraordinary writer who has earned esteem unparalleled in American
Literature.
Steinbeck cared about language and he cared about people; he did
not want to be popular or famous; he just wanted to write books. He wrote
largely out of his own experiences and unlike many of his contemporaries
wrote very little about himself. He avoided answering mostly questions
about his personal matters. On many occasions he was accused of being
a communist, a fascist, a puritan and one of the most immoral men that
ever brought out a book in America. Benson points out that he was none
of those things. In fact he loved writing and he lived for writing. He was
a lover of life and environment. He wrote about what interested his nature,
both human nature and natures’ nature. He felt a kind of “boisterous joy”
in the objects of nature.
31
What bothered Steinbeck most about was that, out of society,
a plenty–so visible in California – large numbers of people could still go
hungry. At a relatively early age he had broken out of the mould of middle
class sensuality; had lived among those who actually did lack food and the
means to, and had developed a strong sense of social justice, giving vent
to the same indignation he had to express so forcefully in The Grapes of
Wrath two decades later. Once in retortion to the preaching of a priest in
a church, he exploded
Yes you all live satisfied, while outside the world begs for a crunch
of bread or a chance to earn it. Feed the body and the soul will take
care of itself … I don’t think much of preaching … goon … you’re
getting paid for it. (Lisca 23)
This pronouncement is a clear-cut indication of his realistic and practical
thinking and appropriate action warranted by the society more than
sermons.
A distinctive feature of Steinbeck’s novels is that he has taken upon
himself the task of glorifying ‘nature’ and ‘human nature’. Nature
becomes a character with all its exuberance and extinctive aspects. His
reputed novel Tortilla Flat brought permanent glory as one of the
outstanding classics in American literature. Being the author of
‘California Experiences’ he has exalted the eye catching landscapes of
California, wildlife of Monterey- his own hometown, and Carmal, by his
32
life like delineations. He glorifies the Paisanos - people hailing from the
town of Tortilla Flat above the Monterey, a village noted for its scenic
beauty. His portrayal of nature in its grim and lackadaisical aspects is
without any prejudicial interception and interpretation but out of his
genuine desire for a graphic and honest description with the aim of
achieving accuracy and honesty in communicative endeavours. Speaking
of the Paisanos, he exhibits his humanistic outlook more than any other
writer. He referred to them as drunkards, thieves, ruffians, vagabonds etc.,
requiring little more from life than from friendship and a little wine.
Few Mexico Americans of Monterey today see themselves as in
Tortilla Flat any more than their predecessors saw themselves in it thirty
four years ago. Steinbeck’s language is also wrong. Mexican Americans
don’t speak as Steinbeck’s characters do, either in Spanish or in English
(Fensch, “Introduction” xiv). Steinbeck struggles through an ‘alien’ milieu
the voice of the narrator, the question of ethnic identification becomes
important and crucial in determining the reliability of the representation.
Steinbeck does not offer a great deal to multi-culturalism. His interest in
the paisanos is in part psychological - the study of group man - and in part
realistic - the “history” of a subculture–and finally in part aesthetic wrestling with the contours of artistic expression (Owens 53). Petit
viewed that Steinbeck’s treatment of the paisanos arouses suspicion of
ethnically based distortions. Steinbeck’s Anglo misfits are usually genuine
33
freaks-idiots, cripples and outcasts teetering on the edge of their own race.
The emotions his works solicited, were excessive and melodramatic,
certainly too intense for his simply drawn characters.
A novel’s ultimate anchorage lies in its thematic perspectives. As
a novelist Steinbeck was interested in employing definite themes for his
novels which often times got expressed at least in the very titles of the
novels themselves. A perusal of them would reveal that the themes
revolve round human concern, forces of exploitation, protest and
humanitarian voices and the like. Given below are some of the thematic
designs woven into the textures of his novels.
Devastation by nature,
Migration of the dispossessed Americans,
Exploitation of the people by the ruthless landowners,
Starvation and the connected human distress,
Social Protest,
Combined endeavours,
Alleviation of other’s Sufferings,
Ideological Transformation of ‘I’ to ‘We’,
Death and renewal,
Individual freedom and social constraints,
Loneliness and tragedy of the dispossessed,
34
Growing violence between corporate agriculture and migrant
labourers.
Being a writer with a clear cut social commitment, Steinbeck could
not but help himself giving expression to his thoughts in the choicest
words exhibiting the plight of the common people at times of distress,
natural havocs or manmade disasters. The Grapes of Wrath has for its
theme, the conflict of rich versus poor and Jim Casy in this novel becomes
a spokesman for the movement from “I” to “We” and assumes a degree of
leadership in it before he is severed by the land owners men. He has
attained the acme of achievement through this novel and acknowledged as
the greatest classic during his times and subsequently. He has been
a ceaseless experimenter and a socially responsible writer throughout his
career, His Travels with Charley in Search of America brought him the
Nobel Prize, for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished
by a sympathetic humour and a keen social perception.
Steinbeck has got extraordinary daringness to approach social
themes apparently. This aspect of Steinbeck as a fiction writer brought
him remarks. But he took upon himself writing as his sacred profession
rather than retaliating the meaningless cries. He viewed the group more
than the self. Here is a writer carried away by the thoughts of social good,
even at the expense of individual gain. In fact he was a class apart in the
35
sense that he had uniform code which did not allow any conflict between
the life one leads and the literature he makes.
His novel The Grapes of Wrath was banned and burned in many
localities in Buffalo, New York, East Saint Louis, Illinois, and California
for its being profane, offensive and vulgar. But Steinbeck faced such
untoward happenings boldly stating that he was truthful and faithful to his
writings and it was none of his duties to appease the readers going against
his conscience. His steadfast conviction is exhibited in this sort of selfdefending replies. When the above novel incurred bitter attack from critics
who dubbed it as coarse, Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of Franklin
D. Roosevelt then President of the United States came to the rescue of
Steinbeck. She pronounced thus: “the book is coarse in spots, but life is
coarse in spots” (qtd. in Owens 122). Consequently the waves of
antagonism subsided and a genuine appreciation of the novel started
intensely. It is evident that Steinbeck possessed remarkable individuality
which continued throughout his literary career. As a retaliatory reply
given to his critics he put forth as, “I try to write what seems to me true. If
it is not true to other people, then it isn’t good art. But I have only my own
eyes to see with. I won’t use the eyes of other people” (Steinbeck and
Wallsten ed. 90).
Steinbeck was always concerned with the common labourers of whom
he had firsthand knowledge through his observations and work as
36
a labourer, a seaman, surveyor and migratory worker among other jobs.
Even the titles of Steinbeck’s novels are the symbolic representations of
social evils social laid problems prevalent in society. Titles were often
a matter of large significance. Steinbeck wanted titles that somehow
suggested at once the narrative accounting, and its symbolic significance.
Each and every one of his novels bears a novelty which tells many more
than the outer expressive appearance than expected. As an instance
The Grapes of Wrath (Though the title supplied by his wife)
In Dubious Battle
Of Men and Mice
The Moon is Down …
A perusal of such titles of his novels brings forth kaleidoscopic
meanings to the mind of the readers. Some are suggestive; some are
symbolic; some are philosophical; and some other are charged with poetic
fervor. As an instance, “He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes
of Wrath are stored!” encapsulates the rage of the oppressed, prophesies
the one through the suppression, visions of a strong freedom”
(Timmerman 105).
Grapes are used symbolically as prefiguration of divine retribution
upon the oppressor. As has been pointed out by critics that the primary
impetus of Steinbeck’s fiction was always to tell the story-before the
crafting, before the technique, form or rhythm of the artistry.
37
Prose proved to be a fitting vehicle of expression for Steinbeck to
describing social evils. He endeavoured to present a clipped and accurate
prose in his works. He declared that he has not lost the love for sound nor
for pictures but only tried to throw out the words that do not say anything
towards effective revelation. Great fiction provided people with the
opportunity to experience themselves through their identification with
characters and events. Steinbeck had an immense fascination for effective
characterization and narration of events in a life-like manner.
His characters are neither more in mould nor less in reality, but
always life-like and appropriate to the calls of a novel concerned. Female
characters occupy a remarkably important place in his fictions. If
Steinbeck had in his mind a movable place for freedom, constraints and
individual dreams of fulfilment, the female characters pitted against good
and bad values serve as standing instances in this regard. Some among
them are jotted down:
Ma Joad
-
The Grapes of Wrath
Juana
-
The Pearl
Fauna Suzy
-
Tortilla Flat
Molly Morgan
-
The Pastures of Heaven
Curley’s wife
-
Of Mice and Men (selfish but not evil).
Through the character delineations Steinbeck’s ideological bent of
mind gets expressed. In East of Eden, Lees reflections are worth noting:
38
“I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man particularly if she
happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost
indestructible” (214). Steinbeck portrays many of his female characters
with the following psychological traits.
1. Endurance through adversity
2. Ability to sail along the conditions without losing individuality
3. Loving kindness.
Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath stands as a towering example for all the
above qualities.
As a writer of social protest Steinbeck maintains individuality in
the selection and choice of stylistic devices. M.H. Abrams remarks that
“style has been traditionally defined as the manner of linguistic expression
in prose or verse – as how it is they say” (384-385). Style identifies an
author. Alexander Pope pronounces that style is the man! As for literary
texts, style of an author is analyzed in terms of rhetoric, diction, syntax,
figurative use of language and the like. A large number of loosely
descriptive terms are generally in currency to classify kinds of style. Some
of them are: pure, simple, ornate, florid, lucid, obscure and so on. There
are distinguished and identifiable styles in Literature namely Ciceronian,
Baconian, Shakespearean, Miltonic, Johnsonian, Wordsworthian each
with its own perceived literary qualities. Personal, objective, familiar,
classical, prophetic, meditative are the types of styles associated with
39
prose or poetry. The matter for writing determines the manner of writing.
As an instance scientific texts call forth simple, straight forward and clear
cut style. Steinbeck has chosen a different style of his own so as to
express his thoughts in a telling, original and appealing manner through
the use of effective characterization combining both ‘realistic naturalism
and moral optimism’ His novels are acclaimed for their combination of
the above noted two qualities not generally found together. Steinbeck
delineated the pain, wickedness, and poverty of the world with unsparing
details. He, at the same time had a firm belief in the perfectibility of man.
This optimistic note is discernible even in his gloomiest account of the
Great Depression, in a clear cut manner.
His style of writing adhered to certain distinctive features which
are well noted. A perusal of them through his fictions reveals that the
author has a fondness for the use of conversational prose, which has well
served his purpose of delving deep into the minds, attitudes and activities
of his characters. “We have got to use whatever material come to us!”
(DB 47).
The style of the novel The Grapes of Wrath has compliance to
Third-person omniscient point of view. His style is noted for lyrical
beauty and appealing with minute details as in “Every moving thing lifted
a thin layer as high as his waist and a wagon lifted the dust as high as the
40
fence top, and an automobile bolted a cloud behind it. The dust was long
in setting back again” (GW 3).
Shelley has pointed out that a poet should not be striving hard in
search of words. In fact, words should come flying at his command. This
literary exigency has turned to be an ethical hold and an intrinsic habit to
Steinbeck. He did not rest content until he found suitable words to express
himself. He did not hesitate to revise and re-revise his drafts even for
twenty or more times. He loved the words; the shape, the sound, the
history of meaning; he delighted in the magical properties of language; he
even got satisfaction from the touch of pencil and paper. Behind nearly
everything that he wrote, there is a man enjoying himself, surprised and
delighted that words work the way they do (Benson 1). Further Steinbeck
developed a taste for scripture during his school days which had
a profound effect upon his literary style (Fontenrose 3). Self-revelation is
the only end in his mind through the course of his writings. At the same
time he was well aware of the fact that a novelist is not an exception to
faults, virtues, fears and braveries which beset common people.
Resorting to symbolism though simple in nature, is another stylistic
feature of Steinbeck. Objects and places get symbolic meanings in his
works. Evidently a simple cup of coffee stands for wealth and well-being.
Burning candles refer to promising life, and guttering does symbolize
death. Crowing roosters envisage fresh beginnings. Owl flying over one’s
41
head is the indication of impending death. Tinned expensive foods are to
be taken as symbol of nourishment. Besides containing lyrical beauties his
style has with it the prophetic tone carrying the burden of sympathetic
humanism throughout the work. Steinbeck was of the firm belief that
fictional prose should not be a course in ‘interior decoration.’ “His own
Prose is generally marked by a spare, yeoman like rhetoric that relies on
verbs and imagery rather than ornamentation” (Timmerman 11).
We come across with the ‘matter of fact voice’ in his narratives as
something like ‘man speaking to men’ enunciated by Wordsworth in his
poetic creed. It comes to light that Steinbeck has always nurtured
a predilection for romanticism even though he himself was subjected to
bitter realities of life. Confluence of Epic voice, Biblical voice and the
Idiomatic voice of the people is a notable feature in the writings of this
author. For the first time in his writings he used the ‘over voice’ narrative
technique that sprang into full power in the intercalary chapters of The
Grapes of Wrath.
Steinbeck has been endowed with an extraordinary descriptive skill
set for immersing into minute details and for vivid portrayal. Everything
in his fiction is dealt with utmost care namely, human beings, animals,
plants, earth, environment and so on with vivacity and dexterous details.
For an instance the highway 66 in The Grapes of Wrath is described as the
long concrete path across the country, weaving gently up and down on the
42
map from Mississippi to Becker’s field. Referring to California he writes
that
the spring is beautiful in California. Valleys in which the fruit
blossoms are fragrant pink and white waters in a shallow. Then the
first tendrils of the grapes cascade down to cover the trunks. The
full green hills are round and soft in. (GW 123)
Steinbeck has developed a unique style as for as his novels are
concerned. Though he did not opt for writing poetry, his style at times
does not miss the mark of poetry, drama, film, music and the like. He
writes a cacophony of prose as evident in “square noses, round noses,
rusty noses, shovel noses and the long curves of stream lines and the flat
surfaces before streamlining” (68). Louis Owens observes “when
Steinbeck wants to suggest the joy of life caught up in delirious motion,
the prose style metamorphoses into pure poetry” (94). The dance scene in
The Grapes of Wrath of chapter 23 may be cited as an instance in this
regard, “Texas boy and the Cherookegirl, pantin’ like the dogs an’
a –beatin ‘the ground.’ Of folks stan’ a–pattin’ their hanes. Smilin’ a little
steppin’ their feet” (344).
His other stylistic methods and modes constitute the lyrical,
prophetic matter of fact, objective, the epic biblical, and the idiomatic
voice of the people. Peter Lisca quotes on Louis Owens, has stated that
“No other American novelist has succeeded in forcing and making
43
instrumental so many prose styles” (89). The style has become an
effective tool in the hands of Steinbeck for exhibiting as well as
condemning the “enormity of the national error” besides other purposes
concerned with the thoughts and actions regarding the characters in his
fiction. For Steinbeck, one of the most important ingredients in writing
was “sound.” Jackson J. Benson stated that “On a large scale he wanted to
create overall musical impressions that would carry out or reinforce the
dramatic sequence, setting or theme” (152-153).
Steinbeck’s novels generally start with a high definition setting
which is remarkably conducive towards the projection and highlighting of
the theme and texture of the same. Environment becomes a character and
man becomes subsidiary and at times powerless before the epic forces that
blow across the country. Paradoxically it is man who is in a sense
responsible for the discrimination and the destruction of land for which he
is subjected to paying too heavy a price. He also has an essential ear for
the music of the word. He liked his novels to be read so as to enjoy the
innate musical potentiality. In the Nobel Prize citation, Steinbeck was
lauded in glowing terms for his realistic as well as imaginative writings
distinguished by a sympathetic humour and a keen social perception. He
once explained to his agents that he was trying to write history while it
was happening and he did not want to be wrong. Actually his novel The
Grapes of Wrath created history in the realm of publications. It was said
44
that no novel since Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin had the
combined popularity and social impact of ‘The Grapes of Wrath’, a novel
that sold more than 400,000 copies during its first print. Joseph
Fontenrose observes that “for a quarter century Faulkner, Hemingway,
and Steinbeck were the three names that usually come to mind when one
was asked who were the greatest American novelists” (12).
Out of seven novels selected for this study, Steinbeck’s In Dubious
Battle takes its title from Milton’s Paradise Lost, This novel dealt with
a fruit-workers’ strike in a California valley and the attempts of
communists to organize, lead, and provide for the striking pickers. It is
a novel describing the war between labour and capital in 1930s America,
where local sheriffs threaten striking workers with marauding teams of
machine gun wielding men, and it does not have a happy ending.
Steinbeck's novel simmers with a rising tension that can only be the
prelude to horrific acts of violence. Even though In Dubious Battle ends
with a bloody murder, nothing is resolved one way or another. It’s simply
one act in a cycle of violence. It concentrates more intensely on what is
basically an all out war between labour and capital. It closely examines
the tough-minded ideology of labour organizers deeply influenced by
communist thought, and shows how utterly unscrupulous their methods
could be. The capitalists - those in control of the fruit orchards and the
price they will give for labour - are portrayed as being outright thugs who
45
think nothing of murder to scare off any agitation for fairer wages. The
origin of this novel, Steinbeck wrote to Louis Paul on February 1936 like
this, “I had planned to write a journalistic account of a strike, but as
I thought of it as fiction, the thing got bigger and bigger...! I have used
a small strike in an orchard valley as the symbol of man’s eternal
strength” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 143). The novel is adjudged as one
of the best of Steinbeck. According to Carlos Baker “Steinbeck is
supremely interested in what happens to men’s minds and hearts when
they function not as responsible self-governing individuals but as
members of a group” (216). It is remarked that Steinbeck had attempted to
root his writings in real people and places.
Steinbeck’s another novel Of Mice and Men tells the compelling
story of two outsiders trying to find their place in an unforgiving world. It
is considered as one of the greatest tales of the last century, both in
moralistic storytelling and personal achievement in the real world. It was
written by John Steinbeck in 1937 and revolves around the difficult lives
of migrant ranch-workers George Milton and Lennie Small who travel
around Depression-torn California looking to earn their keep. The idea is
largely based on Steinbeck’s own life as a bindle staff during the 1920s.
Featuring many issues which are now considered to be racist and
offensive, the piece appears on the American Library Association’s list of
the ‘Most Challenged Books of the twenty first century. It teaches the
46
moral ‘try to understand men, and if you understand each other, you will
be kind to each other’. Knowing a man will never lead to hate and nearly
always lead to love. This has become the very social guideline for
Steinbeck. As Susan Shillinglaw in his “Introduction” has pointed out that
Of Mice and Men was considered to be remarkable in the history of
American letters for its success as a book, a play, and a film … for
its direct force and perception in handling a theme genuinely rooted
in American life, for its bite into the strict quality of its material;
for its refusal to make this study of tragic loneliness and frustration
either cheap or sensational: and finally for its simple, intimate and
steadily raising effect on the stage. (xxvi)
This novel is a powerful and vivid depiction of life in rural America. It
recounts the tragic story of two lonely itinerant farm workers who
belonged nowhere and to no one but themselves, who try to escape
homelessness, economic poverty, and emotional and psychological
corruption.
Considered to be the American classic of twentieth Century and the
undisputed masterpiece, The Grapes of Wrath is set against the
background of Dust Bowl Oklahoma and the migrants of California. It
tells about the Joad family who like the thousands of others are forcefully
driven to the extent of travelling west in search of the ‘Promised Land’.
Their story is one of false hopes, thwarted desires and shattered dreams.
47
But out of their sufferings Steinbeck created an intense human drama and
dignity, majestic in scale and memorable in purport. It comes to be known
that the novel The Grapes of Wrath has had its thematic genesis from the
series of certain articles which Steinbeck wrote on the migrant labourers
from the Midwest in California agricultural industry. The inner mind of
the writer gets expressed with more force and fidelity as evident in the
following fiery verbal representation: “And in the eyes of the hungry there
is a growing Wrath!” (GW 365)
The novel The Pearl portrays a message about life. In it Steinbeck
tells about a great pearl that is found and lost by a Mexican villager. The
value of the pearl is great, and with the value comes much greed from
others and troubles for the villager. This is a tale that depicts human
nature and the way of humanity. It is concerned with the ‘class conflict’
expressed in an artistic manner. It deals with an ordinary fishing family
consisting of Kino, his wife Juana, their son Coyotito. The parents want to
rear their son in the best possible manner but for want of money it
becomes a distant dream. Luckily Kino gets a precious pearl, for
disposing of which he and the family undergoes untold sufferings at the
hands of the greedy bureaucrats and Capitalists leading to the death of his
son Coyotito. As the purpose for which Kino did taste the bitter fruits of
life was not solved, he and his wife decided to get rid of the evils caused
48
by the pearl. They threw back the pearl into the deep sea. As Howard
Levant points out
the corrupting power of the town is pervasive and more powerful
than the organic life of a village … The pearl fulfills the best
literary possibilities of Is thinking; a parable realized in objective
imagistic detail, the abstract fleshed by the particular. (185, 191)
This novel has a strong moral that one should be content with one’s life
and that greed invites misfortune. The novel presents this view through
the character of the Priest, who participates in continuing the oppression
of the indigenous people (Kino's race). In the end, Kino looks at the pearl
and sees it as something evil. The pearl has changed throughout the story
from a sign of hope, to a sign of greed, death, and deceit. He sees the man
that he had killed reflected on the surface of the pearl, as well as a vision
of his baby Coyotito with his head shot off. In his rage, Kino flings the
pearl back into the sea, where it settles into the sand and disappears. The
book also conveys messages of oppression and racism in a way that
suggests they are negative elements in life.
An indirect reference to the significance of East of Eden has come
from Steinbeck’s tongue as such: “There is only one book to a man” and
obviously it is East of Eden. The book is said to be his ambitious work.
It deals with the destinies of Franks and the Hamilton’s which re-enact the
fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Able.
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As New York Times review reads, “the book records the mystery of
identity the inexplicability of love and the baneful consequences of love’s
absence” (qtd. in Lisca 212). In it Steinbeck portrays the struggle of good
and evil in siblings, spouses, and within individual characters. Steinbeck
utilizes the story of Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain and Abel,
extracted from the Book of Genesis in the Bible, to illustrate the theme of
good vs. evil in life. In the Bible story, Adam and Eve are created to live
in paradise in the Garden of Eden but their sin casts them out. Their sons,
Cain and Abel, take different paths, and Cain ultimately kills Abel and is
banished to live in Nod-a land in east of Eden. Steinbeck believes that all
men have both good and evil in them and, although most do not commit
the heinous crime of fratricide, all men live east of Eden, where they must
struggle with the human condition.
Tortilla Flat is the story of Danny and of Danny’s friends and of
Danny’s house. It is the story of how these three form an entity. Danny is
a Paisano. He values friendship more than money. He inherits two houses
all of a sudden. He offers shelter to his fellow beings whose love of
freedom and hatred for property make them indulge in daring adventures
until Danny disappears unawares. Tortilla Flat has been worded by critics
as his prominent critical work and commercial success. It is the funniest
of Steinbeck’s fictions. Steinbeck narrates the stories of these lovable
thieves and adulterers with a poetic purity of heart and of prose.
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The Winter of our Discontent is considered to be the last novel of
Steinbeck wherein he has attained the same standard set in The Grapes of
Wrath. Steinbeck wrote to his friend that he wrote the novel in order to
address the moral depravity of American culture during the latter half of
the twentieth century. The title of the book is taken from Shakespeare’s
play Richard III, the line being
Now is the Winter of Our Discontent
Made glorious summer by this son (sun) of York. (1.1.1)
The novel is about Ethan Allen Hawley, who is working as a clerk
and his family members do not pay any heed to his honesty and morality
which he valued more than money in this society noted for corrupt
practices. But due to the pestering of his wife and children Halley now
manages his store successfully but at the expense of his integrity and
morals. Though he has accumulated wealth, he has lost his happiness once
for all. The novel is the symbolic representation of American affluence
without ethical standards.
Steinbeck attempted to elevate his social narratives to mythic status
in order to create more powerful and more universally accessible figures
who could serve as moral examples for all Americans By creating worlds
which are steeped in allegory, ultimately reaching toward the mythical, he
bridge the gap between individuals and imagined communities to show
the potential for reform on the societal level through the lessons learned
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by his characters. He presented the land as it was. The characters in his
stories experienced floods, drought, and other natural disasters, while in
the Salinas Valley. What Steinbeck wrote was very factual and in depth.
He exhibited his awareness of man and his surroundings, in his early
books, before people ate, a pig had to be slaughtered, and often that and
before they ate, it had to be cooked. Also when a car broke down, the
characters had to find parts, and fixed it themselves. Many people
consider that John Steinbeck novels are records of social history. His
books are the history of plain people and society as a whole, many of his
books focused on the Great Depression, Social Prejudice, religion, and the
automobile. He may be considered as a Sentimentalist, because of his
concerns for the common man, human values, for warmth and love and
understanding. The social relevance of his writings reveals him as
a reformer (Covici xxii).
Steinbeck can rightly be called the writer par excellence. His
writings though rooted to a specific American region and people, have
transcended the geographical and ethnic barriers by virtue of their themes
of protest, fundamental humanistic perspectives and artistic effects. The
attributes generally warranted of a good writer namely humanistic
approach, sincerity, narrative power, introduction of novelty, social
responsibility-all these are amply possessed by him and they have got
deeper expressions in his works. He stood as the staunch spokesman for
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the cause of the working class and he missed no opportunity to raise and
record his voice of protest to do something positive when the people were
confronted with injustice and psychological predicaments.
CHAPTER II
SEMANTICS OF SOCIAL PROTEST
I am actively oppose to any man or group who … is able to
dominate the lives of the workers.
 John Steinbeck
A protest is an expression of objection by means of words or actions
to particular events, policies or situations. Protests are of many forms and
they do vary from individual statements up to mass demonstrations.
Protesters, with a view to making their cause known publicly and to
influence the concerned party or parties (either government or private)
resort to direct action so as to bring the desired changes themselves.
Protests are not generally allowed by bureaucratic set up. Attempts would
be made to quell them either for good or bad. Instances in the history of
the world speak considerably about protests, protesters and the
accomplished tasks in addition to the achieved ends in this regard. When
protests become the part of a campaign bent upon national interest and
with an eye on the methods and modes of persuasion and peaceful
pressures they come to have the nomenclature of ‘civil resistance’ as in
the case of Gandhiji’s non-cooperation movement for securing Indian’s
independence.
A total exclusion of violent methods and a wish to undergo all sorts
of ordeals mark the obstinate character of the protesters in the
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above-stated form of resistance. In fact the restrictions imposed upon the
incumbents by many factors such as governmental measures, social
structure, religious repercussions and in addition to the above, the
monopoly executed by the media-these would be leading towards civil
disobedience and the consequent resorting to virtual action.
World history has got recorded protests by various sections of
people, protests by civilians in general, military personnel, students,
agrarians, government employees, working class, service organizations,
bank men, political parties, religious groups, ethnic tribes, prisoners,
media persons and the like. The underlying motive of protests would be to
squeeze the required benefit or advantage or result from the persons,
parties or organizations concerned. To express it in other words, protest is
meant for getting the demands fulfilled either partially or fully either for
temporal or for permanent ends.
The forms of protest are multifarious which are furnished as below:
Public demonstration or political rally.
Written demonstration.
Civil disobedience.
Residential protest.
Destructive demeanors.
Resorting to direct action.
Protest against Government.
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Protest in the military.
Government employees protest.
Unemployed persons staging a dharna.
Malpractices in the world of sports.
Consumers protest against adultery, substandard goods and unfair
Practices on the part of the merchandise.
Protest in the media sphere –a recent one.
Protest against the release of a film affecting the sentiments of
a section of a social or religious group.
Women protesting against male chauvinism.
Students protesting against the imposition of an unwanted language
in curriculum.
Protests by minority people against the autocratic attitudes and
activities of majority.
There are many more forms of protests based on the call of
necessity and the quantum of benefits sought for, or at least for getting
relieved of a prevalent irksome affair or law or compulsion or
anti-democratic litigation. A bipartite distinction is generally made in the
very form of protest there are addressed and unaddressed. Addressed
protests naturally involve the factors and procedures as detailed earlier in
this chapter whereas unaddressed protests include riots, revolts, dissent,
activism and insurgency. There are many examples related to unaddressed
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protests in the annals of world history. The Reformation by the Protestants
during sixteenth century Europe is the leading one with regard to
unaddressed protest. The American Revolution civil war in the year 1770
is another remarkable anecdote. The French Revolution in 1789 which not
only shattered the Bastille prison and released the prisoners; but also
disseminated the eternally noble ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity
throughout the nook and corner of world as its ideological contribution. In
fact it has become an eye opener to all the subsequent insurgences or
revolting models. The Haymarket Riot (1886) led by Anarchist movement
is described as a violent labour protest. Martin Luther king’s march 1963
on Washington seeking jobs and freedom is another milestone related to
the protest for the common good. Anti- globalization protest in Prague in
2000 and the Occupy Wall Street protest is some of the significant
protests in the world arena.
Protests are multifarious in manifestations. Notably among them
are
protest
march,
picketing,
lockdowns,
protest
song,
radical
Cheerleading, mass bike rides, and so on. Employees or Civilians
tonsuring their heads and indulging in public protests for certain specified
causes are common in India. Public Fasting, rallying, shouting at the
entrance of government or company buildings, raising slogans are often
witnessed in democratic countries as a means of getting the demands
fulfilled. Fasting unto death either singly or in mass is another means of
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attracting the attention of higher authorities so as to get redressed of the
grievances concerned.
Protest songs are aimed at perceived problems in the society. Songs
are made use of with a view to obtaining the desired end in connection
with the issues like emancipation of slaves, suffrage to women, restoring
civil rights, highlighting labour movement, feminist causes, environmental
issues, anti-war sentiments, eradication of injustice, social or racial
discrimination, economic problems with inflation, economic inequality
and such causes. Curiously we come to know that Zimbabwe South
African Dance form named Toyi-toyi was used in the political protest
against apartheid in South Africa. A Tamil poet like Subrahmaniya
Bharathi, in many of his poems has protested against the tyrannical rule of
the British Government in India. Bharathi’s poems contains vehement
repudiation of the British authority.
Protest songs are generally meant to be sung in public places so as
to kindle the spirit of the people and accumulate their wrath against
a particular person, group, business concern, institution, antagonistic
political force, or rival nation etc., Strike, Walkout, Lockout, door
demonstration, work to rule, boycott, riot, self-immolation, suicide,
hunger strike, tax resistance, petitions, signed letter writing campaigns,
are other forms of protests which are in vogue in the world substantially.
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Steinbeck who has achieved an immortal place in the history of
social protest literature took novel as a vehicle of social reformation. The
novel by its very captivating and quintessential attributes has been found
to be the suitable form for portrayal of social conditions, the ideas,
attitudes, and aspirations, the emotional outburst concerned with
an individual or a society at large in the social, political, psychological,
religious or cultural spheres. Novel is considered as a social document
meant for delight through instruction. Novel has been invested with
broader, wider, and deeper scope for delivery into the labyrinthine layers
of human mind and bring out the experiences of people in individual and
social planes by virtue of its story, characters, style, message and above all
by its prospect of interesting reading.
We have an array of British, French, German, Russian, American,
Indian, Scandinavian, and African writers who have attained name and
fame in the sphere of novel writing by virtue of their compatibility with
this form not to speak of their outlook and output. Social and economic
conditions shaping characters and determining events led to the birth of
social novel. If it involves social or political reform either directly or
indirectly it comes under the category of sociological novel. Instances are
varied in this regard. Harried Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852)
Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle (1906) John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of
Wrath (1939) and Nadine Gardimer’s Burger’s Daughter stand as
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appropriate examples for social novel involving protests. Uncle Tom’s
Cabin is held as the first social protest novel in America. It narrates the
story of a Negro slave “Uncle Tom” who deals with his captors with
utmost tolerance and forgiveness until he was brutally killed. This novel
has been instrumental in the American history towards the abolition of
slavery by Abraham Lincoln. A Marxist version of the social novels,
representing the hardships suffered by the oppressed working class, and
usually written to incite the reader to radical political actions is called the
Proletarian Novel. According to M.H. Abrams “Proletarian fiction
flourished especially during the great economic depression of the 1930s”
(256).
Steinbeck’s seven novels that had been selected for the present
research are abounding in varied aspects of social protest literature.
Steinbeck as a novelist had longer and deeper association with his land
and the people to delve deep into the problems of the masses and voice
out their grievances in writing. As one who always took sides with the
common men he could not but sow the seeds of protests in his writings
whether fictions or any other literary forms. An analysis of his novels
could make this clear in addition to understanding the protesting forces
lurking in this novelist noted for inexhaustible humanistic concerns.
Steinbeck in his novels selected for the present study ignites considerably
the minds of the people towards the paths of revolution though he himself
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does not have any positive determination as to its successful harvest. In
the Nobel Award acceptance speech, William Faulkner made the
following remarks:
I believe that man will not merely endure; he will prevail. He is
immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an
inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of
compassion and sacrifice and endurance. (84)
The possession of such an inexhaustible voice, soul, and compassionate
spirit reinforced with sacrifice and endurance-all these endearing qualities
find expression in the characters of Steinbeck especially the Joad family,
which represents the macrocosmic humanitarian attributes, even amidst
undergoing inexpressible tribulations and critical conditions.
Steinbeck dramatizes the entire situation whereby the readers of the
novels themselves would have a feel for the immigrant’s plight and the
exploiters ruthless attitudes and activities arising out of the mammon
worship by crooked and selfish persons. The protesting mechanisms on
the part of the people take up varied modes in his novels herein selected
viz., Tortilla Flat, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of
Wrath, The Pearl , East of Eden, and The Winter of Our Discontent.
The consequences of the Great War knew several upheavals and
agitations in America in terms of race, politics, and society. Anti-foreign
attitudes attained their climax in the years just after the Great War.
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Spokesmen for hundred percent Americanism’ influenced the enactment
of anti-immigration laws. In addition, the revival of the Ku Klux Klan
triggered a racist atmosphere all over the country. Moreover, the outburst
of the Red Scare also coincided with the post-war era. Communists,
radicals, anarchists, and labour figures were pursued and condemned
throughout the nation.
Another milestone issue during the post-war era in America was
the Great Depression. The latter began in 1929 after the Great Crash of
Wall Street. A severe drought led to massive agricultural failure in parts of
the southern Great Plains, particularly throughout western Oklahoma and
the Texas panhandle. These areas had been heavily over cultivated by
wheat farmers in the years following World War I and were covered with
millions of acres of loose, exposed topsoil. In the absence of rain, crops
withered and died; the topsoil, no longer anchored by growing roots, was
picked up by winds and carried in billowing clouds across the region.
Huge dust storms blew across the area, at times blocking out the sun and
even suffocating those unlucky enough to be caught unprepared. The
afflicted region became known as the “Dust Bowl.”
It was the longest and most severe depression ever experienced by
America. The economic crisis left millions of homeless families and
unemployed all over the country. The depression era also experienced
another catastrophe. The latter concerns the “Dust Bowl” that struck the
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Great Plains very heavily. Thousands of American families migrated to
California in order to find a more decent life. A literary work that summed
up the bitterness of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl was John
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath (1939). John Steinbeck as a Californian
was a direct witness of the arrival of these migrant workers to California.
The Grapes of Wrath belongs to what literature is known as the “social”
protest tradition.
As the drought had crippled countless farm families, America had
fallen into the Great Depression. Unable to pay their mortgages or invest
in the kinds of industrial equipment now necessitated by commercial
competition, many Dust Bowl farmers were forced to leave their land.
Without any real employment prospects, thousands of families
nonetheless traveled to California in hopes of finding new means of
survival. But the farm country of California quickly became overcrowded
with the migrant workers. Jobs and food were scarce, and the migrants
faced prejudice and hostility from the Californians, who labeled them with
the derisive epithet “Okie.” These workers and their families lived in
cramped, impoverished camps called “Hoovervilles”, named after
President Hoover, who was blamed for the problems that led to the Great
Depression. Many of the residents of these camps starve to death, unable
to find work. When Steinbeck decided to write a novel about the plight of
migrant farm workers, he took his task very seriously. To prepare, he
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lived with an Oklahoma farm family and made the journey with them to
California. When The Grapes of Wrath appeared, it soared to the top of
the bestseller lists, selling nearly half a million copies. Although many
Oklahomans and Californians reviled the book, considering Steinbeck’s
characters to be unflattering representation of their states’ people, the
large majority of readers and scholars praised the novel highly. The story
of the Joad family captured a turbulent moment in American history.
The Grapes of Wrath was set in a crucial period of the United
States. America witnessed one of the greatest traumas in its history. The
great financial crash of 1929 resulted in widespread financial ruin that led
to unemployment and homelessness. The economic crisis brought a spirit
of social and political revolution all over the country. Americans were
deeply disillusioned by Capitalism after the financial collapse. It is worth
emphasizing that Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath stands as a record of
the painful experience of the 1930s. By presenting a vivid picture of the
social conditions, it is inscribed in what Gorky and Lukacs call “social
realism.”
The basic function of art according Steinbeck is to provide society
with a focus in its own social, moral, economic, and political conditions.
Though he employs modernist techniques, he can be regarded as realist in
his choice of themes. Steinbeck consider that it is his social and political
responsibility to use his literary creativity and skill to inform, reform,
64
raise, and enhance social consciousness. Steinbeck was hostile to the
devastating effects of capitalism. He express sympathy with the outsiders,
alienated, the defeated, the oppressed, and the working-class. Through his
works he seeks to denounce the capitalist doctrine that celebrates profit,
greed, and materialistic instincts. Therefore John Steinbeck reflected the
issues of his age throughout his novels.
The Grapes of Wrath recounts the odyssey of the Joad family from
Oklahoma to California, so it can also be referred to as an epic. It is also
a novel of escape from the terrifying socio-economic conditions of
Oklahoma just after the Dust Bowl. The social message of the novel is
reinforced by references to biblical stories of suffering and sacrifice. For
instance, the initials of Jim Casy, i.e, the preacher who renounced his
calling and travelled to California with the Joads to listen to people and
help them, ‘J.C’ echoes the name of Jesus Christ. The Joads travel to
California to enhance their social status and to live a decent life. This idea
is reinforced by Jim Casy’s assumptions about the motives of the
migrant’s flight. Casy said,
I been walkin’ aroun’ in the country. Ever’body’s askin’ that. What
we comin’to? Seems to me we don’t never come to nothin’.Always
on the way. Always goin’ and goin.’ Why don’t folks think about
that? They’s movement now. People moving. We know why,
65
an’we know how. Movin’cause they want somepin better’n what
they got. An’that’s the on’y way they’all ever git it. (GW 320)
The ‘social’ story of the Joads begins in the summer of the mid1930s. The novel begins in an era of lethal drought, just after dust storms
have ravaged the Great Plains. Throughout their long journey they cross
several towns and roads. The most symbolic road in the novel is highway
66 which is known as the ‘Migrant Road.’ It is referred in the novel as
being the “path of a people in flight.” According to Malcolm Cowley The
Grapes of Wrath belongs to, “very high in the category of the great angry
books like Uncle Tom’s Cabin that roused a people to fight against
intolerable wrongs” (119).
Through the works of Steinbeck we are given a looking glass that
allows us to be present in a time in which the world was changing, a time
when inexperience and innocence succumbed to knowledge and maturity.
Two of his greatest works Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath
both reflect greatly on the social economical and political climate of
America in the 1930s. There characters speak of the common man and his
struggles, his small triumphs but mostly of his defeats. Steinbeck writes,
“… and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of
the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing
heavy for the vintage” (GW 365).
66
In fact the repetition of a partial utterance in the above is apt to be
construed as the device of effective semantic connotation in the manner of
issuing a cautionary note to the exploiters. Steinbeck is all set for
ruthlessly exhibiting the inhuman treatment meted out to the labourers due
to exploitation. The conflict of rich verses poor becomes as well the
thematic climax of the novel The Grapes of Wrath. The ingredient of this
protest finds its culmination in this novel especially in the act of Rose of
Sharon’s breast feeding of a man too sick out of starvation and unable to
eat solid food. Louis Owens states that “The Grapes of Wrath created
uproar of controversy and was one of the banned books of his time
because of Steinbeck’s socialist sympathies” (13). The novel, in spite of
the fact remains one of the most studied works of social protest fiction of
the twentieth century. Steinbeck is spoken of as the leading exponent of
the proletarian novel and a prominent spokesman for the victims or the
Great Depression.
Cultural exponents raised their voice against this sort of
unimaginable feministic “philanthropy” but viewed up from the harsher
realities of life lived by the dispossessed community driven away from its
native soil relentlessly, due to the ecological devastation and especially of
an unprecedented industrial progress, this delineation gets justified. This
theme though an endearing one to many of the western writers has found
its ample and appropriate expression at the hands of John Steinbeck,
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especially for its startling expression of lyrical beauty of recording the
underlying social protest in one form or other.
In the novel The Grapes of Wrath, the movement of the migrants is
from the ‘I’ to ‘we’ where people partly out of desperation, are driven to
a unit. John H. Timmerman states that “the two sides of the ‘I’ and ‘we’
clash dramatically-not just land owners versus migrants but the migrants
among themselves so that the unity is threatened from within” (115). The
father as worker - provides the mother as nourished who serves as source
of spiritual as well as physical nourishment. With the starvation-raging
among the migrants-the feeder attains a significant role. A guide by
Timmerman from Collins manuscripts brings out things not only clear but
also terrific and tragic in nature. Steinbeck describes this in his The
Grapes of Wrath as
Everything under the fit of canvas was dry – Everything – the
makeshift stove, was without heat; all shapes of cans were empty;
pans, pots and kettles all were dry. Everything, for there was not
a morsel of food, not a crumb of bread! (370)
It is pointed out by political exponents that “poverty anywhere is
a threat to prosperity everywhere.” Poverty rings out the autocratic and
exploiting forces in order to ring in the new ideals of common welfare and
universal brotherhood.
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A writer with a sense of social commitment will not fail to give
expression to the toils of the multitudes due either to unforeseen natural
calamities or man-made economic disasters, the later witnessed in the
form of exploitation, plundering and deprivation. Both happen in the
novel The Grapes of Wrath in a considerable scale. Taking undue
advantage of the alarming Dust Bowl, land owners, bank men and the
bureaucratic personages plunder the hapless people leaving them in utter
penury. Steinbeck frequently used his fiction to delve into the lives of
societies most downtrodden citizens.
Steinbeck consistently and woefully points to the fact that the
migrants’ great suffering is caused not by bad weather or mere misfortune
but by their fellow human beings. Historical, social and economic
circumstances separate people into rich and poor, landowner and tenant,
and the people in the dominant roles struggle viciously to preserve their
positions. In his brief history of California, Steinbeck portrays the state as
the product of land-hungry squatters who took the land from Mexicans
and, by working it and making it produce, rendered it their own. Now,
generations later, the California landowners see this historical example as
a threat, since they believe that the influx of migrant farmers might cause
history to repeat itself. In order to protect themselves from such danger,
the landowners create a system in which the migrants are treated like
animals, shuffled from one filthy roadsides camp to the next, denied
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livable wages, and forced to turn against their brethren simply to survive.
The novel draws a simple line through the population-one that divided the
privileged from the poor-and identifies that division as the primary source
of evil and suffering in the world. Steinbeck portrayed the pathetic
condition of the people in his writing “We’re half starved now. The kids
are hungry all the time. We got no clothes, torn and ragged. If all the
neighbors weren’t the same, we’d be ashamed to go to meeting” (GW 35).
Steinbeck portrayed the Joads as exemplary figures in their refusal to be
broken by the circumstances that conspire against them. At every turn,
Steinbeck seems intent on showing their dignity and honor; he emphasizes
the important of maintaining self respect in order to survive spiritually.
Nowhere is this more evident than at the end of the novel. The Joads have
suffered incomparable losses: Noah, Connie and Tom have left the family;
Rose of Sharon gives birth to a stillborn baby; the family possesses neither
food nor promise of work. Yet it is at this moment the family manages to
rise above hardship to perform an act of unsurpassed kindness and
generosity for the starving man, showing that the Joads have not lost their
sense of the value of human life.
Steinbeck makes a clear connection in his novel between dignity
and rage. As long as people maintain a sense of injustice-a sense of anger
against those who seek to undercut their pride in themselves-they will
never lose their dignity. This notion receives particular reinforcement in
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Steinbeck’s images of the festering grapes of wrath, and in the last of the
short, expository chapters, in which the worker women, watching their
husbands and brothers and sons, know that these men will remain strong
as long as fear (can) turn to wrath. The women’s certainty is based on
their understanding that the men’s wrath be speaks their healthy sense of
self-respect.
According to Steinbeck, many of the evils that plague the migrants
stem from selfishness. Simple self-interest motivates the landowners and
businessmen to sustain a system that sinks thousands of families into
poverty. In contrast to and in conflict with this policy of selfishness stands
the migrants’ behaviour toward one another. Aware that their livelihood
and survival depend upon their devotion to the collective good, the
migrants unite-sharing their dreams as well as their burdens-in order to
survive. Throughout the novel The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck constantly
emphasizes self-interest and altruism as equal and opposite powers,
evenly matched in their conflict with each other. Steinbeck presents both
greed and generosity as self-perpetuating, following cyclical dynamics.
We learn that corporate gas companies have preyed upon the gas station
attendant that the Joads meet. The attendant, in turn, insults the Joads and
hesitates to help them. Then, after a brief expository chapter, the Joads
immediately happen upon an instance of kindness as similarly
self-propagating. Mae, a waitress, sells bread and sweets to a man and his
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sons for drastically reduced prices. Some truckers at the coffee shop see
this interchange and leave Mae an extra-large tip.
When Tom killed Casy’s murderer, he chose to take over Casy’s
mission to organize the workers. Tom says:
I been thinkin’ a hell of a lot, thinking about our people livin’ like
pigs, an’ the good rich Ian’ layin’ fallow, or maybe one fella with
a million acres, while a hundred thousan’ good farmers is starvin’.
An’II been wonderin’ if all our folks got together. (371)
The readers never discovered whether Tom was successful in
getting all the “Okies” together, but John Steinbeck was successful in
making the readers “think about our people livin’ like pigs an’ the good
rich Ian1 layin’ fallow.” Tom represented the militant ‘Okie’, one of the
ones who were harbouring the grapes of wrath. Tom’s friend, Jim Casy
held a position in The Grapes of Wrath similar to that held by Doc Burton
in In Dubious Battle. He improvised Steinbeck with a mouthpiece;
someone in the narrative who could propound Steinbeck’s philosophy.
In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck portrays that the Oklahomans
are driven to the extreme limits of fleecing. Finding no scope and hope for
food, shelter and fair living conditions, their plight turns to be
indescribably worse than ever. Having collected firsthand and full-fledged
information combined with his own personal experiences, Steinbeck was
able to give appropriate verbal portrayal to the unprecedented human
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tragedy befalling the people during a particular period of American
history. The story of The Grapes of Wrath is a story of a community of
immigrants. The novel does not focus exclusively on the Joads, but it
gives a multi-dimensional’ portrait of all the Okies through using the
Joads as a vivid instance of the socio-economic tragedy of the 1930s. For
this reason, the people at power, especially the large ranch owners,
regarded the novel as a ‘mere’ piece of propaganda, and Steinbeck as one
of the most threatening men in America. Steinbeck places his criticism of
the American system of capitalism by resorting to American ideas
developed by Jefferson and other ideologists of the time. So if we look at
the idea of the dispossession of the small farmers by the banks, it is the
idea of Jeffersonian democracy and agrarianism that comes first to mind.
Marxist ideas are evoked only when they fit in with American ideas. The
secular ideas of Jefferson are further supported by the social gospel
philosophy.
No novel since Harriet Beecher Stows’ Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in fact
has had the combined popularity and social impact of The Grapes of
Wrath, the reason being his realistic and imaginative rendering of the
living conditions of the down trodden people exploited by the heartless
capitalists, at a particular period concerned with specified area in
America. While discussing about the title of The Grapes of Wrath,
Steinbeck had mentioned once that it had a large meaning. He had
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believed sincerely that the banks and the large growers were sowing the
seeds of their destruction, and that the migrants were being aroused to
mass resistance against their brutal oppressors. He prophesied disaster.
This prophecy might well have come true, but the Second World War
produced a rise in food prices, created a labour shortage, and brought
badly-needed industry to California. The fact that the grapes of wrath
were not gathered for the vintage, detracts nothing from what may well
remain as America’s most outstanding social novel.
Steinbeck both opened and closed The Grapes of Wrath with
sadism. In the beginning, the owners found the destruction of the farmers’
houses very pleasant. In the end, the ‘okies’ chased by floods did not
arouse solidarity but rather animosity. Also their march on the streets
offered a spectacular scene that the owners could enjoy through the
windows of their comfortable palaces. As usual, the owners accomplicesthe policemen-were involved not in assisting the disaster victims, but in
harassing them. Steinbeck related:
… and in little towns pity for the sodden men changed to anger,
and anger at the hungry people changed to fear of them…then the
hungry men crowded the alleys behind the stores to beg for bread,
to beg for rotting vegetables, to steal when they could…The
sheriffs swore in new deputies and ordered new rifles, and the
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comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then
distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant people. (458-459)
Exploitation has its demoniac hands in the novel The Grapes of
Wrath. The migrants depriving all their natural possibilities and
attainments either in the matter of food, shelter or decent living
conditions. Each and every activity of the land owners and bankers added
new woes to the poor people. The hopes of the people were shattered
whereas the purses of the big business mongers were stuffed. Harassments
and a provocation went on side by side in the resettlement camps. The
alluring of the workers by party men without rhyme or reason to join
unions added fuel to the fire.
In The Grapes of Wrath, however, the oppressed workers are seen
clearly through the adventures of one family. Although the Joads were
meant to represent all the migrant families, they were not the type of
family which would be familiar to most readers. To ensure empathy
between the readers and the Joads, John Steinbeck drew clearly the two
children, Ruthie and Winfield, whom anyone would recognize as typical
youngsters. The other migrants, whom the Joads met, both on the way and
in California, such as the Wilsons and the Wainwrights, are also clearly
sketched. There are no shadows here. Even the casual characters like
Lisbeth, Sandry, arid the members of the ‘Ladies’ Committee of Sanitary
Unit Number Four’ are described in detail. This clarity of presentation
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encouraged the readers to visualize what was occurring, and permitted
them to feel the abuses to which the migrants were subjected. In order to
ensure that the whole sordid episode was not rejected as ‘just another
story’, John Steinbeck inserted the powerful, factual inter chapters which
left no doubt in anyone’s mind. While the Joads might be fictional
characters, the conditions which they encountered were far from fiction.
These conditions were familiar to the tens of thousands of migrants for
whom John Steinbeck had so much compassion.
Steinbeck was familiar with all phases of the problem, and in this
novel he touched on such subjects as the home, the family, the
community, motherhood and fatherhood, as well as the political and
economic atmosphere. The Joad family was forced by the dust-bowl
conditions to borrow from the bank. When continuing conditions made
repayment impossible, they were “tractored out” of their Oklahoma home
and joined the great march to California where jobs had been advertised.
Complete at the beginning, the family almost immediately begins to lose
members, and is altered somewhat with each loss.
The situation in California was clearly illustrated as the Joads
encountered border patrols, migrant shantytowns, strike-breaking, police
brutality, native hostility, the greed of the landowners, and the only bright
spot, a government camp. They experienced the whole range of
agricultural oppression, and John Steinbeck exposed it for all to see. He
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was particularly shocked by the use of brute force with pick-handles, tear
gas and shotguns. His descriptions of such incidents were sharp and
brutal. He did not, however, depict all the migrants as helpless victims;
some of his more important characters were dangerous men. Tom Joad
had killed once, and was to kill again, while the ex-preacher, Casy was not
altogether a man of peace. Unlike the actions of their oppressors,
however, it is noteworthy that the violence of these heroes is in
self-defence, or the defence of their friends.
Steinbeck registers his voice of protest prompted by his own innate
humanitarian considerations. That Steinbeck’s theme of protest finds its
multifarious expressions through the characters, and their thoughts jotted
down in apt syntax and in the actions performed by the persons. The
events themselves described by him do smack of the sense and essence of
protest. Referring to the exploiting men In Dubious Battle, Steinbeck’s
anger gets exploded like this:
They don’t produce anything.
What right they got to the profits? (15)
The only orders that really stick
Are the ones that come, down after a vote? (19)
The damn fools think that
They can settle strikes with soldiers. (25)
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If taken externally these protesting voices come under the unaddressed
category but the emotions and the righteous ‘indignation’ reveal their
relevance and significance in the course of actions of the novel. Steinbeck
once spoke to his agents that he was trying to write history while it was
happening and he did not want to be wrong (Timmerman 97).
It has been established that the conditions under which the
migratory farm workers in California existed prior to the Second World
War were almost beyond belief. John Steinbeck demonstrated that they
were not beyond description. Although the most violent criticisms of his
two novels that is The Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle concerned
the validity of the conditions which he described, ample corroboration has
been produced to confirm that Steinbeck wrote the truth. In his In Dubious
Battle, John Steinbeck attacked different facets of the same problem. His
first attempt, In Dubious Battle, although one of the finest strike novels in
American literature, did not achieve wide popularity. The Grapes of
Wrath, on the other hand, was tremendously popular, and drew worldwide attention to America's shameful problem. The difference in the
reception accorded these two novels of migrant workers is due to
Steinbeck’s methods of presentation. The story of In Dubious Battle is
told by means of the actions of two Communist labour organizers. The
actual people whom they are trying to organize, the migrant workers, are
never brought forward. Except for a few non-representative leaders, the
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mass remains in the shadows. Nearly all the activity and all the violence
revolve around the two organizers. The readers never get to know the
downtrodden multitude, nor do they appreciate their grievances.
Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle has a suggestive title. Steinbeck
herein encapsulates his views regarding the need of communism though
he himself was not beyond skepticism as to its definite goal. Inhuman
extraction of work and exploitation of the workers were at the peak during
the days of Steinbeck in his country. Struggle for equality and survival
with dignity happened to be the crucial issue for the migrant labourers
who had been paid paltry sums for their labour. They in fact had to live
and work amidst ruthless and unhealthy environments. This novel appears
to be radical going against the traditional American values as it is
concerned with highlighting the pitiable plight of the poor workers in
California who were exploited by all possible means during the Great
Depression. This novel not only brings attention to capital working class
issue: it is also grapples with the universal, endless and abstract topic of
human nature. It is easy to understand why many readers would dismiss
this novel as mere socialist propaganda. The setting, characters and plot of
the novel revolve around topical socialist issues of the age. The novel
takes place during the Great Depression. The main characters are
members of the party, and the plot revolves around a working class strike.
So it was labeled as socialist propaganda.
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In Dubious Battle is really a struggle between good and evil and
the self destructive behaviour that lives in all man kinds. It focuses on
how characters represent the various ideas, held by capital and labour in
1930s. It is fully deals with a fruit workers strike in California valley, and
the attempts communists to organize, lead and provide for the striking
pickers. Through the character Jim Nolan the protest portrayed. The strike
of nine hundred migratory workers is led by Jim Nolan devoted to his
cause. It was a strike novel set in a Californian apple country. It is another
version of the eternal human fight against injustice. The migratory
workers rise up in dubious battle against the land owners. The protest
forms against the low wages given to all the workers. The central figure of
the story is an activist for “the party” which also is a name for the
American communist party although it is never specifically named in the
novel. The communist party is organizing a major strike by the workers,
seeking this to attract followers to his cause. The writer’s sympathies were
clearly with the strikers. He pictured them as exploited by the capitalists
and the communists. Steinbeck stood by the side of truth and reality
related to humanity. Steinbeck also dealt with the problems of labour
unionism in this novel.
Although the strike is the owner’s inadequate treatment of the
workers, the law enforcement, newspaper and local government officials
denounce the Strike as a communist uprising. Not only do the owners
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reduce wages, but they also take advantage of their workers destitution.
Steinbeck portrayed the situation through the character Jim as: “women
work all day, men work all day; and the owner charges three tents extra
for a can of beans because the men are too damn tried to go into town for
groceries” (DB 71).
The owners exploit the workers; they know that the workers are too
damn tried to go town, and they take advantage of them by overcharging
them: Additionally the owners take advantage of them through the
provision of store credit. Considering the fact most of the workers arrive
with little or no money; they have little choice but to use the stone credit
provided to. And as a result of the overcharging they become indebted to
the store, resulting in an endless cycle of exploitation. Mac, the
spokesman of Steinbeck brings this to light when he tells Jim:
Most of them are n’t going to have any pay when they settle up
with the store. One man tonight in the store got two big jars of
mincemeat. Probably eat both jars tonight and be sick tomorrow.
They get awful hungry for something nice. (75)
In the above passage Steinbeck addresses the problems of credit.
By offering credit and overcharging for products, the owners exploit
workers; they take advantage of the workers hungry. The presentation of
the owners by Steinbeck in this novel reveals the inequality and
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exploitation that mark the working class experience in the early twentieth
century.
The value of unity is at the centre of socialist intellectual influences
on the working class movement; in order to survive and change social
awareness about injustices, the working class must raise their voices in
united rebellion. Steinbeck explains in In Dubious Battle about the
essence of this working class and socialist mentality as:
Group men are always getting some kind of inspection. This seems
to be a bad one. I want to see, Mac, I want to watch these groupmen, for they seem to me to be a new individual, not at all like
single men. A man in a group is n’t himself at all; he’s a cell in an
organism that isn’t like him any more than the cells in your body
more than the cells in your body are like you. (144)
The doctor is explaining the noticeable changes happening among
those in the working class in this novel. He has perceived their coming
together as a unified source, and he draws comparison between the
individual (cell) and the working class (organism). If one thinks of the
great struggle and deaths common among migrant workers at the time this
seems a very fitting parallel. If a cell die, a new cell is born. It is not
individual that matters; it is the whole organism. Unity is connected to
survival, and thus, it is one of the most important values of socialist ideals
to influence working class culture. Toward the end of the novel, the
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migrant workers fight together and figuratively they become one
beginning: the narrator tells, “No lone cries came from lonemen. They
moved together, looked alike. The roar was one voice, coming from many
throats” (315).
In coming together as a unified source and overcoming the
barricade, and they illustrate the working-class conviction that the power
of one. However Steinbeck creates doubt about the outcome of this
socialist out look. In the end, Jim is killed and Mac uses his death to fuel
working-class anger. As a result, one is left wondering about the negative
consequences of communist thought. For, Mac’s final action is heartless
and calculated; and he is able to perform the act became the socialist
theory he subscribe to places the community above the individual.
In Dubious Battle is a condemnation of the techniques that
Steinbeck believes to be employed by the labour organizers, and their
corruption of group-man as a whole. Warren French says,
In Dubious Battle is the best novel about a strike ever written
because Steinbeck refused to become a blind partisan and rather
showed how struggles between labourers and employers - however
provoked or justified - can inevitably prove only destructive and
demoralizing to both parties. (Steinbeck 99)
Yet, this novel does far more than that. Steinbeck does not merely
critique the situation between labourers and employers, but between
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labourers and labour leaders as well. The “dubious battle on the plains of
Heaven” (book 1) John Milton depicts in Paradise Lost, from which
Steinbeck draws his title, is a futile engagement effortlessly concluded by
the Son of God. John H. Timmerman suggests the allusion to Milton is
designed to emphasize the, “hazy battle of the strikers” (87), which is
never truly a battle between black and white as much as it is
a confrontation between shades of gray. The uncertainty as to which side
is justified in their actions is as debatable in Paradise Lost as it is in
In Dubious Battle, because this is just the beginning of a much greater
narrative progression that unfolds in Steinbeck’s writing over the next
decade. The phalanx has only just begun to be explored. Thus In Dubious
Battle is much more than a piece of period propaganda; it is a novel that
presents a picture of its time while creating an abstract presentation. It
would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we
invented them.
Steinbeck’s The Pearl is a symbolic tale of a Mexican Indian pearl
diver Kino. He finds a valuable pearl which changes his life, but not in the
way he did expect. It focuses on a conflict of values prevents a reduction
of the novel to social protest for its own sake. Kino is clearly exploited by
the town, but that is not the isolate theme, it is relate to the conflict of
values. As a man (Kino) he demands justice, thereby he endangers his
family. The central image expressed as a conflict of values. Imaged
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objects define values. This novel connotes a false standard of value. It
suggests various meanings to different people to different times. Kino’s
character justify complicates the basic simple narrative, pride, idealism,
greed, strength, despair and horror all are contained in the precise focus of
the man’s actions. It is the story of pitting the individual and his dreams
against the threat of social power structure. Through this novel Steinbeck
exposes that riches are exploiting the poor. Here Steinbeck describes the
pearl dealers thus:
They did not know, it seemed a fine pearl to them, but they knew
they never seen such a pearl before, and surely the dealers knew
more about the pearl than they did. “And mark this, they said.
Those dealers did not discuss these things. Each of the three knew
the pearl was valueless.” “But suppose they have arranges this
before?” “If that is so, then all of us have been cheated all our
lives.” (P 52)
They taking advantage of the condition of the poor also described.
When the pearl dealer who tries to tell Kino that the pearl was not of much
value, Kino replied that “It is worth fifty thousand. You know it. You
want to cheat me” (50). The theme of solidarity being on the poor
people’s side and sadism on the rich people's is recurrent in Steinbeck's
writings. The Pearl, in which Indians were considered as non-humans, is
a good example. While on their side Indians showed solidarity with Kino
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whose son had been bitten by a scorpion, the rich doctor to whom he ran
for help responded with much arrogance and sadism. Here is an excerpt
from the dialog between the doctor and his Indian servant. The latter said:
It is little Indian with a baby. He says a scorpion stung it … - Have
I nothing better to do than cure insect bites for “little Indians?”
I am a doctor, not a veterinary … Has he any money …? No they
never have money … See if he has any money … (17)
At that time money gave someone the human status and poverty
withdrew it. In his ‘philosophical analysis of the human soul’s needs’,
Henry David Thoreau indirectly pointed out money as one of the worst
enemies of man. Steinbeck also maintained the same theme in this novel.
Steinbeck’s novel Of Mice and Men genuinely rooted in American
life, for its bite in to the strict quality of its material; for its refusal,
tragical loneliness and frustration either cheap or sensational. Steinbeck
present an unbiased picture of a strike and he has done justice to his task
and resultantly it has flourished into a prominent proletarian strike novel
of 1930s. It is a touching and perennially popular tale of two migrants and
their mutual dependence and shared dreams. It vividly exposes the
miserable situation of the peculiar class. There are obvious elements of
social protest in the novel: the plight of migrant workers, a theme that is
developed more fully in The Grapes of Wrath; racial discrimination,
reveals in the abuse and ostracizing of Crooks, the black stable man, by
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the other ranch hands; the insensitive treatment of old Candy and the
social prejudice towards women, exposed through Curly’s wife’s unhappy
married life.
The Southwest as a “multi-racial” land included the presence of the
black community. The majority of the blacks who arrived to the West
coast settled in California before the Civil War. At the end of the sectional
conflict in 1865, a new ‘influx’ of blacks arrived to the Southwest mainly
to cultivate the ‘Southwestern’ lands. It is worth noting that the black
population in the Southwest was small in comparison to the general
population of the area. In a nutshell, blacks were not drawn to the West in
great numbers. The blacks were exploited discriminated, and considered
as ‘inferior’ people. At that time, they became targets in a society.
These historical facts prove that racial discrimination against
Crooks in the ranch is a continuation of a ‘racist’ tradition. He is
introduced as “Crooks, the Negro stable buck, had his bunk in the harness
room” (MM 19). Crooks lives in the harness room because he is
segregated and isolated from the ‘high born’ white members of the ranch.
One can advance the idea that George, Lennie, and Curley stand for the
concept of the white supremacy. So, Crooks is the unique ‘non’ white man
on the ranch as he affirms to Lennie “now there ain’t a colored man on his
ranch” (70). Crooks keeps his distance from the others and when Lennie
‘dares’ to enter inside the harness room, he exclaims “you got no right to
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come in my room. This here’s is my room. Nobody got any right in here
but me” (72). Then, Crooks permits Lennie to enter the harness room.
Their brief interaction reveals the complexity of racial prejudice in
California.
In the south segregation is historical and it is a legacy, so it has
become natural whereas in California, that is, the land of dreams and of
a new world, racial segregation is supposed to be hardly acceptable. Thus,
this ‘Californian genre’ of racial segregation is spatial. In other words, the
idea of segregation was re-affirmed in California through the same codes
and practices that were “in vogue” in the rigid and segregating South.
Moreover, Crooks asserts his ‘Californian’ identity when he says “I ain’t
a southern Negro … I was born right here in California” (70). Even if
Crooks was born in California, unlike many southern blacks who had
migrated, he is still treated like an “outsider” in his “homeland.” In one of
the most poignant passages of the novel, Crooks says,
A guy sets alone out here at night, maybe readin’ books or thinkin’
or stuff like that. Sometimes he gets thinkin’, an’ he got nothin’ to
tell him what’s so an’ what ain’t so. Maybe if he sees something,
he don’t know whether it’s right or not. He can’t turn to some other
guy and ast him if he sees it too. He can’t tell. He got nothing to
measure by. I seen things out here. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if
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I was asleep. If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was
asleep, an’ then it would be all right. But I jus’ don’t know. (73)
From this passage, we realize that Crooks’s loneliness is
a ‘by-product’ of the racism that is exerted on him and Steinbeck
vehemently protest the racial discrimination towards the black people.
Because of their lower social economic position, proletarians have
no strong political power; they are weak in every aspect. Capitalists are
seemed to be strong, because their economic position. From the very
beginning, it is evident that the capitalist world is cruel to poor migrant
workers, especially to characters like Lennie and Candy. There is simply
no place for this lower classes, non self sufficient people in this maneating man society. The pattern of George’s character develops from hope
and optimism and end to despair, is the fate of the migrants. Just as
Crooks said that the dream of getting a ranch is in the minds of hundreds
of migrants, but nobody ever gets it
I see hundreds of men come by on the road an’ on the ranches, with
their bindles on their back an’ that same damn thing in their
heads … every damn one of ‘em’s got a little piece of land in his
head. An’ never a God damn one of ‘em ever gets it. Just like
heaven everybody wants a little piece of lan’. I read plenty of
books out here. Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets no
land. (73)
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Discrimination affects most people in this novel. They are all
discriminated against for certain reasons. One characters old and crippled,
one mentally slow, one is black and one is women. All of these characters
have a hard life, as the other characters discriminated against them. There
is no place for the black in the racial discrimination society, too. The black
stable man Crooks not only suffers to poverty and the lack of home as the
other migrants, but also suffers from the lack of companionship. He is not
even permitted to play card with the white hands. Steinbeck depicts
Crooks with significant sympathy. Crooks suffer a lot at the hands of the
racist people surrounding him and is the victim of oppressive aggression
and discrimination. Everyone who read the novel understands how
immoral the treatment of Crooks is, and in this, Steinbeck succeeded in
helping people to recognize racism.
Steinbeck sensitively dealt with the issue concerning “cat houses”
handling the facts of the life style in a frank and unequivocal manner. He
relates events as they were at that period of time passing no judgment and
showing no protest. He was merely concerned with telling it like it is, as
they say. These are the qualities that earn him such a worthy reputation as
an author, and yet he is so much more. Bringing to the forefront issues
that have previously been pushed to the back and hidden as taboo subjects
helped many to realize the state of society.
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In Of Mice and Men Steinbeck pictures many examples of the
cruelty of the world. Candy’s old sheep dog is an example of what
happens when one is out grow its usefulness. Carlson wants Candy to let
him kill his dog. He tells him it will be quick and painless. He even offers
to give him one of the new puppies. In the end he allows them to kill his
dog. Candy fears that he too will soon out grow his usefulness and not be
welcome at the ranch any more. This exemplifies the cruelty of the world
that people think a man is like a fruit; you eat the fruit and then throw
away the peal.
Although George and Lennie have their dream, they are not in
a position to attain it. In addition to their own personal limitations, they
are also limited by their position in society. Their idealistic dream is
eventually destroyed by an unfeeling, materialistic, modern society. The
tensions between the characters are inherent in the nature of American
capitalism and its class system. Curley, the son of the ranch owner, is
arrogant and always looking for a fight. This is not merely a personality
trait. His position in society has encouraged this behaviour; his real
strength lies not in his fighting ability but in his power to fire any worker.
Similarly, Carlson, the only skilled worker among the ranch hands, is
arrogant and lacks compassion. Carlson would be difficult to replace in
his job as a mechanic; therefore, he feels secure enough in his status to
treat the other workers sadistically. This trait is seen when he orders
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Candy’s dog to be shot and when he picks on Lennie. The other workers
go along with Carlson because they are old or afraid of losing their jobs.
Lennie’s mental retardation also symbolizes the helplessness of people in
a capitalistic, commercial, competitive society. In this way, Steinbeck
illustrates the confusion and hopelessness of the Depression era. The poor
were a class of people who suddenly had captured the imagination of
American writers in the 1930s. This was an example of the shift in
attitudes that occurred during the Depression. Previously, American
fiction had been concerned with the problems of middleclass people.
Steinbeck’s novel was a sympathetic portrayal of the lives of the poorest
class of working people, while exposing society's injustices and economic
inequalities in the hope of improving their situation.
Certainly Of Mice and Men contains unpleasant attitudes; there is
brutality, racism, sexism, economic exploitation. But the book does not
advocate them; rather it shows that these too-narrow conceptions of
human life are part of the cause of human tragedy. They are forces which
frustrate human aspiration. Lennie and George have a noble dream. They
are personally too limited to make it come true, but they do try. They try
to help each other, and they even enlarge their dream to include old onehanded Candy and crippled black Crooks. Theirs is the American Dream:
that there is somehow, somewhere, sometime, the possibility that we can
make our Paradise on earth, that we can have our own self-sufficient little
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place where we can live off the fat of the land as peaceful friends. What is
sad, what is tragic, what is horrible, is that the dream may not come true
because we are each and all of us-too limited, too selfish, too much in
conflict with one another. In Of Mice and Men, Steinbeck has shown us
something about the pain of living in a complex human world and created
something beautiful from it. In true great literature the pain of life is
transmuted into the beauty of art.
His novel Tortilla Flat introduces a notion of “multi-culturalism”
or a commingling of races when he described the paisanos:
Who is a paisano? He is a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican,
and assorted Caucasian bloods. His ancestors have lived in
California for a hundred or two years. He speaks English with
a paisano accent and Spanish with a paisano accent. When
questioned concerning his race, he indignantly claims pure Spanish
blood and rolls up his sleeve to show that the soft inside of his arm
is nearly white. His color, like that of of a well-browned
meerschaum pipe, he ascribes to sunburn. He is a paisano, and he
lives in that uphill district above the town of Monterey called
Tortilla Flat, although it isn’t a flat at all. (10)
In 1935, Steinbeck published Tortilla Flat, whereas his two first
novels simply include Mexican-American characters, Tortilla Flat is
articulated and built around this ethnic group. The novel has a humorous
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tone; it tells the story of a group of paisanos who are very poor inhabitants
of an “underground” district of Monterey, ironically labeled as Tortilla
Flat. The paisano is a mixture of Hispanic cultures and origins. John
Steinbeck in his Tortilla Flat depicts and portrays with a sober irony and
a grain of humour the daily life of the “non-privileged” pole of the
American post-war society. Throughout the novel, this ethnic community
is presented as being isolated from society and as dissenters because they
did not validate the capitalist system. They are at odds within the wasp
ideology. In other words, they are economically “offside.”
The paisanos are clear of commercialism, free of the complicated
systems of American business, free of the complicated systems of
American business, and, having nothing that can be stolen,
exploited or mortgaged, that system has not attacked them very
rigorously. (25)
From this passage, one can affirm that any ‘materialist’ form is
perceived by the paisanos community as a threat or a dangerous disease.
These Hispanics that are portrayed by John Steinbeck are facing a society
that is materialistic, oppressive, and racist.
The novel is articulated around the ‘Arthurian’ brotherhood.
A leader is chosen by the people and dies during the dissolution of
brotherhood. John Steinbeck used the Arthurian brotherhood model to
demonstrate that “the problems of the 1930s in America could be solved,
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although he knew that ultimately the brotherhood solution would not
work” (Marilyn 4). To make a new historical parallel, one can also
advance that the Arthurian idea was reaffirmed within John Steinbeck’s
novel. In Tales of King Arthur, Sir Thomas Malory portrays the ups and
downs of a “brotherhood of knights” who attempt to preserve and
safeguard peace during the early history of England. In Tortilla Flat,
Steinbeck presents the paisanos’s brotherhood trying to improve the basic
conditions of their lives in Monterey during the depression era. Like the
knights of the “Round Table”, Steinbeck has his own ‘knights’ drawn
from the under classes and unprivileged “pole” of the American nation to
look for an impossible grail.
A protesting voice in terms of religious conditions, coming out
from Steinbeck’s bottom of the heart reveals his everlasting apathy for his
fellow men confined not only to California but to the world wherein
uncertainty, threat, and deprivations precipitated the affairs of the people.
A point has been reached from where no further ray of hope was seen.
Steinbeck under this context gives expression to the prevailing doleful
conditions of the people through his character “How can you frighten
a man whose hunger is not only in his own crampled stomach but in his
wretched bellies of his children. You can’t scare him. He has known a fear
beyond every other” (GW 248).
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The anger and the unrest of the labourers strike at the root of social
inequality brought about by the selfish ends of money lenders and the
rapid growth of industrialization at the expense of indigenous ways and
means. According to Travis Matteson “Though the language of labour
protest is almost universal, Steinbeck’s portrayal of festering anger is
unique” (16). The anger is toward the king heads, the white collars, the
stuffed shirts, the damning metonymic as expressed in “them Goddmn
okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain’t human” (GW 221). Further,
we come across exploding comments as follows: “a red is any son of
a bitch that want thirty cent an hour when we are paying twenty five”
(298).
The protesting voice has found an exemplary expression in the
novels particularly in The Grapes of wrath which has been praised as
a triumph of proletarian writing. John Timmerman observes this novel as
On one level it is the story of a family’s struggle for survival in the
promised level. On another level it is the story of a people’s
struggle, the migrants. On a third level it is the story of a nation,
America. On still another level through the allusions to the Christ,
Israelites and Exodus, becomes the story of mankind’s quest for
profound comprehension of his commitment to his fellow men and
to the earth he inhabits. His stories are historically rooted in life
itself – they are of people and places. (272)
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Steinbeck was very much enamoured of what is termed as the
American myth - the myth of his continent as the New Eden and the
American as the new Adam (Owens 9). In his novel Cup of Gold the
golden cup stands as the symbol of purity, promise and innocence. But the
new world - America lose its innocence in the process of being
discovered. Greed for power and expansion of land, resulted in the
damnation of this Edenic bliss. In his other novel, The Pastures of
Heaven, the author dreams of yet another place devoid of flaws. But he
has to come to grips with the harsher realities among which such dreams
could not be realized. To put in the words of Owens “Fallen man brings
his own flaws into Eden” (50). In the East of Eden the novelist creates an
explicit American Adam in the character of Adam Trask. But he finds his
American myth of the Eden shattered, the dangers of the myth exposed.
He had to identify a new path toward a new consciousness of commitment
instead of displacement (55). East of Eden is the saga of two families
living in the Salinas valley in California and Connecticut in the late 1800
and early 1900s. The novel symbolizes the Biblical story of creation and
the subsequent human travails inflicted after the commission of original
sin. The novel is rife with metaphors and allegories related to the story of
Cain and Abel, and good versus evil as the characters struggle with the
human condition in an imperfect world.
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Steinbeck utilizes the story of Adam and Eve and their sons, Cain
and Abel, extracted from the Book of Genesis in the Bible, to illustrate the
theme of good versus evil in life. In the Bible story, Adam and Eve are
created to live in paradise in the Garden of Eden but their sin casts them
out. Their sons, Cain and Abel, take different paths, and Cain ultimately
kills Abel and is banished to live in Nod, a land east of Eden. Steinbeck
believes that all men have both good and evil in them and, although most
do not commit the heinous crime of fratricide, all men live east of Eden,
where they must struggle with the human condition. The sweeping
California epic East of Eden is considered Steinbeck’s most ambitious
work and the masterpiece of his later artistic career. Indeed, although The
Grapes of Wrath is more famous and widely read, Steinbeck himself
regarded this novel as his greatest novel. This novel does delve into the
world of Steinbeck’s childhood, incorporating his memory of the Salinas
valley in the early years of the twentieth century, his memories of the war
era, and his memories of his relatives. The title East of Eden referring to
the fallen world. It is a long family novel, is set in rural California in the
years around the turn of the century. In the center of the saga, based party
on the story of Cain and Abel, is two families of settlers, the trasks and the
Hamiltons, whose history reflect the formation of the United States, when
the church and the whorehouse arrived in the Far west simultaneously.
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East of Eden re-emphasizes that the pursuit of wealth does not lead to
fulfillment.
Writing from the perspective of the Christian tradition, Steinbeck
contends that every human individual since Adam and Eve and Cain and
Abel has struggled with the choice between good and evil. Thus Steinbeck
writes that each person when looking back on his or her life. “Will have
left only the hard, clean questions: was it good or was it evil? Have I done
well or ill?” (EE 164) The struggle is an individual one. Steinbeck implies
that no progress is made through the generations. Each person must
respect the ancient story and grapple with the same ancient problems.
John Steinbeck was always ahead of his time. He was encouraging
new forms of literature, such as the ‘play-novelette’, when most were
content to mimic Hemingway. The same is true of the artistic process by
which The Winter of Our Discontent was created, at an age when many
authors compile their memoirs, Steinbeck engaged in writing process that
personified the idea of “contemporariness.” Putting aside his work on the
Arthurian Cycle, Steinbeck began a novel exploring the same themes of
national and individual corruption. In order to tie ‘Winter’s’ theme of the
loss of moral integrity to its immediate context, John Steinbeck wrote the
novel and admits, something “I … (had) never done … before” (Steinbeck
and Wallsten ed. 633). It is an exploration of the condition of the
cotemporary Americans. Many Americans still remain oblivious.
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Steinbeck most fully describes this condition in an intimate letter to the
head of the United Nations, Dag Hammarskjold, in 1959:
I arrived at home for the culmination of the TV scandal. Except as
a sad and dusty episode, I am not deeply moved by the little
earnest, cheating people involved, except insofar as they are
symptoms of a general immorality which pervades every level of
our national life and perhaps the life of the whole world. It is very
hard to raise boys to love and respect virtue and learning when the
tools of success are chicanery, treachery, self-interest, laziness and
cynicism or when charity is deductible, the courts venal, the
highest public official placid, vain, slothful and illiterate. How can
I teach my boys the value and beauty of language and thus
communication when the President himself reads westerns
exclusively and cannot put together a simple English sentence?
(612)
Steinbeck stood up to his pronouncements. He as far as he could set
down his times in his novels; turned himself to be the watch-dog of the
American society at a specific period concerned with certain regions;
exposed the silliness, and injustices of the selfish people especially the
money lenders and the exploiters as we come across in the novel The
Grapes of Wrath. He did articulate either positively or negatively all that
came under his conscience. He played manifold roles-as a social protest
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writer, a naturalist, realist, journalist, essayist, short story writer,
dramatist, film script writer etc., The prominent themes of his novels are
found to be the impact of environment on man, strength of the family, and
social protests. His mission had been to declare and celebrate man’s
proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit, for gallantry in defeat,
for courage, compassion and love. Steinbeck once stated in unequivocal
terms in the Anthology of American Literature, that “writer’s first duty
was to set down his time as nearly as he can understand it, and serve as
the watch-dog of the society, to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices
and to stigmatize its faults” (qtd. in Lisca 217).
The sinister effects of industrialization and the consequent
treatment meted out to the migrants of Californian central valley has been
uniquely brought out in the novels of Steinbeck. He had always cared for
the have-nots and the persecuted. In Steinbeck’s ideology, the individual
was noble. But it was the collective activity of an impersonal economic
group that caused the oppression. Jim Casy, a Christ figure and a former
preacher voiced out Steinbeck’s conception that religion was neither
a solace nor an answer for the sufferings of the people. These kinds of
loud thinking are omnipresent in Steinbeck’s novels.
Reality defeats the dream. Steinbeck translates myth and legend
into twentieth century realism, showing what paradise, curses, oracles,
ghosts, knights, Robin Hoods and gnomes amount to in everyday terms. In
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his novel Cup of Gold myth is used ironically. But in The Pastures of
Heaven it is set not only in contrast to reality, but also serves to sublimate
the reality, making us aware that ordinary people are interesting”
(Fontenrose 29). Steinbeck was not satisfied with radical ideas alone. He
lays stress on the necessity of humanity for adapting itself to the changing
conditions and also puts under interrogation the semantics of ownership.
The relationship of the land to the tillers is vital to him as found an
exuberant expression in
but it’s our land. We measured it and look it up. We were born on
it, and we got killed on it. Died on it. Even if it’s no good it still
owes. That’s what makes it owes – being born on it, working it,
dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on
it.! (GW 35)
It is but natural to surmise that the Jeffersonian agrarianism had
done a lot in shaping Steinbeck’s ideology as well as some of other
writers in the twentieth century American writing. Protest novels exhibit
their protesting demeanour not only in content but also in the form.
John Steinbeck was a success as a social reformer. He saw
conditions which he deplored; he, almost alone, spoke out against them in
a fictional protest; he aroused world-wide attention to the problem; and
his writings resulted in the adoption of reform measures. While there are
other writers of social protest in the United States, John Steinbeck is the
present leader in that field, and he will not be surpassed easily.
CHAPTER III
ECO-SOCIAL CONTEXTS AND CONSTRUCTS
I was filled with certain angers … at people who were doing
injustices to other people.
 John Steinbeck
Depicting human situation imbibed with social problems has been
the quest of Steinbeck who in his writings has indicated concern and
compassion. He has brought before the public conscience the intolerable
injustice; social blindness or brutalizing conditions as he had an innate
feeling regarding the social responsibility of the writer, sense of
brotherhood and integrity of the self. Being a versatile writer Steinbeck
was also a realistic journalist, naturalist and playwright. He used many of
his personal experiences as materials for his novels. According to Paul
P. Reuben,
… he studied firsthand the struggles of the migrant workers; he
celebrates their labour in ritualistic terms and shows the
downtrodden overcoming their adversities through courage and
dignity and compassion for fellow sufferers. (1-2)
John Steinbeck will be evaluated as a social reformer in the field of
labour relations on concerning the migrant agricultural workers in the
State of California. A biographical sketch of John Steinbeck will be
presented to demonstrate his knowledge of this subject, A history of
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migrant labour in California will be followed by a description of the actual
conditions which John Steinbeck deplored. These must be known if the
veracity of his writings is to be accepted. In order to evaluate John
Steinbeck as a writer of protest, his motives will be considered and his
novels will be studied in detail. Because most of the attacks on these
books have been based on the accuracy of Steinbeck's descriptions of
events, the events described will be related to actual incidents which
occurred in California.
Steinbeck’s humanism is an important factor which conditioned his
image of man. It is the king pin of his artistic vision. His humanism
manifests itself as an undiscriminating love for man and all for his work.
This love also makes itself explicit negatively as protest, moral
indignation and a tragic sense of failure, beside in its constant and even
present form of compassion. Born out of this instinctive love in his and
a fond faith in a millennium while contemporary literature wallowed in
despondency and scepticism Steinbeck maintained a sturdy faith in
abiding human values. Steinbeck’s humanism made him a bitter critic of
the establishment and this made many mistake him for a communist. The
only intelligent interpretation is that he was more far sighted than many.
He observed the simmering discontent of the day and saw it in the
symptoms of a more serious melody, which has blighted the life pattern of
present day America. As James Gray notes:
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Steinbeck accepted as early as the 1930’s the obligation to take
a stand in his writings against tendencies in the American way of
life to which the campus repels of the present have been making
vigorous objection. (6)
He pictures with genuine love of the daily life and habits of the
American people. A period in American history from the westward
migrations for the latter half of the nineteenth century to the Dustbowl
tragedy of the Twentieth is what he delineates through his novels. This
was the most formative period in the history of the nation. By recreating
fictionally that crucial epoch, Steinbeck succeeded in isolating major
trends and tendencies. He was seriously disturbed by the injustice and
false morality of commercial civilization. Some of the problems are
identified by him are still relevant, that explains his growing popularity
with the youth of today.
A perusal of the select novels of Steinbeck would reveal a number
of causative factors responsible for shaping his sensibility and the creative
faculty in addition to his expressive patterns and the poignant portrayals
especially those concerned with the themes of social protest. Such
causative factors may be identified as belonging to social, political,
economic, cultural, and psychological domains. The classification though
intermingling in nature, would serve its own purpose in the sense that it
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enables one to arrive at a clear understanding regarding the workings of
Steinbeck’s creative mind.
Steinbeck loved the people inhabiting the American region as much
as he was fascinated by it. Like Wordsworth he loved nature and man, or
to be precise, man in nature. To such a love is incidental the love right
causes especially those concerning the expropriated and indigent sections.
Such a love and solicitude for a common man is what informs his most
characteristics works. This makes him valid even today. His sympathy for
the underdog and his sense of justice and fair play were probably imbibed
from his home environment. His father was a treasurer of Monterey
country and was fairly a well to do person. At home young Steinbeck
enjoyed all the advantages of an enlightened and cultured domestic
background. His mother, prior to her marriage, was a school teacher. This
probably gave him the right kind of introduction to books. Instead, he
seems to have read widely; much of his knowledge was gathered that way.
During his schooldays, Steinbeck used to work in the forms of
neighborhood. This threw him in to the lap of the lush, green valleys and
brown grassed hills of central California. Salinas, his birthplace, had
a mixed and colourful population-a cross section of the American nation.
Among them he choose his friends, who later became his unforgettable
characters in fiction.
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The social factors that constitute Steinbeck’s novels include:
(i) The call of time which was instrumental for the emergence of
a particular type of novel namely the social protest novel. (ii) The poise
and purpose of the writers in the immediate past. (iii) Group
consciousness. (iv) Naturalistic propensity. (v) Humanistic considerations
in terms of universal brotherhood.
The Grapes of Wrath is a novel of the migrant farmers who were
forced to leave their homes during the mammoth natural calamity called
the Dust Bowl in mid-west states in America during 1930s, to seek a better
fortune in California. The migration of the Joad’s family unfolds both the
personal and universal traits of triumphs and failures as the family endures
the ravages of the Great Depression. As Louis Owens pointed out, The
Grapes of Wrath is one of the great novels. It is mature, extra ordinarily
ambitious and a balanced statement of the major themes that dominated
Steinbeck’s life’s work” (20-21), It is said that while the novel deals with
timeless themes, the experiences of the Joad family and other ‘Okies’
illustrate these themes concretely. Seen from the backdrop of the
complicated social forces at work during the Great Depression Steinbeck
filled the reader’s minds with the bitter taste of the sweep of economic
devastation during a particular period. But the theme is both macrocosmic
and micro-cosmic, Alfred Kazin, “Steinbeck’s critic held ‘In Dubious
Battle’ and the ‘The Grapes of Wrath’ as Stein’s most powerful books”
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(87). Steinbeck’s journey from Oklahoma with the migrants resulted in
great desperation. His letters to Elizabeth Ottis in February and March of
1938, reveal his growing awareness of the plight of the dispossessed.
Four thousand families drown out of their tents are really starving
to death ... The death of the children by starvation in our valley is
simply staggering ... If I can sell the articles, I’ll use the proceeds
for serum and such ... The floods have aggravated the starvation
and sickness. I went down for Life ... The paid my expenses and
will put up money for the help of some of these people ... The
suffering too great for me to cash in it ... It is the most heart
breaking thing in the world. (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 159)
This explains the origin of The Grapes of Wrath and perhaps this is
one of those rare books of which have created great national controversy.
Steinbeck’s characters were not figments of his imagination but
living, breathing, suffering Americans. The British photographer for Life
magazine vouchsafed the above fact in connection with the photographs
taken from the field. When charged with profanity by some heartless
critics, Steinbeck openly refuted saying that he did not write for satisfying
the prejudices of people and hence he could not approve of their whims
and fancies. This reveals that he was guided by firm convictions and not
by flimsy ideas. Susan Shillinglaw, a Steinbeck’s scholar has remarked
that, “like many 1930s intellectuals, Steinbeck sympathized with
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community’s concern for the working class though he himself was never a
community” (Ethnicity 87). His novel The Grapes of Wrath is an authentic
document in the genre of felt anger of the people of Oklahoma and
California evidently identified as the key factors for social protest. He to
Elizabeth Otis that “I want to tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are
responsible for this” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed.162).
It is beyond any skeptic expression that political factors play
a pivotal role in determining the destiny of the people in a nation. In the
Twentieth century America, particularly the period between 1920-40
witnessed colossal natural calamities besetting California valley far
beyond any geo-physical speculations. Added to this were the avaricious
human exploiters who began to fleece the unfortunate migrants to the
core. The policy of industrialization followed by the American
Government, proved more disastrous to the already affected populace
namely the Okies. Machines rendered the agricultural mass landless,
homeless and helpless. Vested interests under the guise of bankers and
bureaucrats did their best to drive away the poor people towards further
predicament. The disastrous state of affairs went hand in hand. Though
the dictates of nature was beyond human prediction, an anti-human drama
was staged under the names of Dust Bowl and Depression the result of
which was the overwhelming pathetic conditions to which the migrant
labourers were subjected. The health and wealth of the Oklahomans were
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looted and their trials and tribulations intensified. All these kindled the
fire of protest lying dormant in the minds of the poor people. When the
stock of patience and forbearance was exhausted, the migrants had no
option other than indulging in protest against their exploiters and the
perpetrators of evil designs. This sort of protest attitudes culminated in the
form unionization.
The economic aspects of the protesting temperament involve the
concept of “Class Struggle” and its varied propagations along with the
Marxian ideologies.
The novel The Grapes of Wrath demonstrates how labour
organizations or unions take their genesis from the desperation and
degradation of the labouring class, and how Capitalism in its quest
for the profit that keeps the machinery going, will oppress and even
destroy the labourers. (Owens 9)
It is said that the above novel serves as a powerful reminder of the
struggle to organize the working class during the twenties and thirties of
the bygone century.
Steinbeck has clearly broughtout the psychological aspects of the
workers due to industrialization. Industrialization has brought out sinister
effects. The workers were alienated from the workplace produce, and their
age old wanted, and they struggled to find out new identities in the form
of new land and amicable living conditions. The labourers were deprived
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of getting even the fundamental necessities of life. The Oklahomans came
to realize that their Paradise was Lost altogether. Instead they have landed
on the veritable hell without possible redemption. But they have had the
firm belief that it was the spirit of oneness, tolerance, co-operation,
sacrifice and better understanding of one another that alone would deter
them from further deterioration. The essence of “we” became their key to
unlock the glory and might of the common people.
John Steinbeck was not, primarily, a labourer. The young
Steinbeck did not experience poverty until he set out to earn his living as
a writer. In 1919, he entered Stanford University, where he took courses
in English and history. Although he attended intermittently for five years,
he did not graduate, probably because he insisted on choosing his own
courses. During those periods when he was not in attendance at Stanford,
Steinbeck worked on ranches, and on a road gang. Here, again, he gained
an intimate knowledge of the attitudes, habits, and speech of the
workingman. In the mid-twenties he went to New York, where he had
a short career as a writer for the New York Journal. He also spent some
time as a free-lance writer before returning to California to write his first
book. In an autobiographical glimpse of Steinbeck’s youth, There's
Always Something To Do In Salinas, may be found some of the material
which later found its way into The Grapes of Wrath.
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The publication of The Grapes of Wrath resulted in self-righteous
objections, not only in California, but in Oklahoma, as well. Much of the
so-called criticism of this novel in Oklahoma has been no more than
efforts to prove or disprove the accuracy of Steinbeck's story. There is
little question that Steinbeck had experienced the conditions of which he
wrote. While driving home from the East, he joined a band of migrant
workers in Oklahoma. He lived with them in their makeshift camps, and
worked beside them when they got to California. During this period, while
writing The Grapes of Wrath, he lived in one of the federal migrant camps
in central California, and performed farm labour with the migrants. He
avoided neither troubles nor hardships to gain first-hand knowledge of the
conditions about which he was writing.
John Steinbeck was born and raised in the agricultural area of
California in which his novels are set. He had observed the evolution on
the land, from grazing to vegetable farming, and with it, the growing
demand for large numbers of transient workers on the great farms. He had
worked beside farm labourers, and had seen their attempts to organize,
and the resultant punitory action. Significantly, because of his family's
social position in Salinas, he had been exposed, as well, to the viewpoints
of the employers and the townspeople. Surely, John Steinbeck knows
where of he writes; he writes from experience. He was familiar with the
conditions of which he wrote, but a broader knowledge of these conditions
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is essential. To evaluate Steinbeck as a social writer, it is necessary to
know and understand the conditions which existed during his period.
There are three unique characteristics have been observed in the history of
agriculture in California. The first is the phenomenon of the tenure of
great tracts of land by a few wealthy owners, which has been inherent in
California agriculture since the Spanish occupation. The second
characteristic is the great variety of crops. Due to a combination of
different soils and a two-season year, over one hundred and eighty
specialty crops are grown; crops are maturing in one place or another
throughout the year. The combination of these characteristics, i.e., largescale farming with crops maturing at different times, produced the third
characteristic. This is the requirement for a large floating labour force
which will move from crop to crop, and then when no longer needed,
disappear until the next harvest. There had been little change in these
characteristics since their inception, and this fact resulted in the shocking
circumstances of farm labour in California in the 1930’s.
After World War I, economic and ecological forces brought many
rural poor and migrant agricultural workers from the Great Plains states,
such as Oklahoma, Texas, and Kansas, to California. Following World
War I, a recession led to a drop in the market price of farm crops, which
meant that farmers were forced to produce more goods in order to earn the
same amount of money. To meet this demand for increased productivity,
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many farmers bought more land and invested in expensive agricultural
equipment, which plunged them into debt. The stock market crash of 1929
only made matters worse. Banks were forced to foreclose on mortgages
and collect debts. Unable to pay their creditors, many farmers lost their
property and were forced to find other work. But doing so proved very
difficult, since the nation’s unemployment rate had skyrocketed, peaking
at nearly twenty-five per cent in 1933.
Steinbeck’s novels dealt intimately with the plight of desperately
poor California wanderers, who, despite the cruelty of their circumstances,
often triumph spiritually. Always politically involved, Steinbeck followed
Tortilla Flat with three novels about the plight of the California labouring
class, beginning with In Dubious Battle in 1936. Of Mice and Men
followed in 1937, and The Grapes of Wrath won the 1940 Pulitzer Prize
and became Steinbeck’s most famous novel. Steinbeck sets Of Mice and
Men against the backdrop of Depression-era America. The economic
conditions of the time victimized workers like George and Lennie, whose
quest for land was thwarted by cruel and powerful forces beyond their
control, but whose tragedy was marked, ultimately, by steadfast
compassion and love. Just as George and Lennie dream of a better life on
their own farm, the Great Plains farmers dreamed of finding a better life in
California.
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Certain cultural factors also seem to be working at the background
of social novels selected for the present purpose which determine the very
course of actions concerned with the characters. Evidently in The Grapes
of Wrath, the breast feeding act of Rose of Sharon at the end of the novel
incurred the worldwide bitter criticism staking the claims of culture. But
the course of events in the novel justifies such transgressions and one is
convinced of Steinbeck’s honest intention in this cultural contravention.
Steinbeck once remarked that his primary aim of writing novels was to
help people understand one another. Regarding the selection of the central
themes of his novels Joseph Fontenrose says:
his most persistent theme has been the superiority of simple human
virtues and pleasures to the accumulation of riches and property; of
kindness and justice to meanness; greed of life ascertaining action
to life denying. (141)
A renewed awareness about class consciousness was prominently
seen among the Americans during the beginning of the twentieth century
and the intellectuals had imbibed significant interest in Marxism or
Communism leading towards the upliftment of the oppressed workers.
The staunch belief of the intellectuals in Marxism as the means of getting
rid of the social and economic ills prevailed in America. The Dust Bowl
otherwise called the ecological terror that blew across fifty million acres
of the Midwest and Southwest which sent around four lakh of Americans
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in search of new lives in California, left an indelible mark on the
impressionistic sensibility of Steinbeck leading to arduous and authentic
creative endeavours. Further, his naturalistic warp of mind and its
sympathetic realization of humanity at large had its own impact on his
writings.
A writer is the product of his age. Resultantly he holds a faithful
mirror up to his time and the society in which he lived. He gives
expression to the social milieu, the ups and downs of the folks, the general
conditions of the people, their dreams, desires, depressions, triumphs,
aspirations and other related aspects through the vehicle of writing, be it
prose, poetry, drama, fiction, short story, travelogue, or other forms of
literature. We have a number of poets and writers who represented their
age and the society in their powerful creations. For an instance, Geoffrey
Chaucer, eulogized as the “Well of English undefiled”, portrayed the
fourteenth century England in no less effective manner in his Canterbury
Tales. Shakespeare did wield his magical wand namely the drama in order
to get into the full fathom of the ins and outs of humanity through his
powerful portrayal of the Elizabethan age. A host of writers in the
succeeding times carried out the literary tasks in their own levels and
manners through their self-chosen literary forms. French, American,
Russian, writers have gained universal currency, and popularity in the
sphere of literature in a prominent level by virtue of their comprehensive
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and deeper understanding of the human society at large seen through their
native genius. Whatever it be, the underlying note of literary works proves
to be nothing but the humanitarian concerns. The American literary
spectacle has already in its ambit eminent names such as Robert Waldo
Emerson, Thoreau, Melville, Walt Whitman, Robert Frost, Ernest
Hemingway, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, William
Faulkner, E.E. Cummings, O’Neill, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams
and so on. John Steinbeck has risen to the firmament of Modern American
Literature by means of his innate interest, involvement, serious thoughts
about the suffering masses, poor condition of labour, commitment to the
prevalent social issues, unparalleled imaginative faculty, sympathetic
understanding of men and matters, brilliant acquirement of verbal
command and above all his all-encompassing awareness as to the
environment and its linkage with human beings both in its good and bad
aspects.
A compassionate human being will not fail to take part in the
distress of the fellow beings. Possessed with a remarkable group
consciousness, Steinbeck had identified himself with the toiling masses.
This element found its brilliant verbal expressions even when he was
dealing with persons who were well off in life. Evidently, Danny the
protagonist of Tortilla Flat is depicted by the author in a different manner.
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Though a landlord, Danny always takes sides with the miserly. In the
words of John H. Timmerman,
When acting as a group, men do not partake of their ordinary
natures at all. Some unique force empowers group so that it
becomes a new living organism which subsumes its individual
parts. (24)
This group consciousness with which Steinbeck was obsessed,
right from the inception of his career gets revealed in all his novels.
Steinbeck cared about language and he cared about people; he did not
want to be popular or famous; he just wanted to write books. He wrote
largely out of his own experiences and unlike many of his contemporaries
wrote very little about himself. He avoided answering mostly questions
about his personal matters. On many occasions he was accused of being
a communist, a fascist, a puritan and one of the most immoral men that
ever published a book in America. Jackson J. Benson points out that
Steinbeck was none of those things. In fact he loved writing and lived for
writing. He was a lover of life and environment. He wrote about what
interested his nature, both human nature and natures’ nature. He felt
a kind of “boisterous joy” in the objects of nature. What bothered
Steinbeck most about was that, out of society, aplenty-so visible in
California-large numbers of people could still go hungry (184). At
a relatively early age he had broken out of the mould of middle class
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sensuality, lived among those who actually did lack food and the means
to, and had developed a strong sense of social justice. He gave outlet to
his indignation so forcefully in The Grapes of Wrath two decades later.
Louis Owens observes
The Dust Bowl and the ensuring flood of displaced Okies, the
national economic depression of the thirties, and the growing plight
of the oppressed worker, all converged in the thirties to powerfully
affect the direction of Steinbeck’s thought and art. (5)
Once in retortion to the preaching of a priest in a church Steinbeck
exploded saying “Yes you all live satisfied, while outside, the world begs
for a crunch of bread or a chance to earn it. Feed the body and the soul
will take care of itself” (Lisca 23). This outburst is a clear-cut indication
of his realistic and practical thinking, his naturalistic approach and
appropriate action warranted by the society and time more than sermons.
A distinctive feature of Steinbeck’s novels is that he has taken upon
himself the task of glorifying man and “nature.” He believes that man is
the unit of society. Nature becomes a character with all its exuberance and
extinction aspects. His reputed novel Tortilla Flat (1935) is an example
for his interest in glorification of man and nature that brought him
permanent glory. Being the author of California experiences he has
exalted the eye catching landscapes of California, wildlife of Montereyhis own home town, and Carmal by his life like portrayals. He glorifies
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the Paisanos - people hailing from the town of Tortilla flat above the
Monterey, a village noted for its scenic beauty. His description of nature
in its grim aspects is without any prejudicial interception and
interpretation but out of his genuine desire for a graphic and honest
description with the aim of achieving accuracy and reliability in
communicative enterprises.
Steinbeck has given expression of Emersonian concept that
“everybody is a part of one big soul” which seems to be the steering force
of in his writings. The quality of owning, freezes one for ever into ‘I’ and
cuts him off forever from the ‘We.’ In fact the sense of belonging namely
‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘mine’ are the root causes for all the evils which plagued
human society in general and Steinbeck was prompted by the thoughts of
generosity, sacrifice and mutual help which have found forceful
expressions in the family Odyssey of the Joads in the novel The Grapes of
Wrath. The sense that we succumb ourselves to something greater is one
of the fundamental elements of humanism. Steinbeck’s characters
generally subscribe to the idea that ‘we’ is superior to’ ‘I.’ This realization
is the stepping stone towards getting access to further developments of
man as an invaluable entity in the world.
It may be put forth that the voices of protest loitering in the novels
of Steinbeck are the outcome of his attitudes replete with humanistic
dimensions. He had always a soft corner in his mind for the people
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afflicted with poverty and undergoing all sorts of tribulations in life. As
Ma Joad expressed it: “If you’re in trouble or hurt or need-go to poor
people. They’re the only ones tha’'ll help -the only ones.?” (GW 513-514)
John Steinbeck's sympathies were with a traditionally exploited
group - the migrant agricultural workers. The humanism exercised by him
is not the one which is associated with “Maudlin tears”, but that which is
nurtured by his genuine understanding of the plight of those destined to
devastating conditions. A perusal of his outlook on humanism will reveal
its multifarious aspects. A glance at the verbal structure and the semantic
texture of Steinbeck will not miss revealing the fact that his heart was
brimming with the “milk of human kindness.” The outcome of this, finds
its echo in his delineations of characters in The Grapes of Wrath.
The moving, questing people were migrants now. Those families
who had lived on a little piece of land, who had lived and died on
forty acres, had eaten or starved on the products of forty acres, had
now the whole west to rove in… (90)
Louis Owens refers to Steinbeck’s literary technique in narration of
the pathetic migrants. According to him, his voice is “deeply accusatory
and often morally outraged” (91). The battle mentioned is this novel is the
class struggles for equality and the struggle of the working men, in
particular the migrant workers to survive with health and dignity.
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In the big picture chapter of The Grapes of Wrath, the author
portrays the pitiable predicament of the itinerant labourers, ill-treated and
dehumanized.
In 1933 the gigantic dust cloud rose over an area of the United
States, stretching from Texas to South Dakota and rendered around
four hundred thousand Americans, homeless, jobless and almost
rootless. (Owens 1)
The aftermath started in their surging towards California in search of new
lives. The dust cloud brought out untold sufferings to the people in the
dimensional forms such as drought; top soil lifting; failure of crops; small
farmers losing their lands to bank men; replacement of horse drawn plods
by tractors owned by economically well off; eviction of marginal farmers
from their lands; exodus causing a heavy burden on the already existing
population growth in California; the feelings of prejudice and its resulting
ill treatment of the fellow beings though divided by the thin layer of
regional demarcations far beyond human considerations; growing violence
in Steinbeck’s own hometown; labourers being put into insurmountable
starvation and disease besides getting paltry sums as wage etc.,
The torrential rainstorm, the factor for suffering and starvation
concerned with the migrant people has left them without employment and
without food. They were forced to steal, which was to meet the repressive
measures by the law enforcing authorities. Though the comfortable people
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were compassionate at first, they ultimately developed hatred towards the
migrants  a natural psychological phenomenon for which they alone
were not responsible. Women expected break in the men. But as Steinbeck
put forth, break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
And obviously wrath is the bedrock on which protest either personal or
social, gets strong footage.
Rose of Sharon like her mother, brother, and Jim Casy the martyr
believes that not an individual but humanity as a whole is the Centre of
life. This realization proves to be ultimately the result of repeated bitter
and painful experiences. And social protest which beset the multitudes in
the said region reveals itself in the form of the bursting out of repressed
feelings concerned with the individuals which affected the mob. The urge,
to do away with this sort of, prevailing injustice is a natural development
of it.
Steinbeck’s sympathy was with the working class during the
depression. He developed hatred towards the middle class materialism
which resulted in his resentment of corporate agriculture in California. He
wrote while preparing for writing of the novel The Grapes of Wrath as
“I want to put a Tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible
for the Great Depression and its ill-fated consequences.” (Steinbeck and
Wallsten ed. 162)
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He did not mislead his statement. He gave prompt expressions in
his works according to the dictates of his inner voice, as he wanted to
write history while it was happening. Louis Owens, remarks that “the
1930’s proved to be the era of proletarian novel in America” (7). The
writings had to express the oppression of the down trodden masses. Many
writers influenced by communist ideologies took upon themselves the
cause of the oppressed. Henry Roth, John Dos Passos, Tillie Olson, Daniel
Fuchs, James Agee, Edmund Wilson, Robert Cantwell are some among
them. The writings of pronounced Americans like Stephen Crane, Upton
Sinclair, and Frank Norris also were conducive towards highlighting the
altogether sad affairs of the people in urban slums, patching houses and
wheat fields. But they did not rise to the heights of John Steinbeck.
Being a place of extremes with diverse geographical attributes
ethnic variations, and abundant affluence rife with challenges, California
was construed to be both a land of promise and destitution. At the same
time it has been a contested place wherein the sugar of one group was the
poison of another. The populace constituted native Indians, Spanish Land
owners, and Anglo Squatters. Railroads, corporations, large scale ranches
and migrant labourers which formed the major features of the region. It is
described as the golden state, a bit unreal, replete with promises of
congenial weather, graceful living, and enormous wealth. Paradoxically
California had not extended its munificent hands to many people hoping
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to reap its resources. The historical perspectives of the region have
presented very often the traits of exclusion by people displaced from their
homes or determined from possessing land of their own. In spite of the
fabulous wealth, vastness and fertility the settlers both the old and new
had to depend upon the impoverishment of another. Steinbeck’s
understanding of the conditions of the migrants has been a penetrating one
and it has suitably found its narrative fervour in the words such as:
The ragged man had children that died because wages were too low
and work was too scarce to afford food for his children and wife.
His story was one of Pain and Despair and was evidence of the
cruel and inhuman treatment. (GW 204)
One is prone to find the genesis for the seeds of social protest
strewn indirectly in such concrete statements given at the select novels of
the present author, in tune with the course of actions.
Karl Marx pointed out that the era of industrialization resulted in
the creation of class conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
The former having the means of control of production at their hands while
the latter being subjected to their exploitation (311). The class conflict in
The Grapes of Wrath is presented in the form of the divisions namely the
employing land owners and the exploited farm workers. The exploited
farm workers obviously getting hard work but low wages. Owning the
Farm lands namely the means of production is one of the key factors
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concerned with the characters in this novel. Class plays an inevitable role
to decide the destiny of the People. The rich controls the means of
production and the poor fall prey to their ruthless exploitation. Class
struggle therefore finds a substantial place in world literature as it was the
call of the erstwhile ages. The world of capitalism gives value to
possessions and not to human values. Human beings are therefore treated
as commodity as and not more than that. The contention between the
haves and the have-nots has therefore found its rationale accordingly in
Steinbeck’s fiction. The struggle between simple and poor indigenous
people against the capitalist invaders had to meet with all sorts of
intimidations. The novel entitled The Pearl is deemed to be the account of
this class conflict. The characters namely Kino his wife, Juana the
fisherman, their son Coyotito leading a simple life in Lapis. But they
come to get possession of a precious Pearl. The wild device employed by
the upper class persons to rob Kino of his pearl and the ensuing loss of
Kino’s only son drives them to the extent of deserting the pearl into the
sea to get rid of its evil impact.
As has been already pointed out, the intensification of the general
dissatisfaction among the people by the labour activists won passive and
negative results. At the outset it served as a kind of emotional hold on the
already harassed and deprived migrants. Steinbeck herein seems to have
immersed into the human side of communism as the focus was on the
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labourers, exploited men and women. He had already developed a soft
corner in his mind towards communism based on his staunch faith that it
would redeem the masses from the clutches of the Bourgeoisie. The
Americans’ growing interest in communism as alternative to capitalism
might have left its influence upon his mind. For, Steinbeck believed that
Man in a group is not himself at all. He is a cell in an organism that is not
like him any more than the cells in one’s body are like himself. His
optimism was that if men worked together they could start a strike which
would bring a change for the best. “From the east coast, to the west coast,
came the migrant Workers, communists, and the unionizers. Eastwest: the
path of Protest!” (Matteson 76). The protest has had multifarious
manifestations depending upon the pivotal interests such as: human
strength, single mindedness, prolongation, forbearance on the part of the
people, and selfishness of a particular section of the society and so on. The
Grapes of Wrath is cited as the most successful protest novel of both
centuries. Part of its impact stemmed from its passionate depiction of the
sad state of affairs of the poor people under exodus. Steinbeck was
attacked as a propagandist and a socialist from both the left and the right
of the political spectrum. The most fervent of these attacks came from the
Associated Farmers of California. They were displeased with the book’s
depiction of California’s farmer’s attitudes and conduct towards the
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migrants. They even denounced the book as a pack of lies and labeled it as
a communist propaganda.
Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men is set in the small town of Soledad in
California, in the 1930’s throughout the Great Depression. As a result of
climatic changes in the West of America the drought lead to large fields of
fertile land being destroyed. Consequently the settlers who had founded
the farms were forced from their land by the “great American dust bowl.”
In 1929, the country’s economy collapsed, unemployment figures
rocketed and poverty increased throughout America. For farmers and farm
workers of the time the circumstances were devastating. While the current
President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal economics relieved the
difficulties greatly, the damage was far from being repaired entirely.
These were hard times for the people of America and the landowners
exploited itinerant workers, they had to work in atrocious circumstances
and were employed on minimal rates of pay. They led isolated lives and
had to strive to save enough from seasonal work to sustain them for the
rest of the year. The fundamental nature of Of Mice and Men originates
from Steinbeck’s personal life and previous experiences. In the following
years Steinbeck subsequently had a number of jobs and gained some
local success as a writer, yet it was evidently his experience as
a peripatetic ranch-hand from which he acquired the inspiration and
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understanding he required to compose his grittily realistic and
internationally acclaimed novel Of Mice and Men.
In Dubious Battle, which Steinbeck wrote in 1934, shows his
theory in fictional form. The writer had originally intended to write a first
person narrative from the point of view of a communist labour organizer.
The idea sprung from his meetings with two union leaders who were
hiding in the Monterey area after helping with a strike in California's San
Joaquin Valley, as told by Jackson Benson in Steinbeck’s biography. The
material, which involved conflicts between groups of men - the apple
pickers, the farmers, and the union leaders - was perfect for an application
of his phalanx theory. True to fictional form, however, the geography,
facts and characters in In Dubious Battle are, in the writer's own words,
“a composite” of the different strikes and union officials he had witnessed
and met in the California in the first half of the thirties.
In Dubious Battle was called a strike novel and a proletarian
treatise, but Steinbeck’s purpose in this book was more scientific than
moral and more psychological than sociological. The book marks an
important development in his consciousness because it is a non
teleological work and an objective psychological portrait of the workers.
The novel In Dubious Battle, was the product of the working conditions
prevailing in the wide valley of California and beyond its bourns. By
keeping himself aloof, the author is presenting the whole story, the
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panoramic characterization dialogues, thematic overtones and etc.,
narrated in third person omniscient way so that the readers could have
a comprehensive understanding of the fears and hopes, ups and downs of
the characters concerned. Steinbeck's workingmen are not silent. It is,
apparent, therefore, that John Steinbeck is familiar with agricultural
workers and the conditions under which they laboured. He is familiar,
also, with the attempts of these workers to organize. In Dubious Battle is
not just a story of workers  its heroes are Communist organizers. One of
the objections made to this story is that Steinbeck diverged from the ‘party
line.’ His answer is, “My information came from Irish and Italian
Communists whose training was in the field, not in the drawing room”
(qtd. in Lewis 58).
The Torgas Valley Strike depicted in In Dubious Battle is
a composite of earlier events that have been heavily fictionalized by
Steinbeck. Steinbeck uses the strike to critique the communist labour
organizers, and provides no conclusion to the labour struggle. Looking at
the treatment of Steinbeck’s strike leaders Mac and Jim in comparison to
those involved in these similar strikes, illustrates Steinbeck’s reluctance to
accept the totality of communist politics. Radical forms particularly that
of the strike novel, are primarily supposed to convey a concern for the
struggle of the workingman, which Steinbeck does in his compassionate
portrayal of the struggling labourers. However, In Dubious Battle is
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continually attacked from both sides because it portrays the need for
a change in the American capitalist system, but simultaneously attacks
those most prominently seeking that change. On January 15, 1935,
Steinbeck wrote a letter to George Albee about his decision to write
In Dubious Battle. He writes,
I had an idea that I was going to write the autobiography of
a Communist but instead, I have used a small strike in an orchard
valley as the symbol of man’s eternal, bitter warfare with himself”,
and now, “I’m not interested in strike as a means of raising men’s
wages, and I’m not interested in ranting about justice and
oppression, mere outcroppings which indicate the condition. But
man hates something in himself. He has been able to defeat every
natural obstacle but himself he cannot win over unless he kills
every individual. And this self-hate which goes so closely in hatred
with self-love is what I wrote about. The book (DB) is brutal.
I wanted to be merely a recording consciousness, judging nothing,
simply putting down the thing. I think it has the thrust, almost
crazy, that mobs have. (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 98)
However, the symbol of the strike may have borne too much of its
own inherent significance to allow Steinbeck the ability to clearly convey
his commentary on the phalanx as well. The mouthpieces of constructs by
Steinbeck do not always take the form of just one character, but in the
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case of In Dubious Battle, there is Dr. Burton. In his autobiography of
Steinbeck, Jackson J. Bensons says,
In this novel Rickett’s influence would seem to have an overt
expression in a character, Doc Burton, who is modeled after
Ricketts and who in speech and behaviour reflects Rickett’s
philosophy. (244)
While the character is based on Ricketts, he also serves as
a mouthpiece for Steinbeck’s own views as can be seen in the similarities
between Dr. Burton's dialogue with Mac and Jim and Steinbeck’s own
commentary found in his letters. They are both intrigued by group-man
and demonstrate a subtle lamentation of how the phalanx is being abused.
Dr. Burton represents an outside perspective to the group-man forces at
play in the novel. John H. Timmerman proposes that, “within each of
these novels, however, and in all the later works, Steinbeck offers an
alternative to the Group Man: the compassionate and creative individual”
(25).
Dr. Burton fills this role, and by setting Dr. Burton apart as an
individual, Steinbeck is able to ascribe his own views into the argument
more directly. Steinbeck’s research into labour organizations had led him
to receive numerous accounts of the actions of Pat Chambers, who was
one of the most prominent strike leaders and labour organizers of the
1930’s. Mac and Jim are supposed to be roughly based on these accounts,
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but most likely they are composites not only of Chambers but also of all
the party men that Steinbeck was meeting at the time. Therefore the gap
between the descriptions of Chambers and of Steinbeck’s leaders is almost
inexplicable.
The Great depression and the Dustbowl proved to be a major
setback in the American economy and social life in the beginning of the
Twentieth century. The devastation brought out by them is unimaginable.
The economic condition of the U.S was shattered beyond the scope of
rejuvenation. The Dust Bowl by its ruthless hands had therefore turned
Salinas’s valley into a veritable Wasteland. Emigration on high way
reached epic proportions, and Californians reacted with fear and anger
because they thought that interests in California would get affected due to
the influx of the Okies. One Californian grower voiced at the mass of
exodus as follows “This is not immigration. It is an invasion. They are
worse than a plaque of locusts” (GW 248). The Dust Bowl affected the
lively hood of the peasants in addition to their farms. No crops could be
raised on the dust. Dearth of water due to the failure of monsoon added to
the unmitigated woes of the masses. The farmers underwent sufferings
sans peril. Consequently they had opted to leave their lands and homes in
search of new ones. Drought was the language which the earth did speak
for a decade to the people. High winds and unbearable temperature and
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the insect menace in the form of grass hoppers, contributed heavily to the
sad plight of the farmers and the working class.
The vegetation and wildlife were the worst hit. Increased
unemployment leaving loss in business, physical hardships, psychological
strain-all these and more was the result of the great depression and the
dust bowl. Around an estimated 2.5 million people migrated to California
in search of livelihood. But conditions turned from bad to worse. The
migrant labourers were exploited by the land owners, bankers and also by
union organizers. Arresting of homeless men was a common sight. Due to
the mechanization process ploughs were replaced by tractors. Lands
belonging to the people were confiscated at minimum cost. Violence was
let loose on the strike coachers. Their wages were cut to fifteen per cent
beyond expectation the strike leaders under the guise of fighting for the
rights and privilege of the people were concentrating more on personal
interests. The general discontent among the people by labour activists was
of no avail due to their move. In Day brooks Battle Steinbeck portrays the
labour strike undertaken by the American Communists and the fruit
pickers. Torgas valley a rural part of California became the hectic region
for all the above mentioned bitter activities. To regain dignity or
livelihood became a distant dream for the people. Willa Cathers’ novel
Neighbor Rosicky (1930) deals with the Dust Bowl disaster during the
drought years. It covers the midwest. “She gives the sense of both success
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and failure in people as they are broken or made by life’s struggles”
(Oliver 27).
Industrialization had opened up the gates of human alienation not
only in the workplace but in the society in general. The man, who partakes
of his labour, has virtually no links with the products. Division of labour
had brought about the hazardous physical and psychological alienation.
As Karl Marx had remarked that “man becomes an appendage of the
machine and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily
acquired knack that is required of him” (107). The separation between
production and Consumption is a marked feature in Of Mice and Men.
People sow at one place but hope for the harvest at another place, moving
from job to job, performing one seasonal type of task per ranch.
In The Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck expressed the goal of the
working class and the implication of a flight for a new social order
through the verbal delieanation of Tom Joad. He says “Throwout the Cops
that isn’t our people. All work together for our own thing-all farm our
own land” (GW 248).
That the very happening in the region concerned at a particular
period of American history has been faithfully and realistically portrayed
by Steinbeck. Charlotte Cook Handella regards Steinbeck’s style as
realism, as she points out that “Steinbeck’s novels include realistic details
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gleaning from the writer’s experiences as an agricultural labourer and
from his journalistic investigations of farm labour conditions” (113).
After World War I, economic and ecological forces brought many
rural poor and migrant agricultural workers from the Great plains states
namely Oklahoma, Texas and Kansas to California. Following World War
I a recession led to a downfall in the market price of farm crops which
forced the farmers to produce more goods in order to compensate the
monetary loss. With a view to meeting the demands of the increased
productivity, many farmers bought more land and invested unduly in
purchasing farm equipment which proved to be fatal to them. The stock
market crash which took place in 1929 added fuel to the fire by further
worsening the situation. Banks had no option but to foreclose on
mortgages and collect the debts unwarrantedly.
Thousands of farmers finding themselves unable to pay their debts,
sold their properties and were forced to seek new ways and means of
living. It was estimated that already the rate of unemployment was around
twenty five percent. The migrant farmers’ lot became still worse. Tillers
had to bear the brunt of economic depression. In creased farming activities
caused indescribable soil erosion which in combination with the already
existing unseemly drought, culminated in the Dust Bowl Disaster. The
affected were the migrants from Oklahoma. The cruel visages of the Great
Depression have made their lasting impact in American Literature, and
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Steinbeck was no exception towards articulating strongly about these
disastrous happenings of his times.
Capitalist economy preferred to be the best one for America had in
its store many efficacious but more evil ingredients. A capitalist is defined
as one who controls the production system and who is always bent upon
making money by exploiting and misusing the efforts of the workers.
Capitalism is an economic and political system in which a country’s trade
and industry are controllable by private owners for profit. A capitalist will
go to any extreme provided his survival, sustenance and accumulation of
wealth are ensured. Steinbeck’s novel The Pearl is an impressive account
of the ruthless behaviours that capitalist would resort to. It is reckoned
with, by critics as a veritable critique of capitalistic set up and style of
functioning. The story addresses a struggle between rich and poor.
A group of people owning the means of production while the major
proportion consisting of the toiling masses falling prey to the former’s
selfish ends explicitly called exploitation in its dimensional sense, forms
the platform and pith of the above novel.
Capitalists use force to gain, perpetuate and multiply their interests.
Oppression and capitalism go side by side. Heartless mercenary minded
people would forever attempt to build their castles on the ashes of the
working class. Any ideological resentment by anybody in this regard
would entail protesting manifestations. Creative novelists like Steinbeck
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stand as towering instances in their endeavours pertaining to the welfare
of the common people and their steadfast determination to strive and
succeed. Other people’s stories of everyday life became issues for
Steinbeck. His writings spoke against these who kept the oppressed in
poverty and therefore he was branded as a communist because of his
voice. Critics point out that Steinbeck’s background and concern for
common man made him one of the best writers for human rights. He often
focused on social problems, concerned with the haves verses have not’s
and made the reader to have the thrust to encourage the underdogs.
Twentieth Century writers and critics are interested in the class conflict
and ups and downs in the society. These writers wrote their works
highlighting the inequality in the society and the inadequacies of
capitalism. Steinbeck came under the spell of proletarian considerations
by virtue of his innate psyche and direct experiences.
The American Dream provided him with an opportunity and
a liability by placing his work as a critique of not only a limited social
problem but also the system which did breed, permit or fail to offer
a chance of resolving the said problems. The author of the social protest
novels had taken a different ideological stance towards the Dream. His
novels particularly The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men stand as
testimony to the above. In Of Mice and Men Curley’s wife voices out her
desire to become a film star. Another character namely Crooks was rife
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with the fantasy of hoeing a piece of garden at Lennies farm one day.
Candy puts an end to George’s imaginative owning of some acres of land.
It is obvious that these persons long for freedom, unstinting happiness,
protective and contended life free from the brutal hostility of the world. In
such inhospitable world the American Dream has become a virtual
improbability. The bitter realities of life prove that their aspirations could
not be realized in this world which is “woe-betide.” Just as George and
Lennie dream of a better life on their own farm, so the farmers of the
Great Plains dreamed of finding better life in California deemed to be the
promised Land. This dream also got collapsed due to natural and
manmade hazards and calamitous factors.
The very thematic elements of social protest in Steinbeck’s novels
owe its allegiance to the socialistic and natural fiction. He constantly
places his characters and narrative within the context of very specified and
more important actual social situations. “The dreams of George and
Lennie are founded upon a rigorous analysis and critique of the
encompassing structures of social organization and the way they affect the
people who must live with them” (Baldwin 12). Steinbeck gave voice to
the voiceless in his novels. Paratoo massacre (Monograph) hailed this The
Grapes of Wrath as an American epic, a family saga and a Christian fable.
Levant Howard points out:
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Steinbeck’s concern for the helpless have-nots got intensified in
course of his creative efforts. Consequently even the passionate
lyricism of his early books gave way to increasingly schematize
social, protest. (11)
Steinbeck wrote in his travelogue,
… it is the nature of a man as he grows older a small bridge in
time, to protest against change, particularly change for the better,
But it is true that we have exchanged corpulence for starvation and
either one will kill us. (Travels 102)
The fact that he was a staunch Protestor in thoughts, words and
deeds cannot be undermined, and the telling expressions of the above got
manifested in his novels in the choicest diction and delineation.
John Steinbeck’s work is most often considered in the literary
tradition of Social Realism, a type of literature which concerns itself with
the direct engagement with and intervention in the problematic (usually
economic) social conditions in society. The height of Social Realism-and
of its close relative, Naturalism, which blends social critique with a tragic
narrative structure wherein a sort of natural fate irresistibly propels the
characters toward their downfall-dates from the end of the nineteenth
century and is represented by such authors as George Gissing, Theodore
Dreiser, and Frank Norris. By the 1930s, this literary style was already
waning, having given up its position of primacy to what has come to be
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called Modernism, which, although not uninterested in social or political
thinking, is far more experimental in the way it uses and manipulates
literary and aesthetic techniques. James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, and Ezra
Pound are some representative modernist writers from Ireland, England
and the United States respectively. Steinbeck’s decision to forego very
radical experimentation and use the more explicitly engaged realist style
in his work from the 1930s may owe to the urgency of the social problems
of the Great Depression and Steinbeck’s desire to register an immediate
and direct critical protest. Of Mice and Men, like Steinbeck’s two other
major works from the 1930s, In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath
takes its subject and protagonists from the agricultural working class of
California during the Great Depression.
The longing for lands and ones roots are at focus in the novels The
Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. It shows the necessity of breaking
the alienation. In Of Mice and Men, the struggle for land is the primary
goal for the main characters and what keeps their spirit up. Steinbeck
indicates indirectly that the solution for the above problem is unionization.
This concept is exemplified in the successful functioning of the
Government Camps; the food protest by the prisoners; the strike for
enhancing the Peach farm and so on. The solid assemblage of the workers
after Lennie’s fight with the boss’ son is another instance in this regard. In
fact Steinbeck might have been influenced to a greater extent by the
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Communist Manifesto and the clarion call rose therein as ‘workers of all
countries unite’. At the same time he has not overtly expressed anywhere
in his novels that revolution is the only solution for getting rid of the evils
of capitalism.
Through the characters, Steinbeck speaks of the power of free will
in human mind which is held as the most precious of human capabilities.
The intention to fight against the ideological, political, and religious or
any other kinds of forces hindering the freedom of individual gets upper
hand in chapter 13 of the novel. Kino in the novel The Pearl does not
believe the words of the dealer that the pearl obtained by him is valueless.
He hopes that it is worth of fifty thousand. From his inner mind, break out
strong words: ‘I will fight this thing. I will win over. We will have our
chance” (P 59). These words are not that of the protagonist alone but of
the writer also who by his staunch faith in the ultimate human good
through struggle has become its spotless spokesman. Steinbeck
categorically stated through one of this characters in East of Eden as
follows:
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual
human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would
fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes,
undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion or
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government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what
I am and what I am about. (134)
Steinbeck had firm faith in struggles as means of solving problems
though they do not always prove to be so.
We only have one story. All novels, all poetry are built on the
never ending contest in ourselves of good and evil ... To a man
born without conscience a soul stricken man must seem ridiculous;
to a criminal honesty is foolish, according to him. I have a new
love for that glittery instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and
unique thing in the universe. It is always attached and never
destroyed – because Thou mayest. (413)
His works stand unto his pronouncements. They amuse; they move
to emotion and they illuminate. The illumination pertains to good and evil;
body and soul; morality and depravity both in individual and the society.
The motivation and artistic urging that spawned in The Winter of Our
Discontent device from quite another source of response to what
Steinbeck perceived as a peculiar moral darkening of the age. He wanted
to reveal that and react to it. While nearly all his prior work had recreated
personal experiences. In his last novel The Winter of Our Discontent
‘Winter’ probes a contemporary moral ailment and attempts a remedy.
The conviction of ‘moral manhood’ was the steering force during
his time of writing The Winter of Our Discontent. John H. Timmerman
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explains the conception of this moral manhood as “the strength to stand by
convictions and to act according to them” (97). Steinbeck was rather
frustrated with the moral torpor and spiritual flabbiness in Americans in
whom the values have got crossed up, courtesy is confused with weakness
and emotion with sentimentality. He declared openly in a letter written in
7 June 1959 that “Immorality is what is destroying us. The failure of man
toward men, the selfishness that puts making a buck more important than
the common weal” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 255).
When John Steinbeck was a young boy, his aunt gave him the book
that would spark his lifelong fascination with words  a copy of ‘Sir
Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur’. So late in his life when he decided
to update Malory’s Middle English for the modern reader, he was
undertaking a project that was perhaps more personal than anything he
had done before. The work appealed to both the scholar and the creative
writer in Steinbeck. He and his wife Elaine settled in Somerset, England,
for most of 1959, where he had access to research materials and could get
a feel for Arthur’s world. What started out as a straightforward translation
turned into an ambitious retelling, and Steinbeck returned to America with
the work unfinished. The Steinbeck’s arrived in America just in time to
witness the media frenzy surrounding Columbia University English
Professor Charles Van Doren. He had recently admitted to cheating on the
popular TV game show “Twenty One.” What Steinbeck perceived as the
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chief problems in Malory’s time - greed, ambition above integrity, and
immorality - he identified in America, an ailing culture made weak from
prosperity and abundance. The scandal with Van Doren, who hailed from
a distinguished family of letters, further cemented this conviction that
Americans cared more about fame and money than honesty and basic
morality. His remedy was to write The Winter of Our Discontent (1961),
a book about an ordinary family in contemporary America, confronted by
these very problems.
The Winter of Our Discontent weaves together some of the most
important influences on Steinbeck: Malory’s Arthur, The Bible,
Shakespeare, history, mythology, and even the modern literature of T.S.
Eliot’s The Waste Land. It was the novel that once again positioned
Steinbeck as a social critic. Like The Grapes of Wrath, The Winter of Our
Discontent is another richly textured work set in the present day; in this
case, 1960 America. The story follows Ethan Allen Hawley from Good
Friday to Independence Day, as he negotiates the financial and ethical
problems set before him. His transformation is told against a backdrop of
Christian religious holidays, with Ethan’s development following the
death and resurrection of Christ. Hawley’s name signifies the historical
Ethan Allen, an American political hero of questionable integrity.
Steinbeck calls all of American history into question when he links
Ethan’s ancestral roots to both Puritans and whaling tycoons. The novel’s
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title is taken from the line in Shakespeare’s Richard III, a play about
another corrupt historical figure. Finally, the novel’s conclusion makes
a clear nod to Arthur when Ethan finds the family talisman in his pocket.
Though bleak, The Winter of Our Discontent leaves the reader with
a symbol of hope. The American moral terrain is not quite a wasteland,
but Steinbeck wants to warn his readers that a superficial life, one which
placed a higher value on material success than personal integrity, would
surely lead to a degenerate culture. In prosperous 1960, it must have been
difficult to comprehend the kind of world Steinbeck imagined when he
wrote the book, but by the time of the Watergate scandal, Americans were
all too familiar with a country led by dishonest politicians, a country in
which the courageous were assassinated for standing firmly behind their
principles. The Hawley family could be any middle class American family
in 1960, but perhaps The Winter of Our Discontent is best read as a fable
or cautionary tale, with its characters and events symbolic of the timeless
problems of temptation, greed, and the desire for personal advancement.
The novel addresses the moral depravity of American culture in the last
half of the twentieth century. It is a symbolic representation of American
affluence without ethnical standard. On the whole it depicts the moral
degradation of the entire U.S.A. In a letter to Covici he wrote: “But as far
as I know, a novel is a long piece of fiction having form, direction and
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rhythm as well as intent. At worst it should amuse, at half-staff move to
emotion and at best illuminate” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 676-677).
The immorality issue has not spared even the religious sphere.
Religion itself is turned on its head in this world in which traditional
moral norms for value are replaced by commercial ones. John H.
Timmerman has summed up the ideology of Steinbeck that “the abolition
of moral norms for action is ultimately an abolition of man” (122). The
inversion is clear in the image used when Ethan enters Baker’s Bank.
Joey dialed the mystic numbers and turned the wheel that drew the
bolts. The holy of holies swung stately open and Mr. Baker took
the salute of the assembled money. I stood outside the rail like
a humble communicant waiting for the sacrament. (WD 98)
The protesting voice of this novelist has taken recourse to the
amelioration of the illness sheltered in the greedy minds of the wealthy.
A revolutionary remedy does not seem to have been Steinbeck’s
diagnostic prescription. Instead of taking sides with any of the extremes,
he has endeavoured to explore and expose the phenomena’s they
happened, but left the judgment to the discretion of the readers
themselves. Jay Parini quotes on Linda Stubbs observes, “he remains
unfailingly attractive to readers of all ages and levels of sophistication” (3)
because of such great literary attributes and achievements. In all his
writing Steinbeck is a kind man, whether he is wise depends partly on our
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idea of wisdom. But he is never mean nor does his soul appear ever to
have been sick. Among the masters of world fiction, his place is as one
who loved only too well and provided an image of man abounding in
vitality, depth, comprehensiveness and exaltation.
CHAPTER IV
FICTIONAL REPRESENTATIONS OF
SOCIAL PROTEST
Writer’s first duty was to set down his time as nearly as he
can understand it, and serve as the watch-dog of the society,
to satirize its silliness, to attack its injustices and to
stigmatize its faults.
John Steinbeck
Protest novels in American Literature had considerable social
footing and historical significance. They took upon themselves the task of
highlighting the evils anchoring in the walks of American Society ranging
from slavery, economic discrimination, corruption, administrative
slackness, parochialism towards gender issues, illicit living styles, ecodevastation mad hunting after money, loss of identity, and ethical values
and so on.
American novels particularly those hailing from the southern part
of the country had varied thematic elements related to background of the
age namely, fundamentalist religion, defeat in civil war, economic
frustration, the impact of slavery, and the ruthless faces of racism. The
rhetoric of the public arguments over the land and national identity has
been presented more dramatically and suitably in the Californian social
protest fiction developed between 1930s and 1940s. It was therefore
within the literary terrain for naturalistic writers like Steinbeck stimulated
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by humanistic considerations, to paint the picture in their writings, of the
egregious injustices prevailing in the state with a view to looking forward
for a future of more social justice. It is stated that the Californian writers
viewed their state as an integral part of a national project of economic
expansion, not alienated geographically and culturally from the rest of the
nation. They had a staunch belief in the ideology that what affected
California, affected the nation and thus they wrote to a national and not
regional audience. The underlying motive was to expose the glaring
injustices inflicted upon the varied groups of people so as to create an
awareness of the problems in the minds of the audience. The optimism in
this regard was ignited by the thought that such exposures would be
leading towards righting the wrong and thereby nurture good will towards
American people not to speak of the government. Steinbeck raises his
voice against the non-human attitudes and greedy activities which deprive
the land of its beauty and peace and pleasure. Steinbeck did seek to
identify the ways and attitudes of his characters with those of the audience
giving the signs of “Consubstantiality.”
It comes to light that Steinbeck has restored to diverse stylistic
techniques so as to provide effective delineation of his semantics of
protest. Instead of direct verbal renderings he dabbled his creative
imagination in myth and legend. He, as Joseph Fontenrose remarks,
“found joy in myth and legend” (141). The Arthurian legends to which he
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had greater fascination from his early days up to his end, kept open the
windows of his creative fervour to a greater extent. They and the Biblical
tales served him as the sources of inspiration besides quenching his
innovative thirst in his novels. Even the titles of his novels such as East of
Eden, In Dubious Battle, The Grapes of Wrath, and the descriptions also
considerably reflect his literary moorings in myth and legends as evident
in his usages like Holy Grail and Fisher King, Garden of Eden, Cain and
Abel, the Joseph story, Exodus, Leviathan, The passion and resurrection,
and The revolt of the angels etc., It is myth which attached his work most
closely to the great tradition of the European and American novel. It also
served him as channels for expressing his protesting ideologies in the
artistic manner possible. In Dubious Battle reminds one of the satanic
revolt in Milton’s epic Paradise Lost. Especially impressed with the revolt
of Satan, Steinbeck warped the characters in his novel as reflecting the
fallen angels with their demurral trends, temperaments and tangible
inimical reactions. Jim in the above noted novel is no less than Satan. He
has the uniform purpose of regaining the power. Like Satan he persuades
the subordinate men to disobey their new superiors. In Paradise Lost
(Book-I) Satan summons the fallen angels and infuses a new spirit into
their minds so as to act against their arch-enemy namely God. His fiery
address furnished below tempers the fallen angels greatly who support
him in his revolting endeavour as:
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Innumerable force of Spirits armed,
That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,
His utmost power adverse power opposed
In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,
And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?
All is not lost-the unconquerable will,
A study of revenge, immortal hate,
And courage never to submit or yield:
What is else not to overcome? (101-109)
John Steinbeck opens his novel, In Dubious Battle, with the above
quote from Milton's Paradise Lost. (This is where the title of the novel
comes from) While Milton's work specifically looks at the battle between
Heaven and Satan, as well as man’s fall from grace from Eden, Steinbeck
also takes a similar vision of some kind of paradise being lost and the
struggle to regain it. In In Dubious Battle, the struggle is between those
who might be considered blessed, those who are the salt of the earth, and
they are battling against the evil landowners who seek to strip the workers
of their dignity and livelihood.
In this novel, Jim is an instrumental in summoning the pickers at
Martin orchards and they hold a strike meeting. The struggle once begun
is as hopeless for the strikers as for the rebel angels. The workers face
their opponent’s viz., men with power, mighty weapons, and spies.
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Diverse protesting modes are witnessed in this fiction: Warnings are
issued; Threats are made known; reprisals are encountered. At the very
outset of Book I of Paradise Lost Satan makes a glowing speech to his
followers, which is to be understood in the light of the previous address:
Fallen Cherub! To be weak is miserable!
Doing or suffering. (157-158)
The implicit motive of the above address is the egotistic urge of
Satan. He is subscribing to the revolting intention because according to
him, it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven.
Torgas valley figures forth as the venue of innocence, reminding
Garden of Eden before the fall, a farmland filled with apple orchards
mostly owned by few men. When the apples are ripe and ready for
harvest, homeless persons doing casual work used to come and pick for
a meagre wage. The valley has become the beehive of strike activities in
Steinbeck’s novel In Dubious Battle. The characters Jim Nolan and Mac
Burton represent the communist party and they actively organize the
picker’s strike. The novel is said to be Steinbeck’s first attempt in fiction
to deal with the calamitous conditions of the workers in California who
were subjected to tyrannical exploitation by the heartless owners during
the Great Depression. The violence in the novel presented by Steinbeck is
graphic in nature with the purport of attracting the sympathy of the readers
on one hand, and on the other hand towards the fate of the workers and the
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anger set against the selfish landowners. The text itself is in the form of
a dialogue. The characters are depersonalized. The emotions required of
an occurrence are evoked sincerely. The observation of John Seelye holds
good at this context with reference to the exodus to California by a large
number of people he remarked thus: “If California was the ‘future’ then to
reverse the famous aphorism, it did not seem to work – expect for
corporate Capitalism” (xiv).
The book as Jackson J. Benson puts “it was a scientific exploration
of the stimulation and reaction of the mob” (304). Steinbeck makes use of
real happenings in addition to the motive behind such matters for his
fiction. He transformed them by his artistic excellence and by means of
his powerful language.
In this novel Steinbeck, objected generally to
the exploitation of the migrant fruit pickers, but there were specific abuses
to which he drew particular attention. One of these was the custom of the
large growers to encourage an influx of surplus workers in order to
depress wages. Early in the story, when Mac was briefing Jim Nolan on
the situation in the Torgas valley, he told how the big owners waited until
all the fruit tramps had arrived and then announced a wage cut. A factual
report on the wheat land riot in California revealed that the grower is
responsible for the strike which touched off the riot. In this case the fact
was worse than the fiction, for there was no mention of the growers in
In Dubious Battle advertising for help. The labourers’ camp described in
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the book offered much better accommodation than many to be found in
California at that time, even though there was only one water faucet for
the use of all the workers. The real conditions are described so vividly by
Steinbeck in his story of the apple-pickers’ strike. His strikers in the
Torgas valley found all the power of the community against them. The
sheriff and all his deputies were there to protect the growers’ interests; the
strikers were intimidated; and, as the camp superintendent said, “You
know vagrancy is anything the judge doesn’t want you to do” (DB 93).
Steinbeck’s main interest in writing this novel, however, was to
make some observations about man’s behaviour both as an individual and
as part of a group, a theme which is repeated in some other of his novels,
such as Tortilla Flat, The Grapes of Wrath and Cannery Row. The ideal
group formation, in the writer's view, is one in which the members act as
individuals and at the same time contribute creatively to the formation of
a harmoniously integrated whole. One of Steinbeck’s recurrent symbols
which express his concept of an ideal group formation is the communal
meal, as it encompasses positive characteristics such as participation,
unity among men, and sharing. Eating together, partaking a meal has
always had, from primitive times, a religious meaning which stresses
communion among individuals of a social group. In this novel Steinbeck
presents imagery of food and a number of meals not to express
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camaraderie or brotherhood, but often to show how the absence of these
feelings affect the relationship among men.
The first meal in In Dubious Battle is at the Party’s quarters, where
the five members-Harry, Dick, Jim, Joy, and Mac-eat corn beef. The way
they eat their dinner reflects their emotional separation from each other:
“Each man retired to his cot to eat” (17). The physical separation of the
party members shows that, contrary to table tradition, none of their meals
promote intimate union among the participants. The party is their main
interest, not each other, so there is no need for a ritualistic consolidation.
This same interest for the party itself and not for the strikers is clear in Jim
and Mac’s relationship with these men. Earlier on in the novel Mac tells
Jim: “Our job's just to push along our little baby strike, if we can” (28). In
their vision, a successful strike is the most important thing, since their
loyalty is to the party, rather than to the workers. This difference separates
them from the group, whose hunger is basically physical, although the
workers have ideas of their own too and cannot be merely treated as “men
with stomachs” as Doc, the camp doctor, observes. He sees that Mac
overlooks the possibility of these men only being commanded by their
hunger:
You practical men always lead practical men with stomachs. And
something always gets out of hand, they don't follow the rules of
common sense, and you practical men either deny, or refuse to
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think about it. And when someone wonders what it is that makes
a man with a stomach something more than your rule allows, why
you howl “Dreamer, mystic, metaphysician. (133)
Significantly, Mac’s answer to Doc shows how he can only see the
men as pieces on a chessboard which are moved about for the good of the
cause: “We’ve a job to do” Mac insisted. “We’ve got no time to mess
around with high-falutin ideas” (133). Mac, in fact, looks down on the
workers, and fails to understand them as individuals like himself or Jim:
“This bunch of bums isn’t keyed up. I hope to Christ something happens
to make’em mad before long. This is going to fizzle out if something
doesn’t happen” (145).
This difference, again, can be traced to the fact that Jim and Mac
do not arise as natural leaders from the apple picker community. They are
strangers who force their way into a group of workers but who never
really become part of it. Furthermore, unlike the workers, who have
a closer relationship to the land, the two leaders come together from town
and can only understand the strike rationally. This strangeness is reflected
in the separate meals the party leaders have. The drastic disproportion of
wealth illustrated in the capitalistic structure of American society during
the Great Depression caused many working class people to respond to
socialist thought and propaganda. The discussion about food in
In Dubious Battle reveal the contrast between working class characters
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and non working class finances. When talking about Dick, Ma tells Jim:
“see how beautiful he is? We call him Decoy. He tells ladies about the
working class, and we get cakes with pink frosting, huh, Dick?” (18).
This passage is significant to working class strife because
Steinbeck brings to light about the contrast between non working class
and working class diets. The contrast reveals the drastic economic
inequality that existed during the 1920s and 1930s between social classes
and reveals the wide spread hunger that was topical issue during the Great
Depression.
In a capitalistic society there is little doubt that these socialist ideals
would come and fire. In a society where the rich get richer and the poor
get poorer, any philosophy that advocates just distribution of funds is
going to be controversial. In this novel Mac explains the controversial
socialist theory to London as:
If you was to own thirty thousand acres of land and a million
dollars, they’d be a bunch of sons-of-bitches. But if you’re just
London, a workin’ stiff, why they’re a bunch of guys that want to
help you live like a man and not like a pig, see?’ course you get
your news from the papers, an’ the papers is owned by the guys
with land and money, so we’re sons-of-bitches, see? Then you
come across us, an’we ain’t. You got to make up your own mind
which it is. (283)
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Mac explains to London that the communist party is a group tied to
the working class. Steinbeck’s nobles sounded too noble and his common
people sounded too common. Generally, his characters in The Grapes of
Wrath and In Dubious Battle sounded entirely authentic. His workingmen
talked like workingmen. Steinbeck’s characters spoke their own language
they remained convincing and alive. More than occasionally, however, he
had them speaking more like John Steinbeck. He addresses the party
tactics through discourse between Jim and Mac in this novel. When Jim
asks Mac if they are going to try to get the apple orchard workers to strike,
Mac explains: “Sure May be its all ready to bust and we just give it a little
tiny push. We organize the men, and then we picket the orchards” (32).
Thus Steinbeck addresses the true power of the organization during
the 1930’s. He illustrates that the strength of the party resided in its ability
to organize and mobilize workers. This portrayal of protest ranges from an
individual’s explosion of anger to that of collective outlet of a group.
Instances are varied. In this, Mac converses with Anderson using storming
words: “you bastards, never owned nothing. You never planted trees and
seen ‘em growing felt ‘em with your hands. You never owned a thing,
never went out and touched your apple trees with your hands” (323).
Here we can see Steinbeck’s burst of anger against exploitation.
Another facet of this struggling affair finds its culminating expression
through Mac’s inducement of his men towards fighting. “Look, in a war,
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a general knows he is going to lose men. Now, this is a war, if we get run
out of here without a fight, its losing ground!” (345).
Steinbeck’s anger knows no bound when he ruminates over the
ruthless acts of the land owners and the social malady which detains the
working class from reaching the reward for their toils. These people who
work in the fields, make them sound for cultivation, rise crops on , nurse
them by proper watering and manuring, protecting from insects, birds and
animals, harvesting and thereby filling finally the coffers of the land lords,
are driven to the verge of dwelling in indecent living conditions and
starvation besides being affected by diseases. What has been produced by
them is allowed to go rotten and waste without being offered to the
hungry stomachs. The roots of all these human tragedies may be traced to
avarice and self-centeredness on the part of the owing class bent upon
exploitation of the ill-fated mass. The owning class will burn coffee for
fuel in ships, burn corn to keep warm for it makes hot fire, dump potatoes
in rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from
fishing them out, slaughter the pigs and bury them but will not offer them
for the starving. Words cannot well describe the unbridled atrocities of the
land owners as furnished above.
Much of the action in In Dubious Battle revolved around occasions
of organized brutality to the workers. At the beginning of the story, Jim
Nolan told about being beaten by police; Mac had his arm broken and his
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home burnt by American legionnaires acting as vigilantes; and little Joy
had been beaten so often that his mind had gone. As the tale developed,
more and more examples of the illegal use of force were quoted. Threats
were made to the strike leaders; Al Anderson was beaten and his lunch
wagon burned; Jim and Mac barely escaped from harsh treatment by
a vigilance committee; Dakin lost his truck; and Anderson had his barn
burned. The final act of violence was the murder of Jim Nolan, which
ended the story.
The villain behind the scenes was the growers’ Association, which
was run by the Torgas finance company. It told the growers what to pay
their workers, and it set the price of the produce. Every event about which
Steinbeck wrote had happened in the twentieth century. In Dubious Battle
was Steinbeck's great contribution to the cause of the oppressed workers,
where the rest of the country had been unconcerned about the plight of
migrant workers and unsympathetic about Communist activity. The
readers of In Dubious Battle saw the Californian events in a new light.
They saw communists who “didn't want nothing for themselves” trying to
better the lot of free American citizens who were being treated worse than
slaves. Unfortunately, while this was Steinbeck’s best book to date, it was
not a particular success with the reading public. Perhaps it was too
realistic and described a national tragedy. John Steinbeck told this tale of
brutality by describing the development of Jim Nolan from an uncertain
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youth, looking for a meaning in life, to a cold, calculating, dedicated
Communist. At the same time, his mentor, Mac, portrayed as a powerhungry, bloodthirsty man, who “can’t waste time liking people” (82). This
viewpoint was presented by Doc Burton. He, like Steinbeck, did not
believe in communism, but he did believe in the dignity of man.
Steinbeck’s point of view which he denied existed, seemed to be that,
insofar as the workers are concerned, in union there is strength. Man like
to work together, and “group-man” can conquer all his difficulties.
The characterization in this book is strong, although the characters
were not described in nearly the same detail as the locale. The actions of
all the characters were authentic, both individually and collectively, and
the mob scenes were particularly effective. Even, the minor characters like
Mr. Anderson, his son Al Dakin, and London’s daughter-in-law Lisa, run
true to what one would expect, while poor little Joy was in a class by
himself. It was significant that Mac gave the same epitaph for Joy and
Jim. “He didn't want nothing for himself” (48). They would both have
been happy to know that a martyr’s death was the reward for serving the
Cause. Jim Nolan was the hero, pure with no bad habits; a man who
substituted Communism for religion, while his partner, Mac destroyed
almost everything he touched. He destroyed first, his home, then, in rapid
succession, Joy, Al Anderson, Mr. Anderson, Dakin, Doc, and finally Jim,
and in so doing, managed to use them all selfishly. As Jim said to him,
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“You protect me all the time, Mac. And sometimes I get the feeling you're
not protecting me for the Party, but for yourself” (46).
Jim is the strongest character in the book, and Doc Burton realized
his strength. But Doc disappeared before he could penetrate Jim’s
defences. He was the only one who might have tempered Jim’s idealism,
and it was ironic that Jim died; believing that he was aiding Doc.
Steinbeck told the story of the plight of the migrant workers without
identifying any of the ordinary labourers. The ones he brought to the fore,
London. Dakin, and Sam, weren’t typical. The typical ones remained,
significantly, in the shadows. “Some men sat in the doorways and looked
out at the dusk ... The women carried cans and cooking pots to fill at the
faucets. In and out of the dark doorways children swarmed, restless as
rats” (50).
They were a shadowy people, not to be seen as individuals. Their
power lay in their group value - as a mob they were irresistible. Although
Steinbeck had gone to great lengths to research, party organizers and
contemporary strikes to authentically portray the novel’s action, the party
organizers after whom Steinbeck modelled his characters also questioned
Steinbeck's representation of their motives. According to biographer
Jackson J. Benson, Pat Chambers and Caroline Decker, prominent labour
organizers at the time, who are popularly believed to be the models for
Mac and Jim, objected to
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the emphasis on the calculated manipulation of the strikers as
a mob, rather than an emphasis on the actual spirit of brotherhood
and mutual support that made the strike possible and produced
eventual success. (304)
In this novel Mac’s speech such as’ “I feel that way about all the
working stiffs in the country” (265), is said to foreshadow the speech of
Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. Tom Joad explains to his mother that
the reason for his leaving the family was to become an inspiration and
operating secretly wherever poor people are struggling for justice and
dignity. Steinbeck’s personal desire would have verbal outlet through the
mouth of his character. Warren French points out that Mac’s angry
comments such as “He did not see why food had to be dumped and left to
rot when people were starving” foreshadows Steinbeck’s “crime that goes
beyond denunciation” (Steinbeck 117). It comes to light that Steinbeck
originally planned the title of the novel as Dubious Battle, but insisted on
adding the preposition ‘In’ in order to stress the process involving struggle
rather than simply the event.
Steinbeck uses the strike to critique the communist labour
organizers, and provides no conclusion to the labour struggle. Looking at
the treatment of Steinbeck’s strike leaders Mac and Jim in comparison to
those involved in these similar strikes, illustrates Steinbeck’s reluctance to
accept the totality of communist politics. Radical forms particularly that
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of the strike novel, are primarily supposed to convey a concern for the
struggle of the workingman, which Steinbeck does in his compassionate
portrayal of the struggling labourers. However, In Dubious Battle is
continually attacked from both sides because it portrays the need for
a change in the American capitalist system, but simultaneously attacks
those most prominently seeking that change. On 15 January 1935,
Steinbeck wrote a letter to George Albee about his decision to write In
Dubious Battle. He writes, “I had an idea that I was going to write the
autobiography of a Communist” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 98), and as
Benson and Loftis point out, this was going to be “a first-person narrative
from Chamber’s point of view – a diary of a communist labour organizer”
(201).
Steinbeck’s research into labour organizations had led him to
receive numerous accounts of the actions of Pat Chambers, who was one
of the most prominent strike leaders and labour organizers of the 1930’s.
Mac and Jim are supposed to be roughly based on these accounts, but
most likely they are composites not only of Chambers but also of all the
party men that Steinbeck was meeting at the time. Therefore the gap
between the descriptions of Chambers and of Steinbeck’s leaders is almost
inexplicable. The fact that Steinbeck leaves the reader in a position from
which interpreting the actions of the leaders will almost assuredly elicit
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a negative response is what sets this novel apart not only from the radical
tradition, but also from real life descriptions of the labour activists.
As a district organizer for the Communist Party founded Cannery
and Agricultural Workers Industrial Union, Pat Chambers was known to
be a caring and compassionate man, intimately concerned with the lives of
the workers. Mac and Jim on the other hand seem to be concerned with
nothing other than the success of the strike and how that success would
figure into the big picture for the Party. The strike is not as much about
the men that are striking, as it is about what victory will mean when the
cotton-picking starts in the next valley, and how they can effect labour
relations as a whole. Dakin, one of the natural leaders of the itinerant farm
workers used by Mac, says, “You’re a cold blooded bastard (Mac). Don’t
you think of nothing but, strike?” (DB 169). Dakin is responding to Mac’s
desire to use his deceased comrade Joy, to illicit further support for the
strike. John H. Timmerman points out that, “While Mac” uses them like
ciphers in development of his movement, Chambers seemed to be
motivated by a genuine admiration for the men and commitment to them”
(81). Mac seems to have no admiration for the men, and instead treats
them more like cattle waiting to be branded with the party logo. Mac is
not part of the group; he only wishes to take advantage of their collective
strength. When the police and vigilantes begin to make life more difficult
for the strikers, Mac wishes for blood and says, “This bunch of bums isn’t
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keyed up. I hope to Christ something happens to make’em mad before
long. This is going to fizzle out if something don’t happen” (165).
The strike leaders that Steinbeck constructs are cruel and inhuman.
They are driven by an unrelenting desire for revolution, and treat the
strikers as pawns rather than comrades. Many of these organizers were
portrayed as heroic. In many ways Steinbeck depicts Mac as a force
serving to continue the worker’s solitary existence, rather than striving to
encourage communal values. During the course of the Torgas Valley
Strike there are two murders were occurred. During this period of time,
“in two instances, strikers were shot and killed” (Benson 215), and
therefore both of these events make it into Steinbeck’s narrative. Not only
is the number of deaths disproportionate though, but Mac also makes it
seem as if this is common. When Joy is killed by a vigilante sniper, Mac
says, “Joy always wanted to lead people, and now he’s going to do it,
even if he’s in a box” (DB 173). And then props Joy up on a wagon so his
body can be literally paraded through town. Steinbeck makes the parade
all about the cause rather than an event serving multiple purposes. There is
no mention of paying respect to the dead, only the cause. Mac excuses the
cold-bloodedness of his actions by saying, “We got damn few things to
fight with. We got to use what we can. … We’ll get a hell of a lot of
people on our side if we put on a public funeral” (175).
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Mac’s utter disregard for human life is a recurring theme
throughout the novel, and Steinbeck is undoubtedly trying to make a point
about the party mentality toward a revolution at any cost. The battle is left
off as a perpetual struggle, conveying Steinbeck’s own personal doubts.
However, there does seem to be some element of hope in the novel, which
mainly comes in the form of Dr. Burton. Steinbeck frequently creates
characters that mirror his own belief system. These characters often
exhibit the traits of Steinbeck’s friend Ed Ricketts as well. Ricketts was
a marine biologist that inspired a large portion of Steinbeck’s moral and
political philosophy. The mouthpieces Steinbeck constructs do not always
take the form of just one character, but in the case of In Dubious Battle,
there is Dr. Burton. In his autobiography of Steinbeck, Jackson J. Bensons
says,
In this novel Rickett’s influence would seem to have an overt
expression in a character, Doc Burton, who is modelled after
Ricketts and who in speech and behaviour reflects Rickett’s
philosophy. (244)
While the character is based on Ricketts, he also serves as
a mouthpiece for Steinbeck’s own views as can be seen in the similarities
between Dr. Burton’s dialogue with Mac and Jim and Steinbeck’s own
commentary found in his letters. They are both intrigued by group-man
and demonstrate a subtle lamentation of how the phalanx is being abused.
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Dr. Burton represents an outside perspective to the group-man forces at
play in the novel. John H. Timmerman proposes that, “within each of
these novels, however, and in all the later works, Steinbeck offers an
alternative to the Group Man: the compassionate and creative individual”
(25). Dr. Burton fills this role, and by setting Dr. Burton apart as an
individual, Steinbeck is able to ascribe his own views into the argument
more directly. Mac cannot understand why Dr. Burton helps them, and yet
does not blindly commit to the cause. Mac says
You’re not a Party man, but you work with us all the time; you
never get anything for it. I don’t know whether you believe in what
we’re doing or not, you never say, you just work. I’ve been out
with you before, and I’m not sure you believe in the cause at all.
(DB 149)
Mac questions Dr. Burton’s ability to support the Party, which is
ironic and challenging Steinbeck’s radicalism. Dr. Burton may not believe
in the propaganda, or even in the notion of revolution itself, but he is
simultaneously living the sort of lifestyle that an actual communal
existence would require, by unquestioningly fulfilling his specific role for
the sake of the whole. Dr. Burton acts as if he sees himself as part of
a larger human collective, of which the strikers are a smaller segment, and
Steinbeck’s later novels suggest that he feels similarly. The enigmatic
position Dr. Burton occupies within the strike is indicative of Steinbeck’s
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own difficulty in placing his views on the phalanx in contrast to those of
communist labour organizers like Mac. Dr. Burton’s reply to Mac in this
exchange is where Steinbeck’s own voice becomes evident. Dr. Burton
says,
Well, you say I don’t believe in the cause. That’s like not believing
in the moon. There’ve been communes before, and there will be
again. But you people have an idea that if you can establish the
thing, the job’ll be done. Nothing stops, Mac. If you were able to
put an idea into effect tomorrow, it would start changing right
away. Establish a commune, and the same gradual flux will
continue. (149)
Dr. Burton charges that Mac cannot truly be successful because he
is too inflexible. Dr. Burton continues to say,
I want to see the whole picture - as nearly as I can. I don’t want to
put blinders on the blinders of, good’ and, bad’, and limit my
vision. If I used the term, good’ on a thing I’d lose my license to
inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don’t you see? I want
to be able to look at the whole thing. (149)
In this defence Dr. Burton has perfectly encapsulated Steinbeck’s
own reluctance to commit whole-heartedly to any particular doctrine or
philosophy, in attempt to preserve his ability to discern the truth for
himself. Steinbeck is concerned with the workingman, and he does think
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that radical change needs to take place, but he wants to be able to consider
these issues on his own terms instead of having to choose between
adopting the Party’s principles or being used a pawn, which are the two
basic roles offered to the characters of In Dubious Battle. Steinbeck was
not only interested in group-man, but in the communal existence that
group-man was capable of propagating. However, this novel represents
Steinbeck’s group-man philosophy in its earliest stages. The reader is
offered a glimpse of the positive force group-man can become as they
swarm over Anderson’s farm picking the apples at an alarming pace as
payment for using his land. This scene is of the group-man unopposed or
externally controlled though, and this is certainly a novel about
opposition. Benson and Loftis say, “His intentions, he told his friends,
was not to write a philosophical dissertation on his theory, but to think it
through and then find the fictional symbols which would act as a vehicle
for it in his creative writing” (197), and John H. Timmerman points out
that, “in his earliest references to the novel, Steinbeck often described it as
the Phalanx novel” (83). However, this investigation of Steinbeck’s own
philosophical views is based on the premise that In Dubious Battle is in
fact a vehicle for this argument, but in no way the final vehicle.
In Dubious Battle is an analysis of the stimulus Steinbeck is
describing more than about group-man itself. Dr. Burton makes this point
when he says, “group-men are always getting some kind of infection”
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(DB 150). When Mac questions how Dr. Burton accounts for his role in
the strike, the doctor replies,
You might be an expression of group-man, a cell endowed with
a special function like an eye cell, drawing your force from groupman, and at the same time directing him, like an eye. Your eye both
takes orders from and gives orders to your brain. (151)
However, Steinbeck’s comment as to the role of stimuli on groupman might also suggest that Mac is more of a virus than an eye, infecting
the group and turning the phalanx into a mob. Mac believes that an
individual may be manipulated and sacrificed to benefit the masses and
therefore he can never truly become part of the group. The confusion over
this point is palpable in the text, and is indicative of the fact that Steinbeck
is still formulating these thoughts himself. The mentality that one must be
willing to endure wounds, as must the group-man as represented by
a single amalgamated form like a mob, is contradicted if individuals must
be manipulated to serve their role, proving that the group is not an organic
form. Jim is the obvious contradiction to this as he both longs to become
part of the phalanx, as well as becoming part of the leadership. In turn,
Jim’s death allows for him to become a sort of group-man martyr, but
Mac’s political motivation keeps him on the outside. Mac’s role suggests
that the labour organizers are perhaps foolish in their attempts to use the
mob, rather than realizing the true power and possibility of group-man’s
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communal roots. Mac and Jim have become so preoccupied with
constructing the dictatorship of the proletariat, that they have forgotten the
final collective goal of communism. Joseph Warren Beach says, “The
strength of proletarian fiction is that note, of comrades who want nothing
for themselves alone-who sink their personal interest in that of the whole
tribe of underdogs” (252).
Steinbeck does not indict group-man psychology as a whole; he
indicts the corrupt usage of psychology and accuses the Communist
labour organizers of doing so. Mac and Jim are portrayed as being more
interested in the socialist dictatorship of the proletariat itself, than in the
revolution of socialism as a path to the collective order of communism.
The underlying Marxist principles that Steinbeck is either consciously or
inadvertently drawing from, approach utopian notions of communal
existence, and just as Mac accuses Dr. Burton of being too far left,
Steinbeck may have been as well. In a very bold comment for 1933,
Steinbeck wrote to Carlton Sheffield, “Russia is giving us a nice example
of human units who are trying with a curious nostalgia to get away from
their individuality and re-establish the group unit the race remembers and
wishes” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 76).
Steinbeck looks at communism in Russia as a positive example of
man attempting to rediscover his group roots, even if the process is
flawed. The novel ends with a far more exaggerated example of quasi-
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martyrdom. By concluding with Jim’s death the novel becomes a means
by which to make the reader aware of just how cold Mac really is. Mac
announcing that with Jim’s corpse, “Comrades! He didn’t want nothing
for himself” (DB 349); Steinbeck delivers no inkling of satisfaction.
Instead the reader is left with the notion that the struggle for revolution is
both costly and eternal, and therefore most likely not worthwhile.
In Dubious Battle introduces Steinbeck’s reader to the idea of the
phalanx, but this novel is far from being Steinbeck’s all-inclusive thesis
on the group-man mentality. This is far more complex than a simple strike
novel. Steinbeck knew that he was going to anger both those that oppose
the communist movement and those that support it. Critics that suggest,
In Dubious Battle succeeds because it avoids polemics and propaganda.
The novel’s dark ironies and cynical portrayal of capitalism, patriotism,
and vigilante violence call into question many traditional American values
and suggest there is something fundamentally wrong with an economic
system that starves and oppresses its labour. At the same time, Steinbeck’s
portrayal of the questionable motives of Party members, alluding to the
Communist Party in America in the 1930s, leaves readers to ponder
whether any just solution to labour problems actually exists. Like later
more famous Steinbeck novels, In Dubious Battle dramatizes humanity’s
capacity for great moral fortitude and justice in addition to shameful and
selfish greed, suspicion, and violence.
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In the novel Of Mice and Men Steinbeck voiced his deep sympathy
for the poor and the oppressed, especially the migrant workers. In this
novel he presents a majestic history through portraying believable
characters. Since his return to California in 1930’s, he learned to know the
poor, in particular the migrant farm-workers, American and Mexican, and
he wrote from their point of view. His subject is mainly concerned to draw
a true picture of these people.
Of Mice and Men is a novel set on a ranch in the Salinas valley in
California during the Great Depression of the 1930’s. It was the first work
to bring John Steinbeck national recognition as a writer. The title suggests
that the best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry, a reference to
Robert Burn’s poem “To a Mouse.” This is the poignant story of two
migrant workers trying to make their way through the aftermath of
drought and depression in 1930’s America. Caught in a world of grinding
work and little promise, George and Lennie are driven by a dream of one
day owning some land of their own. Lennie, though a big bulk of a man,
has a mental disability that renders him a child-like character with little
understanding of the world. George, as his guardian and companion,
delicately balances both responsibilities while maintaining a tenuous
connection between Lennie’s world and reality. John Steinbeck takes us
through the inevitable conflict between Lennie’s naiveté and the harsh,
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unforgiving circumstances of the real world, to reveal some indelible
truths about friendship, survival and compassion.
As a self-declared “watchdog” of society, Steinbeck set out to
expose and chronicle the circumstances that cause human suffering.
Steinbeck seems to be saying that the loneliness is even worse than the
poverty. Here, Steinbeck relates that loneliness is responsible for much of
that suffering,
Guys like us, that work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the
world. They got no family. They don’t belong no place ... With us
it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that
gives a damn about us. We don’t have to sit in no bar room blowin’
in our jack jus’ because we got no place else to go. If them other
guys gets in jail they can rot for all anybody gives a damn. But not
us. (MM 15)
The other characters Candy, Crooks, and Curley’s wife all feels
their loneliness and disappointments in life. Human beings, the novel
suggests, are at their best when they have someone else to look to for
guidance and protection. George reminds Lennie that they are extremely
lucky to have each other since most men do not enjoy this comfort,
especially men like George and Lennie, who exist on the margins of
society. Their bond is made to seem especially rare and precious since the
majority of the world does not understand or appreciate it. The old black
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stable-hand Crooks speaks these words to Lennie and admits to the very
loneliness. “I seen things out here. I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know if I was
asleep. If some guy was with me, he could tell me I was asleep, an’ then it
would be all right. But I jus’ don’t know” (72).
There is no place for the black in the society where racial
discrimination exists. The stableman Crooks not only suffers from poverty
and the lack of home as the other migrants, but also suffers from the lack
of companionship. He was a lonely black stable buck, so that wasn’t
treated as fairly as the other workers on the farm because he’s black. No
one slept in the same room with him and they only talked to him to tell
him to do something. This disconcert for his feelings as caused by the
colour of his skin. People who were black weren’t treated as fairly as
people of a lighter skin. There was no one of the ranch of same skin as he
was. He was left alone and no one else to talk to to him or help him with
his problems. So with no friends or anyone to talk to, he turned to books.
They were his only companion and they couldn’t talk back or help him
with anything. As a black man with a physical handicap, Crooks is forced
to live on the periphery of ranch life. He is not even allowed to enter the
white men’s bunkhouse, or join them in a game of cards. Crooks, who
lives in isolation in a room off of the barn, is unhappy and intensely
lonely. He asks Lennie, “S’pose you couldn’t go into the bunk house and
play rummy ‘cause you was black. How’d you like that? (72).
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His resentment typically comes out through his bitter, caustic wit,
but in this passage he displays a sad, touching vulnerability. Crook’s
desire for a friend echoes George’s earlier description of the life of
a migrant worker. He is the loneliest person on the ranch envies George’s
good fortune at being able to share his life with Lennie, even though
Lennie is a half-wit. Yet in his heart, he is yearning for companionship,
for someone to talk to. As Crooks burst out that:
Suppose you had to sit out here and read books. Sure you could
play horse shoes till it got dark, but then you got to read books.
Books ain’t no good. A guy needs somebody — be near him.” He
whined, “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 and he gets sick. (72)
Loneliness almost drives him mad. “People need people”-an old
saying, but one that still holds true today. Steinbeck stressed this theme
frequently in this novel. Everybody needs somebody; no one wasn’t to be
alone for ever. Curley’s wife is a good example for need of people. She
was always to walking around asking people “Have you guys seen
Curley?” (61) and when they said no, she would try to stay there and start
a conversation, but nobody would want to talk to her because she was the
boss’s son’s wife. So the eventual result was no one would talk to
Curley’s wife, leaving her alone with no friends. So she ended up being
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mad at everyone and trying to get other people’s attention by flirting with
them, giving her a non-respectable society name. She is frail because of
the social prejudice towards women. She even has no name; she is always
mentioned as “Curly’s wife.” She is married to Curly by mistake. There is
no love to base their marriage at all. Curley does not respect her. He is
a domineering and brutal husband. She has no position either in her family
or in society. She is regarded as flirtatious by the ranchmen. But she is
never as ‘bad’ as they think. They object to her not because she is a tart,
but because she is a threat. She is overshadowed by her husband. She
really desires is to have someone to talk to and to be taken dancing
occasionally. When George calls her a tart, she replies, “I got nobody to
talk to. I got nobody to be with. Think I can just sit home and do nothing
but cook for Curley? I want to see somebody. Just see them an talk to
them” (49).
Through these lines Steinbeck portrays the social prejudice and
suffering caused by loneliness. The old man Candy and the black
stableman Crooks are all doomed to suffer because of the social system.
Even George, who, somewhat understands his environment but has no
way out, is doomed to destruction. He can no longer hold on to the dream
of buying a piece of land and there is no hope left to him. Just as he
predicts, he will grow old working for fifty dollars a month until,
someday, he will be too broken to work, and then, like Candy and the old
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dog, he too will be “shot away.” Only the Curleys and the rich and brutal
are protected by that society. They will survive and prosper because they
are strong economically and politically in that society. He shows his
frustration to Candy: “I’ll work any month and then I’ll take my fifty
bucks. I’ll stay all night in some lousy cat -house or I’ll set in a pool room
until everybody goes home. And then I’ll have fifty bucks more” (93).
After Lennie kills Curly’s wife, and George kills Lennie for fear
that his friend would suffer more in Curly’s hands, George realizes that
the dream has indeed ended. The pattern of George’s character develops
downward from hope and optimism to despair, so is the fate of other
migrants. Just as Crooks said that the dream of getting a ranch is in the
minds of hundreds of migrants, but nobody ever gets it. Here Steinbeck
revealed the fact that the proletarians have no strong political power
because of their lower social and economic position; they are weak in
every aspect. Capitalists in the novel are strong, not because they are the
best, but only because of their superior economic position.
Steinbeck portrayed the migrant workers George and Lennie,
deprived of their land during the industrialization, just as the mice
deprived of their homes. They become the proletarian class whose labour
power the capitalists buy for profit, because the capitalist class owns those
means of production. They are heavily exploited by the capitalists,
because such kind of economic structure decides the situation in which
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one class has power over the others. But this structure is either seen by
most members of society as natural or not seen at all. Therefore, although
George and Lennie are innocent and hard-working men, they still can’t
earn enough money to settle themselves down and enjoy the elementary
family life. Although they are real farmers whose life is closely attached
to the land, they don’t have a piece of land of their own. Whereas Curly,
who never works on the land, is the owner of the land. Lennie is a symbol
of the primeval and fundamentally innocent yearning for the earth that is
found in all men.
One of Steinbeck’s endearing thematic elements happens to be the
longing for a piece of land to exercise individual freedom and work
according to one’s own will and pleasure. The sense of possession
warranted by innate fulfilment and external advancement is an
inextricable living idiom on the part of human beings. Psychological
solace is the more essential attribute than physical pleasures. The writer
herein stakes the reverberating claim of getting identity as instrumental in
effecting better things. He, while representing in his writings the sense of
loss of identity gives vent to his ideas as to the claims of ‘owning’ for
one’s own benefit and betterment. Man’s longing for land and the dreary
shattering of this dream finds place in this novel through the
characterization of George and Lennie who work in a ranch with continual
displeasure but with the hope of owning a land from out of their savings.
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When the dream is about to be flowered into a reality, Lennie kills
Curley’s wife in a fit of madness which collapses the entire schematic
endeavour.
Steinbeck at a different context remarked that Lennie represents the
inarticulate and powerful yearning of all men. The course of events in the
fiction unfolds the matter that it is beyond the possibility of men to get
access to full-fledged freedom and pleasure. One at this juncture is
reminded of critic Joseph Fontenrose’s words that “the individual’s desire
for carefree enjoyment of pleasures is the serpent in the garden” (59). The
Edenic set up envisaged in the guise of acquiring a land, living with
reasonable affluence, soul stirring and un hampering independence,
cordial fellowship etc., which have suddenly become an unrealizable
possibility.
From the very beginning, it is evident that the capitalist world is
very cruel to poor migrant workers, especially to characters like Lennie
and Candy. In the beginning of the story, Lennie carries a dead mouse in
his jacket pocket. When George asks what he wants with a dead mouse,
Lennie replies that he only wants to pet it with his thumb as they walk.
The mouse symbolizes the theme of innocence and frailty destroyed that
pervades the novel. When Candy’s dog is shot by Carlson, he begins to
realize his own situation. He is as old as the dog and useless for the boss
now. His fate may be even worse than the dog’s. He has to be left alone in
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this world to suffer from old age, poverty and loneliness. He offers his
money paid by the boss when he lost his hand on the ranch to George and
Lennie only if they could bring him to live with them when they get
a ranch. He says miserably:
You seen what they come to my dog tonight? They says he wasn’t
no good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me here I wish
somebody’s shoot me. But they won’ do nothing like that. I won’t
have no place to go, an’ I can’t get no more jobs. (MM 58)
His last hope is to form a bond of comradeship with George and
Lennie when they buy the farm, a hope that is shattered by Lennie’s death.
The old dog vividly symbolizes the situation of the frail and the old.
Neither of them can survive in this cruel society. When Carlson leads the
old dog out and shoots him in the back of the head with the luger that
George will later use to shoot Lennie, and like the dog Lennie is also shot
with the same pistol in the back of the head, the motif of the destruction of
the innocent, the frail and the old is repeated and creates a shocking effect
in reader’s hearts. Here Steinbeck brings out the fact that, there is simply
no place for these lower classes, non-self-sufficient people in this maneating-man society.
The protest against the psychological serfdom also gets manifested
by Steinbeck through his characters. When George and Lennie arrive at
the bunkhouse, the difficulties of the lives they lead become starkly
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apparent. There are few comforts in their quarters; the men sleep on rough
burlap mattresses and do not own anything that cannot fit into an apple
box. George’s fear that lice and roaches infest his bunk furthers the image
of the struggles of such a life. This section also immediately and painfully
establishes the cruel, predatory nature of the world. Carlson’s belief that
Candy should replace his old dog with a healthy newborn puppy signals
a world in which the lives of the weak and debilitated are considered
unworthy of protection or preservation. The ranch-hands’ world has
limited resources, and only the strongest will survive. As Slim, who
voluntarily drowns four of his dog’s nine puppies, makes clear, there is
little room or tolerance for the weak, especially when resources are
limited.
Throughout the course of the novel, nearly all of the characters will
confront this grim reality. Not only does the ranch represent a society that
does not consider the welfare of its weaker members, but it also stands as
one in which those who hold power wield it irresponsibly. Curley
represents the vicious and belligerent way in which social power tends to
manifest itself. Curley serves as a natural foil-a character whose emotions
or actions contrast with those of other characters. Curley’s strength, on the
other hand, depends upon his ability to dominate and defeat those weaker
than him. Steinbeck, therefore was lauded as having a rare quality of
mercy in depiction of the small man. The verbal outlet of Crooks unfolds
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the bare reality connected with human aspirations such as, “… an every
damn one of em’s got a little piece of land in his head. An’ never God
damn one of’ em ever gets it. Just like heaven. Everybody wants a little
piece of lan” (MM 73).
Crooks does not nurture any brooding over in the matter of
acquiring a piece of land. He is confirmed of the bitter truth which gets
revealed in the wordings, “Nobody never gets to heaven, and nobody gets
no land. It’s just in their head. They’re all the time talkin’ about it, but it’s
just in their head” (73).
Being all about the farm labourers the novel Of Mice and Men
stands in between the other novels In Dubious Battle and the The Grapes
of Wrath, in its vehement portrayal of human aspirations, sufferings,
struggles, and above all protesting streaks. Susan Shillinglaw has pointed
out in glowing terms that the
Impact of Of Mice and Men is remarkable in the history of
American letters for its success as a book, a play and a film ... for
its direct force and perception in handling a theme genuinely rooted
in American life; for its bite into the strict quality of the materials;
for its refusal to make this study of tragical loneliness and
frustration not either cheap or sensational; and finally for its
simple, intense and steadily rising effect on the stage.
(“Introduction” xxvi)
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The Nobel Citation lauded Steinbeck for his position as an
independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased instinct for what is
genuine. Further Steinbeck’s greatness as a writer lies in his empathy for
common people – their loneliness, joy, anger, and strength, their
connection to places and their craving for land. His sympathy towards the
poor finds expressions in words charged with wrath and at times the very
portrayal of men and matters in his fiction vouchsafes this vividly.
This portrayal of protest ranges from an individual’s explosion of
anger to that of collective outlet of a group. This is a novel of defeated
hope and the harsh reality of the American Dream. George and Lennie are
poor homeless migrant workers, doomed to a life of wandering and toil in
which they are never able to reap the fruits of their labour. Their desires
may not seem so unfamiliar to any other American: a place of their own,
the opportunity to work for themselves and harvest what they sew with no
one to take anything from them or give them orders.
All the characters wish to change their lives in some fashion, but
none are capable of doing so; they all have dreams, and it is only the
dream that varies from person to person. Curley’s wife has already had her
dream of being an actress pass her by and now must live a life of empty
hope. Crook’s situation hints at a much deeper oppression than that of the
white worker in America-the oppression of the black people. Through
Crooks, Steinbeck exposes the bitterness, the anger, and the helplessness
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of the black American who struggles to be recognized as a human being,
let alone have a place of his own. Crook’s hopelessness underlies that of
George’s and Lennie’s and Candy’s and Curleys wife’s. But all share the
despair of wanting to change the way they live and attain something
better. Even Slim, despite his Zen-like wisdom and confidence, has
nothing to call his own and will, by every indication, remain a migrant
worker until his death. Slim differs from the others in the fact that he does
not seem to want something outside of what he has. He is not beaten by
a dream. He has not laid any schemes. Slim seems to have somehow
reached the sad conclusion indicated by the novel’s title, that to dream
leads to despair.
Steinbeck’s scathing verbal attack did not spare the colour and
racial prejudices prevailing in the American society of his times. He raises
his penchant remarks against the ill treatment of the Negroes in this
fiction. Crooks the Negro is subjected to tyrannical treatment at the hands
of the whites for not the fault of his own. Pursuit of material comforts
deprives the white race of fundamental human concern and precious
values in life. The Negroes are driven to the extent of living in isolation
and leading a life of poverty, loneliness and discomfort and they were all
held under prejudice. The delineation of the author’s protest against such
evils is identified in a clear manner in this novel.
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Nearly all of the characters in Of Mice and Men are disempowered
in some way. Whether because of a physical or mental handicap, age,
class, race, or gender, almost everyone finds him - or herself outside the
structures of social power, and each suffers greatly as a result. Inflexible
rules dictate that old men are sent away from the ranch when they are no
longer useful and black workers are refused entrance to the bunkhouse.
While the world Steinbeck described in the novel offers no protection for
the suffering, there are small comforts. Lennie and George’s story is one
such reprieve. The power of their vision of a simple life on an idyllic little
farm rests in its ability to soothe the afflicted.
A scintillating verbal rendering concerned with the relationship of
man to his piece of land occurs in his novel The Grapes of Wrath. In it
Steinbeck gives a fair play to his inner voice which speaks for itself
unvarnished truth applicable to humanity in general, transcending the
ethnic or national barriers. The pith of the expression is meant to instruct
one that machines are useful but they lack life and warmth. Man’s linkage
with his land is emotionally intimate which beggar’s description. This
conjures up the Biblical saying “From Dust thou art made, to dust thou
returned!” The description by Steinbeck furnished below in this regard is
noteworthy;
For nitrates are not the land; nor phosphates and the length of fibre
in the colon is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt, nor water
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nor calcium. He is all these but he is much more, much more and
the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more
than his chemistry, walking on the earth, tarnishing his handles to
slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch;
that man who is more than his elements knows the land and is more
than its analysis. But the machine man driving a dead tractor on
land does not know and love, understands only chemistry and he is
contemptuous of the land of himself. (GW 34-35)
The back drop for The Grapes of Wrath is the tale of how “farming
became industry” (298) and farm families were driven from the land as
the dust storms of the 1930’s added to the suffocating pressures of the
depression. These uprooted farmers set out to seek greener pastures, and
found them in California, only to discover they were not welcome. The
Joad family is the means Steinbeck uses to convey the horror of these
events, and the atrocities committed in the name of the bottom line. Mimi
Gladstien says, “the Joads gain much of their literary cachet from the
similarities of the problems suffered by immigrants everywhere. The
experience is universal” (134), and this is the effect Steinbeck was hoping
for. This novel was not simply about the Okie migration, but about the
treatment of one group of humans by another. Perhaps this is why
Steinbeck created and almost entirely white cast for his novel.
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This is a novel that Steinbeck intended as something pointedly
concerned with itinerant farm workers. This novel was designed from the
onset to be a social commentary, meant to convey Steinbeck’s own moral
and political philosophy to the reader. Steinbeck felt passionately about
this novel because he was concerned about the itinerant workers suffering
all over California, while the creation of this text also gave him an
opportunity to further expound upon his own leftist beliefs and the nature
of the phalanx. Perhaps the amount of passion that went into the crafting
of this particular novel is the reason Joseph Warren Beach said, “The
Grapes of Wrath is probably the finest example produced in the United
States of what in the thirties was called the proletarian novel” (250).
Exploitation had its demoniac hands to play with the lives of
ordinary people who are consequently driven to the extreme limits of
starvation in addition to deprivation of other fundamental necessities in
life. Hunger is the mother of anger against the cruel haves. This novel is
a veritable document of the migrants’ agonizing experiences. Steinbeck
has given untarnished and at the same time turbulent portrayal of the
toiling labourers who raise their hunger stricken angry voices against the
owner men in such verbal outlet as: “what do you want us to do? We can’t
take less share of the crop-We’re half-starved now. The kids are hungry
all the time, we got no clothes torn an’ ragged” (GW 36).
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The squatting men have reached a stage from which no sign of
relief is speculated. They enter into heated argument with the truck driver
who is carried away by the interest of safeguarding himself and his family
for a meagre wage of three dollars a day at the expense of the livelihood
of thousands of tenant men. The outburst of a tenant man at this juncture
brings out the bitter truth in this regard.
Three dollars a day, and it comes every day. But for your three
dollars a day, fifteen or twenty families can’t eat at all. Nearly
a hundred people have to go out and wander on the roads for your
three dollars a day! Is that right? (39)
The intense anger and the protesting angst of the tenants are
brought out decidedly in a realistic and vehement verbal portrayal by
Steinbeck. In fact, the retaliatory thinking of the tenant men forced them
to go to any extreme level of explosion either oral or functional. “But
where does it stop? Who can we shoot? I don’t aim to starve to death
before I kill the man that is starving me” (41).
The conversation taking place between the owner men and the
tenant men conduces better to vouchsafe the bitterness perpetrated by
fiscal personages and the emotional attachments of the tenants to their
own lands inseparable from their blood and being. It was not easy to
persuade the determined farmers who believed in their natural rights to
own that land. It is appeared clearly in the farmer’s response after the
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bank’s envoys had explained their orders were to clear up the land or lose
their jobs. They were also calling the farmers to go on relief or to go to
California. The farmers answered:
… but it is our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born
on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. …That's what makes it
ours-being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes
ownership, not a paper with numbers on it. (35)
This passage conveys Steinbeck’s opinion about the issue of
ownership. He wants to make the reader realize the absurdity of chasing
people from where they have been for generations. A bank or a company
breathe profits. They eat the interest on money. This prefiguring leads
towards the direction in which the courses of the events take place in the
novel. The owner men explained very arrogantly to their victims that the
bank’s ‘life’ was of more worth than the farmer’s. They said:
Those creatures (banks and companies) don’t breathe air, don’t eat
side-meat. They breathe profits; they eat interest on money. If they
don’t get it, they die the way you die without air, without sidemeat. It is a sad thing, but it is so. It is just so. (37)
They were aware that they were depriving poor men of their only
source of food, which means that they were willingly and knowingly
pushing them to death to save their banks. Therefore, one may conclude
that John Steinbeck intended to show that owners’ salvation resided in
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farmer’s starvation. Very unfortunately, the dispossessed farmers who
were promised a paradise in California, found rather a ‘hell’ where banks
and cruel owners were masters. Moreover, deeply hurt by those
capitalistic and sadistic practices of the banks, Steinbeck found no other
means to attack them, but with his pen.
The farms were not the only things to change though, as the men
were forced to change as well, not only the men that were forced to leave,
but the men that stayed behind. Steinbeck writes, “The man sitting in the
iron seat did not look like a man; gloved, goggled, rubber dust mask over
nose and mouth, he was part of the monster, a robot in the seat” (37).
These were the men that surrendered to capitalism at the price of
their humanity in Steinbeck’s depiction. The tractors are invaded the land.
The farms became nothing more than, “A tractor and a superintendent.
Like factories” (42). The sound and fury of the protesting temperament
take the right turn and purpose in the concerned retortion put forth by the
tenant man who cried,
I built it (my house) with my hands. Straightened old nails to put
the sheathing on. Rafters are wired to the stringers with baling
wire. It’s mine. I built it. You bump it down-I’ll be in the window
with a rifle. You even come too close and I’ll pot you like
a rabbit. (40)
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After a tractor driver had told a certain Joe David to leave his house
before it collapsed on him, the man responded above like that. Money
corrupted and enslaved the tractor drivers who zealously started their
gruesome job, claiming to execute their masters’ orders. As Steinbeck
wrote about one driver, “(money) had somehow got into the driver's
hands, into his brain and muscle, had goggled him and muzzled himgoggled his mind, muzzled his speech …” (37).
When the driver argued that he was just a slave to the ‘monster’,
the man realized that the driver was not the right person to be killed. Then
he changed his mind and said: “Well, there is a president of the bank.
There is a board of directors. I’ll fill up the magazine of the rifle and go
into the bank … We’ve got a bad thing made by men… that’s something
we can change” (40).
The last sentence of the above quotation is, doubtless, Steinbeck’s
own conclusion. It shows Steinbeck’s protest and radical temperament. In
this case the landowner is a bank, and Steinbeck says, “The bank is
something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but
they can’t control it” (36). Steinbeck makes his attack on landowners
personal through the voice of Preacher Casy, who says, “If he needs
a million acres to make him feel rich, seems to me he needs it, cause he
feel awful poor inside his self” (266). Casy is speaking of the landowners
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in California rather than the bank in Oklahoma, but the principle remains
the same because they are both wildly abusing the farm workers.
People were massively continued to flow into Californian farms for
their survival. The itinerant farm worker is a perfect model to illustrate the
dehumanization of the proletariat as they are forced to live along the side
of the road and to fend for themselves like wild animals. Steinbeck
described this situation as:
Three hundred thousand in California and more coming. And in
California the roads were full of frantic people running like ants to
pull, to push, to lift, to work. For every man-load to lift, five pairs
of arms extended to lift it; for every stomachful of food available,
five mouths. (252)
The Californian owners, who were presumably in league with their
Oklahoman counterparts, welcomed the “okies” with much hatred.
Practically they had nothing to pay for food. Therefore, Californian shop
owners and bankers had nothing to gain from them. For that reason, they
hated them. Steinbeck writes,
The town men, little bankers hated okies because there was nothing
to gain from them. They had nothing and the labouring people
hated okies because a hungry man must work, and if he must work,
if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for
his work, and then no one can get more. (248)
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Californians were become a champion of unfair practices. They
were worse because the ‘okies’ were either to work under difficult
conditions or to starve. Such conditions resulted from a situation where
there were two separate classes: The first comprised the powerful owners
who dominated and the second one the powerless and poor people who
were dominated and exploited. In California, the owners were pushed the
migrants to work for very low wages. Beside the very low wages, the
owners always tried to gain as much as possible without giving, or giving
as little as possible. Furthermore, the scales in cotton farms were most of
the time crooked to the workers’ detriment. About the scale man, one
worker shouted: “His scales is fixed … the scales is crooked” (431). Not
only were the scales crooked, but also the marking of the weight was
unfair. At the same time the Joads came to that farm, attracted by
comparatively high wages. To warn Tom against the farm owners’
trickery, Casy said:
we came to work there. They says it’s gonna be fi’ cents. They was
a hell of a lot of us. We got there an’ they says they’re payin’ two
an’ a half cents. A fella can’t even eat on that, an’ if he got kids-So
we says we won’t take it. (405)
After a certain time, the “okies” became more vigilant. They could
no longer allow themselves to be seduced by the owners’ sweet tongue.
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Some would require guarantees before taking the way to the farm. Floyd
said:
I’ll go, mister. You’re a contractor, an’ you got a licence. You jus’
show your licence, an’ then you give us an order to go to work, an’
where, an’ when, an’ how much we’ll get, an’ you sign that, an’
we’ll all go. (278)
The only response of the indignant man was that he had to run his
business his own way, meaning respecting no rule but making profit at all
costs. The above reminds the reader of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men
where the first rule on the ranch was to keep silent in front of injustices.
On their arrival, George and Lennie were told: “A guy on a ranch don’t
never listen nor he don’t ask no question” (MM 26). In The Grapes of
Wrath the owner men fix low salaries to the workers and to impose on
them what to buy, where, when and how much to buy it for. The same
situation had been alluded to in Of Mice and Men, where Steinbeck
pointed out the ranch workers' situation. Their low wages were justified
by their free lodging and food. The one to draw profit from it was the
ranch owner. Complaining about that situation, George-one of the
workers-said:
“An’ I ain’t so bright neither, or I wouldn’t be buckin’ barley for
my fifty and found” (GW 40). All the above unfair practices led John
Steinbeck to declare angrily on the Voice of America in 1952: “I was
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filled … with certain angers … at people who were doing injustices to
other people” (DeMott xxxiv).
Throughout The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck portrayed the
police as being a very negative institution. The policemen appear not as
a security men and help to people, but as arrogant and sadistic trouble
makers. This was summed up by Casy’s statement when he told Tom:
“I tol’ you-Cops cause more trouble than they stop” (GW 229). The above
attitude doubtlessly confirms that police were corrupted by the owners
who used them to achieve their egoistic goals. All those who tried in any
way, to protest or to argue against policemen were either beaten or jailed.
In emphasizing democracy in the camps, Steinbeck intended to
ridicule the unfair, unjust and irresponsible system that prevailed outside
them. The camps were depicted as an oasis of democracy in a desert of
brutality and greed. The following excerpt from the dialog between Tom
and a government camp watchman clearly revealed the democratic
character of those camps. The watchman said:
Works pretty nice. There’s five sanitary units. Each one elects
a central committee man. Now that committee makes laws. What
they say goes.-S’pose they get tough … well you can vote’em out
just’ as quick as you vote’em in. (304)
More interestingly, the squatters of the government camp used to
laugh at their fellows in other camps who looked out only for themselves,
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while in the government camps they used to take care of their hungry
fellows. To any attempt at revolt, the owners would respond with brutal
repression combined with the divide-and-rule policy. Despite that, some
“okies” kept believing that strikes, revolts or even armed rebellion would
be the best solution. One evening, an excited man told his fellows:
“Whyn’ t twenty of us take a piece of lan’ ? We got guns. Take it an’say:
‘put us off if you can’. Whyn’t we do that?’(250). The most serious revolt
in The Grapes of Wrath was certainly the one led by Jim Casy over very
low salaries. After explaining to Tom the causes of the strike, Casy told
him how it was brutally crushed: “We tried to camp together, an’ they
druv us like pigs. Scattered us. Beat the hell outa fellas. Druv us like pigs
… We can’t las’ much longer. Some people ain’ t et for two days” (405).
That revolt led to the tragic death of its leader and to the serious
injury of Tom who, nevertheless, had refused to join the movement. The
death or injury of strikers-referred to as vagrants by the owners-was seen
as a positive thing. If all the vagrants could be killed, there would be no
trouble any more. As one of the okies explained, a vagrant was “anybody
a cop don’t like” (353).
The owners kept lowering the wages, yet there were always people
ready to work for the proposed salaries. The principle was that the
hungriest ones, who were the ones to be ready to work for the lowest
wages, were the ones to be hired. This created many divisions among the
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labourers who obviously had not discovered the owners’ trap. Steinbeck
described this trap through a young okie’s reflection to Tom:
S’pose you got a job a work, an’ there’s jus’ one fella wants the
job. You got pay ‘im what he asts… S’pose they a hundred men
wants that job. S’ pose them men got kids, an’ them kids is
hungry…S’ pose a nickel’ll buy at leas’ some pin for them kids.
An ‘you got a hundred men. Jus’ offer' em a nickel-why, they’ll kill
each other fightin’ for that nickel. (260)
The owners set up the trap and pushed the labourers to play the game
themselves. Among the ‘okies’, the problem was no longer the owners or
police harassment, but their own fellow okies massively flocking into the
farms and causing pay cuts. The new situation was to the owners’
advantage, for the low wages were not proposed by the owners any more,
but by the ‘okies’ themselves. That situation was summed up as follows:
“When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it-fought with a low
wage. If that fella’ll work for thirty cents, I’ll work for twenty-five” (300).
Such workers were warmly welcomed and congratulated by their bosses
who never lounged around.
As Steinbeck’s stories are of people and places they bring out his
secrecy of identifying himself with the thoughts and actions of the people
especially at times of crisis. His novels do not misrepresent the problems
confronted with by the masses because as Steinbeck once remarked it was
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the duty of a writer to lift up. In commensurate with his pronouncement he
declared that all his work was meant to help people understand one
another (Fontenrose 141). The novels of Steinbeck speak on behalf of the
humanity in general though they have their stand point at some particular
regions and specific ethnic populace. The harvesters of California crops
were no longer Mexicans and Orientals; now most of them were Okies
and Arkies, families that had been evicted from their farms in Oklahoma,
Arkansas, Kansas and Texas, and neighbouring states. To whatever States
they belong, in Steinbeck’s views, weal equally shares the burden of life.
In his novel To a God Unknown the story of California’s farmers struggle
is narrated with a view to build an enduring family community in
a treacherous land, universalizing that struggle as man’s relation to the
Universe.
Instead of indulging in ideological accusation Steinbeck attempted
to delve deep into the human problems both arising out of natural and
man-made havocs, so as to bring forth to the limelight the dimensional
causes and effects in an undaunted manner. He was clear in his perception
and therefore was not confronted with any inhibition to give exposure to
his thoughts and feelings which he felt genuine. In a letter to his friend
Pascal Covici, he informed that “I tried to write this book the way lives
are being lived and not the way books are written” (Steinbeck and
Wallsten ed. 178). Similarly he wrote to Elizabeth Otis in 19 March 1937
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that “I’ve broken every literary rule when I wanted to, I am not
confirming to some literary model now” (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed.
137).
The Californian farm owners united their forces to impose actions
to be taken and respected in all the farms. Cutting wages was among their
decisions as it appears in The Grapes of Wrath, when a certain Thomas
reduced his worker’s pay from thirty cents an hour to twenty five cents.
He told his workers that it was imposed by the Farmer’s Association. He
said:
Did you ever hear of the Farmers’ Association? … well, I belong to
it. We had a meeting last night. Now do you know who runs the
Farmers ‘Association? I’ll tell you. The Bank of the West … So
last night the member from the bank told me, he said: “you’re
paying thirty cents an hour. You’d better cut it down to twenty-five
… the wage is twenty-five now. (GW 31)
He proved that in a capitalistic society, money calls money, that much
money calls much money, generally to the detriment of poor people.
Through this delineation Steinbeck portrayed that the rich men of
California would exploit their poor compatriots who expected from them
salaries equal to their work.
That the poor becoming poorer and the rich becoming richer is the
code of economics in a society which is terribly lacking in basic ideology
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and up righteous ethos. The very administrative functioning is based on
unfair political set up would fall short of the expectation for finding
justifiable solutions to the prevailing problems related to the oppressed.
The bureaucratic fiscal structure would prove to be ineffective and
inhuman when the machinery of the system of production, distribution
and consumption does not serve in the larger interest of the society
especially for the benefit of the labouring class which is the backbone of
the social and economic mobilization and strength. It is common
knowledge that poverty anywhere is a threat to prosperity everywhere.
Working hands should not be robbed of their strength and sinews by the
sharp points of selfishness. Undue accumulation of wealth by admitting
the common people to wallow in utter poverty is unfair on the part of the
capitalists.
In his introduction to The Grapes of Wrath Robert DeMott remarks
that “Steinbeck’s direct involvement with the plight of American’s Dust
Bowl migrants in the latter half of the 1930s created his obsessive urge to
tell their story honestly but also movingly” (“Introduction” xiii). Before
the novel The Grapes of Wrath got printed, the author had a premonition
that the novel would be attacked because of its being revolutionary. His
prediction did not go wrong. So much of opposition went along with the
popularity of the novel. Critics’ attacked it for its moral, filthy wordings
and complained about the bedraggled, bestial characters. But Joseph
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Warren French declared that “The Grapes of Wrath was the finest
example produced in the United States of what in the thirties was called
the proletarian novel.” He further added that “social problems in the novel
are effectively dramatized in individual situations and characters” (qtd. in
Owens 11-12). Steinbeck had strong belief both in individual and the
movement. At the same time he was well aware of the strength and
limitations of them. He even believed that when acting as a group, men do
not partake of their ordinary natures at all. The group can change its
nature. It can alter the birth rate, diminish the number of its units, control
states of mind, alter appearance, physically and spiritually (Steinbeck and
Wallsten ed. 75).
That the roots of social protest are best discernible in the very style
of narration by the author in dealing with the events in realistic terms and
suffused with emotional outpourings and symbolic usage as witnessed in
such lines:
The ragged man had children that died because wages were too low
and work was too scarce to offer food for his children and wife. His
story was one of pain and despair and was evidence of the cruel
and inhuman treatment. (GW 363)
No other portrayal of the sufferings of the poor people will be more
impressive and faithful than the one referred to above. The streaks of the
protesting voices and the consequent translation of them into virtual action
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are to be identified in such pathetic renderings. As Louis Owens points
out that
The Grapes of Wrath created uproar of controversy and was one of
the banned books of his times because of Steinbeck’s socialist
sympathies. In spite of it the novel remains one of the studied
works of social protest fiction of the twentieth century. (13)
In The Pearl Steinbeck juxtaposes the two classes of society; the
capitalists and the proletariat which are in sharp contrast to each other in
the novel. The mythical theme of all Steinbeck novels is that man should
reject his material pursuits by exploiting nature which would result in
acute and accentuated suffering; but this suffering purifies his soul, cures
him to the level of God-like nature helping him gain a cosmic vision from
a confounded selfishness. The myth in The Pearl is the displacement of
the man. That man could make up the yawning gap between him and
nature by giving up his self-centeredness, and his anthropomorphic
attitude. Man’s selfishness limits his understanding. His materialism
reduces nature to a resource to his well-being as merchandise. Greater
wisdom prevails when man shuns the materialistic benefits and surrenders
to the call of nature by casting away and become isomorphic. The pearl
possessing evil brought in troubles and tribulations. Dispossession of the
pearl brought in greater understanding of the world. The Journey of Kino
in The Pearl ends with the experience of the death of his son which brings
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a profound change, a new vision, and transcendence in the face of defeat.
Due to the loss of innocence after eating the forbidden fruit, Kino and
Juana are expelled from the paradise. Their experience of oppression and
burdens in the civilized world makes them return to paradise, if not with
their original innocence. This symbolizes their return to animal life, to
a state of perfect harmony and identity with cosmos.
Kino, a pearl diver, lives with his wife Juana and his first born son
Coyotito in a Mexican coastal village. He leads a harmonious and
peaceful life there but is enticed by the lust for materialistic life when he
discovers a priceless pearl in the sea which he retrieves for giving as a fee
for the treatment for scorpions bite. But the pearl instead of bringing
pleasures of life entangles him in a series of woes and sufferings which
culminates in the death of his son. In his jealousy to save the pearl of the
world he loses the priceless pearl of his family. He comes back to his
village after throwing away the pearl into the sea, which naturally gives
mental peace and solace. Kino, however, rejects the pearl of salvation and
returns to the familiar and comfortable poverty. Conflicts as we see in The
Pearl between the-haves and the-have-nots obsessed the minds of all
philosophers, especially of Marxist bent of mind, from Plato down to
Lenin. The crux of the novel is the proletariat‘s short term glory and its
decay at the hands of aristocracy.
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The characters of the novel strictly comprises of two groups that is
Bourgeoisie or the-haves and the Proletariat or the have-nots. The
darkness of the capitalist system and Kino‘s resistance is presented by
Steinbeck from the start of the novel. After the prologue, the opening of
the novel records, “Kino awakened in the near dark” which implies that
the protagonist is the inhabitant of the man-created darkness and he will
have to fight against this darkness. When he opens his eyes, first of all he
saw “the lightening square which was the door” (P 1), which manifests
that the protagonist is not a blind person but is conscious to his
exploitation. Moreover, his looks for light indicate that he will try to
liberate himself from all kinds of darkness.
Kino‘s looking towards the door also implies that he will continue
his efforts to get rid of various bondages and restrictions imposed upon
him by various persons and institutions of his own society. Kino belongs
to the exploited strata of the society. He is a representative of the havenots. In the very first chapter, the author juxtaposes the living conditions
of both the haves and the have-nots which prove that the haves ‘exploit
the have-nots for their mortal pleasures. Kino lives in a small “brush
house” while the doctor and other aristocrats or members of the
bourgeoisie reside in city. They are living in:
the city of stone and plaster …, the city of harsh outer walls and
inner cool gardens where a little water played and the bougainvillea
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crusted the walls with purple and brick-red and white. They heard
from the secret gardens the singing of caged birds and heard the
splash of cooling water on hot flag stones. (9-10)
The “caged birds” in the doctor‘s house suggest that the aristocrats
of Kino‘s society not only maltreat their fellows, but they also imprison
the innocent creatures of the nature which they use for the decoration and
self-pleasure. Further it also suggests that the aristocrats are getting
pleasure out of others ‘pains. Moreover, the cage is a mini-prison cell.
Prisons are used, rather misused, for the confinement of men, while cages
are used for the confinement of birds. Both are misused for the same
purposes and the persons or institutions who use such things consider
themselves authoritative. In the case of human beings, such institutions
like prisons are used to impose various restrictions on them by the persons
who are controlling the economy. Steinbeck portrays the pigs as “… the
early pigs were already beginning their ceaseless turning of twigs and bits
of wood to see whether anything to eat had been overlooked” (1).
It seems that pigs are entirely dependent upon the inmates, while
the inmates do not give any attention to the wretched conditions of those
pigs that are starving from hunger. Further Steinbeck writes:
The ants were busy on the ground, big black ones with shiny
bodies, and little dusty quick ants. Kino watched with the
detachment of god while a dusty ant frantically tried to escape the
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sand trap, an ant lion had dug for him. A thin, timid dog came
close … (3)
The ants are considered as the meek and hard working creature of
earth. In society we usually associate hard working poor people with ants.
It is said “O ant”, while addressing a poor man it does not matter how
much you work hard, your ultimate result will be the same hard work in
dust. So the ant symbolizes Kino and his race with their wretched
condition like ants. The trap of the lion ant symbolizes the exploitation of
poor by the capitalists. Moreover we can observe that most of the beings
in the novel are pining after the basic necessities of life. The living
conditions of Kino and his race are not much different from these ants.
The wretched conditions of the pigs and their “ceaseless turning of twigs
and bits of wood to see whether anything to eat”, the ants who “frantically
tried to escape the sand trap”, and the “thin, timid dog”, all these things
anticipate the high-handedness of the opposing forces of the society. It
indicates that the society of The Pearl is economically deprived and its
inmates are the victims of exploitations. Moreover, most of the animals of
the locality, mentioned by Steinbeck in the text, are engaged in an
undeclared war against each other: apart from the ants and the ant lions,
Steinbeck further writes: “Near the brush fence two roosters bowed and
feinted at each other with squared wings and neck feathers ruffed out. It
would be a clumsy fight” (4).
209
Through the wretched condition of the animals of the locality the
novelist exemplify the worst condition of Kino‘s race. In the beginning of
chapter two we see “… on the beach the hungry dogs and the hungry pigs
of the town searched endlessly for any dead fish or sea bird that might
have floated in on a rising tide” (15).
Signify the miserable condition of the animals of the locality. The
animals depend on the wasted materials on the beach. In the same way
Kino‘s race are marginalized to the beach of the sea and only depended on
the sea food like fish or its clumsy pearls. They are silenced by aristocracy
of La Paz to use the remaining of the upper class. The gap between the
two classes of society becomes more evident when Kino‘s son Coyotito is
stung by a scorpion and Juana asks for the services of the doctor of the
locality. It was:
A wonderful thing, a memorable thing, to want the doctor. To get
him would be a remarkable thing. The doctor never came to the
cluster of brush houses. Why should he, when he had more than he
could do to take care of the rich people who lived in the stone and
plaster houses of the town? (8)
Thus, we can observe that The Pearl is set in and around La Paz,
Mexico, a coastal town marked by economic, social, and racial divisions
resulting from colonial domination of the local native population. In other
words Kino‘s people are colonized within a state. In the very first chapter
210
of the novel, the novelist juxtaposes: the dominant and the dominated; the
oppressor and the oppressed; the haves and the have-nots. Domination of
one class by another is the key note of the text. The whole novel portrays
the domination and the resultant exploitation of one class by another.
Steinbeck has depicted Kino and his family realistically. He has
duly emphasized their wretched economic condition of Kino. When Kino
awake, get up and go to the fire-place for his break-fast, he
squatted by the fire pit and rolled a hot corn-cake and dipped it in
sauce and ate it. And he drank a little plaque and that was breakfast. That was the only break-fast he had ever known outside of
feast days. (4)
At another place Steinbeck portrays the economic situation of the family
in these words:
And the newcomers, particularly the beggars from the front of the
church who were great experts in financial analysis, looked quickly
at Juana‘s old blue skirt, saw the tears in her shawl, appraised the
green ribbon on her braids, read the age of Kino‘s blanket and the
thousand washings of his clothes, and set them down as poverty
people … (10)
When Kino and Juana, along with the neighbours, went to “the city
of stone and plaster” to get the services of the doctor for the treatment of
their little Coyotito, most of the neighbours were keen to know “what the
211
fat lazy doctor would do about an indigent baby with a scorpion bite”
(11). Thus, Steinbeck has amply clarified the poverty-stricken situation of
all the three members of the family in a pathetic and heart-rending way.
Kino, his wife Juana, Juan Tomas, Apolonia and their neighbours living in
the brush houses are the characters who represent one class of the society:
the oppressed, the exploited, the victims. In Marxist theory, they are
known as workers or proletariat. All these are the dire consequences of the
nineteenth century industrialism and the resultant capitalism. Thus,
chapter one is a background to the forthcoming friction between Kino as
protagonist on one side, while the opposing forces of the society as
antagonist on the other side. The society has been segregated on economic
bases.
The finding of the great pearl aroused strange sensation in all
people of La Paz and they start scheming how to get profit out of the
pearl. They started taking interest in Kino. Everyone tries to associate
oneself with the business of the pearl. The priest of the church is the first
who come to know about the pearl. He starts day-dreaming about the alms
that Kino may give to the church. Shopkeepers sitting in their shops
examine the clothes with the prospect that Kino may buy clothes out of
the pearl money. The doctor who had refused to treat Kino‘s son claims
that Kino is his client and he is treating Kino‘s son for scorpion bite. The
doctor recalls his luxuriant life in the Paris. All this happened as a result
212
of the pearl which manifests wealth and money. These people thought in
terms of exploitation of Kino. The priest, shopkeepers and the doctor who
are from the bourgeoisie class want to snatch back the pearl or its money
out of Kino‘s hand which nature has bestowed upon Kino. Accordingly,
the local priest begins to take special interest in Kino. He visited Kino that
night. Steinbeck writes:“The priest came in-a graying, ageing man with an
old skin and a young sharp eye. Children he considered these people”
(31). It indicates the hypocrisy of the clergy. The parasites of the
Proletariats are not far than the bourgeoisie in the exploitation of the poor
people. The beggars sitting in front of the church are motivated by the
news of the pearl and hope of alms. They celebrate their happiness when:
“The news came early to the beggars in front of the church, and it made
them giggle a little with pleasure, for they knew that there is no alms-giver
in the world like a poor man who is suddenly lucky” (25).
The next group of parasites is that of pearl buyers who used to buy
pearls from the poor fishermen. “There were only one (pearl buyer), and
he kept these agents in separate offices to give a semblance of
competition” (25-26). The pearl buyer used to exploit the poor fishermen
for their owner to gain their commission out of the profit: “They waited in
their chairs until the pearls came in and then they cackled and fought and
shouted and threatened until they reached the lowest price the fisher man
would stand” (25).
213
When Kino went to sell his pearl in the nearby market, Steinbeck
sketches secret practice of the pearl-dealers in these words: “The news of
the approach of the procession ran ahead of it, and in their little dark
offices the pearl buyers stiffened and grew alert” (47).
Kino‘s imagination is also at work due the excitement of finding
a good fortune. He sees the pictures of those things in the surface of the
pearl which he thought in the past but gave up as impossible. The pearl
becomes a sign to liberate him from the unseen prison constructed by
capitalists of La Paz. The things which were associated with bourgeoisie
seemed possible for him now. Kino in his imagination sees himself before
the altar in the church and says to Juana “We will be married in the
church.” - In the pearl he sees how they were dressed. “We will have new
clothes” (27-28). In the same way he innocently desired for many things
he will do by the money of the pearl. But as long as he will not have
a rifle, he will not be able to liberate himself from the slavery. But to wage
war against capitalism is not an easy job as “It was the rifle that broke
down the barriers. This was impossibility, and if he could think of having
a rifle whole horizons were burst and he could rush on” (28).
Capitalist Ideology foregrounds in the exploitation of the
proletariat in The Pearl. Kino and his race held certain views which are
evidently capitalist Ideology. In the novel Kino and Juana are reluctant to
show the baby to the doctor when he comes at their hut. But when the
214
doctor declares that it may be a temporary improvement and he “shifted
his small black doctor‘s bag about so that the light of lamp fell upon it, for
he knew that Kino‘s race love the tools of any craft and trust them” (34).
In this way Kino is duped by the doctor to check the baby. The
doctor gives such medicine to the baby which vomited the baby and
proved that the baby is ill. In addition to this Kino‘s neighbours believed
that sudden wealth might make a poor man greedy, hateful and cold. They
wished Kino to be safe from the evil effects of wealth. The have-nots had
made the proletariat to hate wealth and money which was extra of their
needs. After first attack on Kino to steal the pearl Juana said to Kino that
the pearl is evil and “throw it away. Let us break it between stones. It will
destroy us all” (64) but Kino is not ready in any way to this version of
ideology, as the pearl in itself is not evil but Kino and his people are made
disgusted to good fortune. Further we see that the capitalists had no regard
for human beings but for material entity. When Kino kills a man in self
defence, he makes his way to the beach to prepare his canoe for escape.
But a hole was knocked in the bottom of his canoe. In utter distress Kino
gave expression to his feelings which are installed by the repressive
ideology of the capitalists. “The killing of man was not so evil, as the
killing of a boat, for a boat does not have sons, and a boat cannot protect
itself, and a wounded boat does not heal” (71).
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His boat was his only defence against hunger and extinction. Kino
and his race were colonized by the Capitalists of La Paz from the past.
They were marginalized, exploited and alienated by the bourgeoisie. Due
to the fear of oppression and harassment, psychological disorders can also
be traced in them. There only defence is to shut or squint their eyes
against the harsh realities. Capitalists use force to gain their interests. So
oppression and capitalism go side by side. Kino and Juana with their baby
leave for another city in the dark to escape the persecution of oppression.
They have challenged the capitalist system of exploitation by their
rejection of the unfair prices of the Pearl, and now they are like the
criminals escaped from the prison-house. It was evident that they would
be traced by the capitalists. While resting under the shade of a tree, Kino
sees three trackers, one on horseback with a rifle and two on feet. The
man on the horse back with a rifle symbolizes the-haves and two trackers
were his subjects to serve his interests. It reminds us of the Doctor‘s
servant. He is from the Kino‘s race but is serving the doctor. The trackers
miss the tracks and go ahead. But Kino knew that they will come back
shortly. So he and Juana take their way to the Mountains. The trackers
reach after them at dusk. The trackers camp underneath the cave in which
Kino and Juana has taken refuge. Kino was sure that they will find them
in the morning and will kill them so he plans to attack them in the dark.
While he is going to attack, Coyotito screams in the entrance of the cave.
216
The rifle man took it for coyote and fired at the direction of the scream.
Coyotito was killed. Kino also kills the three trackers. The crying of
Coyotito and his death had also some significance. To take a human
crying for a coyote show that the bourgeoisie had no sense of distinction
between Kino‘s race and animals. They were simply treated as animals.
Moreover Coyotito‘s death is a kind of sacrifice for the liberation of his
parents from the capitalist‘s prison-house. But unfortunately he could not
knock down the hard prison walls of capitalism. The ending of the novel
represents by Steinbeck that Kino will still suffer from persecution of
upperclass. Though he abandoned the pearl but he had killed the four men
from the bourgeoisie class. He will be punished and may be hanged. The
capitalist will never forgive him for the violation of their rules. Steinbeck
here portrays the class distinction and exploitation of the down trodden
class of society.
According to John H. Timmerman
The Pearl is a simple, unpretentious and successful work in which
Steinbeck seems to have worked out and settled his theme of nearly
two decades - pitting the individual and his dreams against the
threat of social power structure. (209)
Conflicts both open and secret are evident as in Kino’s “I was
attacked in the dark. And in the fight I have killed a man” (P 89). Further
Kino’s brain was red with anger and he said that “I would buy a rifle for
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countering my foes and have power over other men” (89). Steinbeck has
remarked that all are equally share the burden of life. His most persistent
theme has been the superiority of simple virtues.
In this novel The Pearl the haves exploit the have-nots in many
ways. First, they are unconsciously exploited. Second, they have accepted
it as a set pattern and tradition. Thirdly, their poverty makes them
vulnerable to the capitalism. And finally if workers resist them, force is
followed to subjugate them. It is a heart rendering novel in the sense that
Kino the protagonist loses his only son for whom he is struggling. Here
Steinbeck insists that education and awareness are essential to get rid of
the capitalist’s subjugation. If the exploitation of the poor is not stopped,
the have-nots will one day raise arms against the-haves which will result
in civil war and fighting until exploitation is abolished or the poor’s are
vanished.
“There is only one book to a man” Steinbeck wrote of East of
Eden, his most ambitious novel. Set in the rich farmland of Salinas valley,
California, this powerful novel follows the intertwined destines of two
families-the Trask and the Hamilton-whose generations helplessly
re-enact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and
Abel. In this novel Steinbeck created some of his most memorable
characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity,
the inexplicability of love and the murderous consequences of love’s
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absence, perpetual contest between good and evil, the freedom to
overcome evil, and the pain of paternal rejection. The novel symbolizes
the Biblical story of creation and the subsequent human travails inflicted
after the commission of original sin. The novel is rife with metaphors and
allegories related to the story of Cain and Abel, and good vs. evil as the
characters struggle with the human condition in an imperfect world. The
essential sense of good had enabled Steinbeck to have a clear cut vision of
humanity and which is responsible for the protesting reverberations in his
writings. Upon completing his manuscript, he wrote to his friend Covici
I finished my book a week ago ... Much the longest and surely the
most difficult work I have ever done ... I have put all the things
I have wanted to write all my life. This is “the book.” If it is not
good I have fooled myself all the time. I don’t mean I will stop but
this is a definite milestone and I feel released. Having done this
I can do anything I want. Always I had this book waiting to be
written. (Steinbeck and Wallsten ed. 304)
Steinbeck believes that all men have both good and evil in them
and they must struggle with the human condition. There are obvious
contrasts in the characters exhibiting good and evil. He writes
I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one ...
Humans are caught-in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers
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and ambitions, in their kindness and generosity too - in a net of
good and evil. (EE 413)
In this novel the protagonist Adam Trask is a pacifist by nature.
The biblical Adam succumbs to satanic temptations whereas the Adam of
East of Eden remains as firm as a rock and is sceptical about the source of
his father’s Income. Like Joseph of To a God Unknown, Adam too is
a patron of fertility. Adam believes that “the people of the world were
good and handsome” (146). Adam’s attitude reveals his optimism, innate
goodness and immense faith in his wife. But throughout her life Cathy
Ames (Adam’s wife) proves to be a remorseless monster. She is
consistently evil in her thoughts and actions, manipulating others for her
own ends without a trace of conscience. Cold and callous, she seems to be
without a single decent feeling. As a young girl she is different from the
other children; she is a nonconformist and a liar. At the age of ten she gets
two boys punished for indulging in sex play with her, which she initiated;
at high school she drives her Latin teacher to suicide. At sixteen she
murders her parents by burning down the family home. She then becomes
a prostitute and brothel owner, enslaves her whores with drugs,
encourages sadomasochistic sexual practices, and blackmails her
customers. On the whole Cathy is associated with darkness and gloom.
Steinbeck portrayed her as,
220
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents ...
The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or
a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same
process produce a malformed soul? (74)
Cathy’s notable evil is indeed the evil of lovelessness: instead of
affirming life, she perverts and bends life to her darkness. She is and
remains a monster for two reasons. First, she bends and twists life.
Second, she debases sexuality. The sexual weapon that Cathy wields
wounds everyone in the novel. Therefore Cthy’s evil is equated with
strength of will and mastery of the material world, while in Adam’s good
is equated with moral weakness and an inability to master the material
world. Cathy’s life is more fascinating than Adam’s failures and partial
successes. Aron and Caleb’s lives repeat the pattern of Adam and Cathy.
Aron is physically weak and unable to live with the knowledge of
imperfection, let alone with evil. Caleb is physically strong, and his
knowledge of evil enables him to accept evil in others while he strives for
the good.
One of the fundamental ideas in East of Eden is that evil is an innate
and inescapable human problem. The main characters of the novel,
generation after generation, wrestle with the problem of evil. Cyrus, the
patriarch of the Trask family, apparently chooses evil by stealing money
during his term as a U.S. Army administrator. Charles succumbs to
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jealousy of his brother, Adam. Cathy takes the path of evil at every turn,
manipulating and wounding others for her own benefit. Cal, worried that
he has inherited a legacy of sin from his mother, struggles perhaps the
hardest of all the characters. Although the novel also sets forth hope that
each individual has the freedom to overcome evil by his or her own
choice. The concept of “timshel” is a major thematic concern throughout
the novel. A hebrew verb, “timshel” translates into “thou mayest”, and
expresses the notion that humans have the ability to choose good over
evil. It holds that we can decide not to be influenced by our dark family
histories, and choose instead to live more positive lives.
Don’t you see? ... The American Standard translation orders men to
triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James
translation makes a promise in “Thou shalt”, meaning that men will
surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel‘Thou mayest’-that gives a choice. It might be the most important
word in the world. That says the way is open. (305)
The concept of “timshel” stipulates that every individual, at any
given time, has the ability to choose good over evil. This idea is
particularly pertinent at the end of the novel, during Adam’s death scene.
Adam’s son Cal believes that he is condemned to become an evil man
because he has inherited his prostitute mother’s innately evil nature.
Adam, however, raises his hand in blessing and utters the word to his son
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‘timshel’ signifying the fact Cal can decide his own moral destiny for
himself. Steinbeck rejects the idea of inherited moral determination. He
replaces it with his concept of ‘timshel’ through Cal, leading to the
semantic stuff that each individual is at liberty to choose his and her own
moral destiny. Writing from the perspective of the Christian tradition,
Steinbeck contends that every human individual since Adam and Eve and
Cain and Abel has struggled with the choice between good and evil. He
writes that each person, when looking back on his or her life, “will have
left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done
well—or ill?” (413).
Steinbeck implies that no progress is made through the generationseach person must re-enact the same ancient story and grapple with the
same ancient problems. This novel was to be the focal point for the moral
views about humankind and human relationships that Steinbeck had been
developing since the early thirties. Steinbeck relates
For the world was changing, and the sweetness was gone and virtue
too. Worry had crept on the corroding world, and what was lostgood manners ease and beauty? Ladies were not ladies anymore, and
you couldn’t trust a gentleman’s word. (131)
American society was undergoing both good and bad values. And it
was expedient for them to choose good ones. We come to understand that
Lord Byron one of the Romantic poets of England had greater interest in
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the story of Cain, who composed a dramatic poem on the theme. His aim
was to attack the political and social institutions in the Nineteenth century
England. Steinbeck stated that he had imbued East of Eden with
everything he knew about writing and everything he knew about good and
evil in the human condition. . Besides the rollicking tale with a ‘bad seed
woman’ near its center, Steinbeck provides a historical backdrop that
includes the fortunes of different waves of immigrants to California, the
appearance of various inventions, food profiteering in wartime, and
organized prostitution across the West.
Throughout East of Eden, characters withhold the truth both from
themselves and from others. Cyrus lies about his Civil War record to win
an important job and an ill-gained fortune. Charles withholds the truth
about Cathy’s seduction on Adam's wedding night. Lee lies to himself
about his desire to leave the Trask family and open a bookstore. Cal keeps
his business ventures secret from his father. Adam and Lee keep the truth
about their mother, Cathy, from Cal and Aron. Similarly, Cal fails to
inform his father and Lee that he knows that his mother is a notorious
brothel owner. Adam lies to himself about Cathy and excuses her
depraved behaviour. However, the truth ultimately sets Adam and Cal
free. Cathy, the ultimate liar, is suspicious of Adam when he arrives to
inform her that Charles has left her a large inheritance. She is used to
dealing with people who lie. When he finally faces the truth about her, he
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feels exhilarated and free. When Cal faces up to the fact that telling Aron
the truth might have resulted in his death, he takes responsibility for his
actions, and realizes that he has the ability to make good choices in the
future.
Steinbeck writes that it is individuals, not groups, who accomplish
great and inspired deeds. In light of this belief he worries that the
twentieth century’s move toward automation and mass production will
dampen the creative faculties of human kind. Steinbeck sets for his belief
that the power of free-will in the human mind is the most precious of
human capabilities. He declares his intention to fight against any forceideological, religious, and political or otherwise – that threatens to hinder
or constrain this freedom of the individual. Thus Steinbeck re shadows the
idea of freedom to choose between good and evil that becomes the main
idea in East of Eden. Here he points out
And this I believe: that the tree exploring minds of the individual
human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would
fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes,
undirected. (34)
Cal and other characters struggle with the problem of evil
throughout the rest of the novel. The manifestation of this struggle is
found in his East of Eden about two families living in Salinas valley and
Connecticut during 1800-1900. It symbolically represents the Biblical
225
story of creation and the subsequent human travails due to the commission
of original sin. Cain and Abel stand in the novel allegorically as good and
evil, and the characters struggle immensely in an imperfect society. The
Eden-like Salinas valley is surrounded by the “good” sunlit Gabilan
Mountains to the East, and the dark and foreboding “bad” Santa Lucias
Mountains to the West.
In this novel Steinbeck expressed in no less emphatic terms his
unshakeable faith in good and humanitarian values in addition to having
a sympathetic approach towards the predicament in which mankind is
pitted piteously. Steinbeck brought all his ideas together - realism, non
teleological thinking, scientific detachment, personal philosophy, moral
concern, and comic consciousness. This is a story about the battle between
good and evil, between free will and fatalism. He therefore does not miss
to lay stress on the ‘Shared guilt’ the vestiges of which are still visible
beyond dubiousness in the guise of aggression, avarice, imperialism,
social inequity and violence - which should be averted by all means
possible. Steinbeck dramatizes this perpetual conflict between good and
evil in the society of the Salinas Valley as a whole and within the
individuals of the Trask and Hamilton families in particular. Ultimately,
he ends the novel on a positive note, as Cal accepts the possibility and
responsibility of free will-of free choice between good and evil. This
optimistic ending is tempered, however, by our knowledge that future
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generations will endlessly replay the same struggle that Cal and his
ancestors have endured.
Tortilla Flat is the story about a group of young men and what they
experience together on Tortilla Flat in Monterey, a Californian city. They
are all ‘paisanos’, that is a mixture of Spanish, Mexican and Indian
bloods. The core group of main characters in the novel consists of Danny,
Pilon, Pablo, Jesus Maria, the Pirate and finally Big Joe Portagee. What
could be said about them all in general is that they are lazy, they drink
a lot of wine and they steal some to survive. They are not cultured or
worldly people, but in their ignorance of modern technologies and ways of
thinking, there is something enigmatic and appealing about them. They
are truly free in ways that societal influences prevent other people from
being.
This story was about not only the less than glamorous lifestyle
lived by Danny and his fellow ‘paisanos’, but the importance of friendship
through bad times over material values. The primary aim of this novel was
explaining the importance of putting the needs of oneself aside for the
help of others. By the living standard of simple values that held them
together, a group of friends placed the highest moral value on
camaraderie.
Many of Steinbeck’s novels address facets of social problems that
impact the marginalized people of society in profound ways. There are
227
many sociial problem
ms that aree explored in this noovel, incluuding the
treatment and
a perceptiion of peopple who are poor, peopple who are mentally
challenged, and Africcan Americcans. In Toortilla Flat,, we see all
a of the
motifs thatt are so fam
miliar to Steinbeck’s work: the dow
wntrodden man, his
isolation from
fr
societty, and thee obstacles placed in his paths that are
seemingly impossiblle to overrcome. Yeet one of the featuures that
distinguish
hes Tortilla Flat from some of Steinbeck’s
S
other worrk is the
frequent reeferences too God and the role thhat he playss as either a neutral
force or a force who chooses noot to interveene and rescue people who are
the poor
so clearly disadvantagged. He deenotes evenn God has abandoned
a
as, “The go
ood God is not
n always so good to little beastss” (TF 9).
The comforts that
t
Steinbeeck saw peeople wastinng their livves for in
New York are like thhe comfortss that the Pirate
P
had inn his chickken coup.
Without frriendship, life
l
is withhout meaninng. After the
t Pirate turns
t
his
money oveer to Dannyy and Pilonn in, he expresses the joy
j that he feels for
having frieends with this
t
quote “To think,, all those years I layy in that
chicken ho
ouse, and I did not knoow any pleeasure. But now, oh, now
n
I am
very happy
y” (59).
Wheen the Piraate was livving along in the chiccken housee, he had
everything he neededd. He had plenty off food, a roof over his
h head,
a mission and
a life, annd some degree of com
mpanionshiip in his doogs. With
quotes likee this, Steinnbeck is saaying that it
i is good to
t have all of these
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things, but true pleasure in life comes from having stimulating and caring
friends. The Pirate had never realized what he was missing until he had it.
His inability to recognize that most basic need of human nature was part
of how his mind had not grown up with his body. For a boy, dogs are
enough, but a man needs friends who challenge him, include him, and
help him when he is in need. This can also be seen as a commentary on
society in the modern world.
Steinbeck sees the advances in American business and technology
as corrupting influences on freedom loving people. The fact that the
paisanos are untouched by this system, that they do not crave convenience
and fortune, and that they have nothing to offer the system that would
cause it to pursue them, is a beautiful thing to the author. In their
simplicity, they are not blinded by the false promises and pursuits of
modernity, and are free to examine the very essence of life. Steinbeck
finds the things that engage the paisanos: companionship, free living, and
humanity to be much more worthwhile pursuits than those dictated by
1920’s American society, which were economics, status, and comfort.
Steinbeck would be likely to sum those things up in two words “greed”
and “pride.” The closest to a modern person living in Tortilla Flat is
Torrelli. He used to repeat arrogantly to the poor paisanos that he had
nothing to do with moneyless people. Steinbeck described him “but
Torelli was not friendly toward men who had neither money nor
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barterable property” (100). According to Steinbeck, possession of wealth
corrupt men. He portrayed the diminishing human values as “When one is
poor, one thinks, ‘If I had money, I would share it with my friends.’ But
let that money come, and charity flies away” (10).
Throughout his literary career, but especially in the early part of it,
Steinbeck focused on the working poor people of California. He intends to
bring out the unpolished beauty of the people. Though they are thieves,
womanizers, and drunkards, Steinbeck intends to portray the ‘paisanos’ as
having as much moral virtue and largeness of heart as the chivalric
knights of Arthurian tradition. He does not describe them as being lacking
of modern conveniences or ignorant to the ways of the world. Instead,
they are “… clean of commercialism, free of the complicated systems of
American business, and having nothing that can be stolen, exploited, or
mortgaged, that system (commercialism) has not attacked them very
vigorously” (10).
This is a recurring theme of Steinbeck’s fiction: the values of
a simple people are opposed, as more healthy and viable, to the values of
a competitive society.
Steinbeck is also aware of the faults of the paisano lifestyle. He
never tries to hide the fact that they are committing crimes. Rather than
portraying the paisanos as model citizens, he seems to be trying to show
that they possess certain values that he sees lacking in his contemporary
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society. Jackson J. Benson observes that “Steinbeck got much of his
information about the Mexico Americans and Paisanos second and third
hand. But he knew them well from childhood on!” (78). The paisanos
have a degree of freedom that no one with a job, responsibility, or
commitment can experience. They can spend their days any way that they
want to. Instead of wasting their days trying to earn money or seduce
women, or make names for themselves, they lay around relishing in the
joys of companionship and nature. Steinbeck seems to be trying to point
out that in the complexity of modern life, simple pleasures like freedom
and friendship are often overlooked in favour of luxury and comfort. He
point out that “It is a fact verified and recorded in many histories that the
soul capable of the greatest good is also capable of the greatest evil”
(TF 15).
The novel entirely centres on the idea that the men comprise
a close circle of friends. The actual theme of this novel could be
something like how to find peace and happiness in one’s life, since they
are happy and joyful almost all the time. The protagonist portrayed as
when he was poor he was happy. But when he becomes rich he lost his
happiness. Before he got his houses, he was free and didn’t care for
anything. The situation is turned quite opposite when he acquired the
houses. Desire for freedom overwhelms Danny’s sense of responsibility
and place. Danny says to his friend Pilon as “One cry of pain escaped him
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before he left for all time his old and simply existence. “Pilon”, he said
sadly, “I wished you owned it and I could come live with you” (13).
In this novel Steinbeck shows the individuals (the knights) become
Danny's house (the round table) and that Danny’s house is part of Tortilla
Flat and that Tortilla Flat is part of greater Monterey and Monterey part of
the greater world. Steinbeck was interested in the birth, survival, and
ultimate death of the group, a phalanx –the ‘I’ which becomes ‘we.’ In his
paisano round table in Tortilla Flat, he imagined the ideal birth, life and
death of the phalanx. The phalanx was a biological or philosophic idea
that Steinbeck and his marine biologist friend Ed Ricketts discussed
throughout their relationship. Steinbeck makes use of the conception of
the group as organism. The first words are:
This is the story of Danny and of Danny’s friends and of Danny's
house. It is a story of how these three become one thing ... when
you speak of Danny’s house you is to understand to mean a unit of
which the parts are men, from which comes sweetness and joy,
philanthropy and, in the end, a mystic sorrow. (3)
Instead of modelling our lives after the paisanos, a good idea would
be to apply the things that make their lives so endearing to our own. Like
Pilon, we should pause occasionally to appreciate the wonders of nature
and spirituality. Like the Pirate, we should occasionally trust our friends
instead of always suspecting them of plots. Like Jesus Maria, we should
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care less about acquiring luxury for ourselves when there are people so
much less fortunate than ourselves. Like Big Joe, sometimes we should
just sleep. And finally, like Danny, we should do all that we can to enjoy
our lives and not dwell on the fact that death is coming for us all, but rage
against it instead. Thus Steinbeck, mingles seriousness with jest,
enjoyment with deeper meanings in Tortilla Flat.
In The Winter of Our Discontent Steinbeck dealt with the abnormal
climate of America in the ‘bleak fifties’, especially the decay of standards
in American life right from politics up to personal matters. In his earlier
writings the signs of evil were apparent in different groups of people such
as businessman ranch owners etc, or in individuals such as Cathy in East
of Eden. But in this novel evil dominates all branches of society. Material
prospects had invited corrupt practices in the society. The climate as
Howard Levant points out, “led to ethnic prejudice, kickbacks, real estate
promotion, political manipulation, sexual blackmail, rigged Quiz shows
and essay contests, loss leaders and general sharp dealing” (288).
The Winter of Our Discontent deals with a man who believes
himself to be good is beset with a variety of temptations that are universal
in nature, but specific to Ethan Hawley as he struggles to rationalize the
behaviours of modern thinking versus the old fashioned values he was
taught as a child. Throughout this novel Steinbeck explores both the
traditional, Christian view and the natural view of the world and its
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corruption. He shows how Ethan Allen’s life was that of a Christian, when
he followed his morals. He was a victim of betrayal as he was passive and
generous. However, Steinbeck also shows that nature can take hold of
a man, when Ethan's animalistic instincts and moral conflicts arise. So it is
evident that although Christianity is the traditional way of moral thought,
the natural processes come first in allowing Ethan and every human to
make the proper decisions necessary for survival. Both views, the moral
and amoral ways of thought, work inside of each person to control their
actions and behaviours. To understand the views, Steinbeck explores, we
must first understand morality. Morals are beliefs that a person or
a society has on the difference between right and wrong. Sometimes, the
morals of an individual and the society they live in will clash, and so
begins a struggle to survive with an internal conflict. With this in mind, it
could be said that morals are simply a belief in an opinion, which leads to
a battle of the weak versus the strong. Those with stronger moral
judgments or even that of a larger population will most likely win against
the beliefs of a smaller group or individual. In cases like these, some
people will change their morals to fit those of the majority, or the society.
Ethan questions this, and the motives behind each acceptance of
a wrongful action. He found that “to most of the world success is never
bad … Strength and success they are above morality, above criticism”
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(WD 187). If this is the case, then morals could change based upon the
need to be a part of the winning side.
Ethan is highly educated and a gentleman (although wearing
a clerk’s apron) with high moral ideals that his wife Mary derides as “old
fashioned fancy-pants ideas” (34). Ethan succumbs to pressures both
internal and external to shed his moral scruples in order to expand his
influence. Ethan Hawley is persuaded to forsake his principles in order to
be a success. Ethan feels an intense shame as a man, father, provider, and
Hawley for being nothing more than a “cat … catching Marullo’s mice”
(4). His rationalizations for turning his boss over to immigration, robbing
Mr. Baker’s bank, and facilitating Danny Taylor’s drinking himself to
death are, however, much more ruthless. With the first person narrative
allowing direct access to his moral and psychological fragmentation, we
see the thought processes of Ethan at work: his analogy of business to
war, “where you’re a hero for killing” (10); his use of natural selection
and survival of the fittest to justify murder, for in the end “the eaters (are
no) more immoral than the eaten” (46) and his underlying shift to a belief
that morality is a relative concept-as Ethan puts it, “If the laws of thinking
are the laws of things, then morals are relative too, and manner and sin—
that’s relative too in a relative universe. Has to be. No getting away from
it” (56-57).
235
Ethan Hawley rationalizes his way to the destruction of what
matters most: his own sense of self-respect. Ethan suffers a loss of moral
integrity, which is ultimately a personal virtue, a struggle of the lonely
individual with his conscience amid intense pressures to rationalize for
self gain. Hawley painfully learn, self-respect is impossible without
adherence to your innermost values and beliefs. In Hawley’s case there is
no moral foundation to allow him to judge his son for betraying his own
moral standards. The novel rings with a contemporary note, and ends with
the words:
Let us look to our country, elevate ourselves to the dignity of pure
and disinterested patriots, and save our country from all impending
dangers. What are we—what is any man—worth who are not ready
and willing to sacrifice himself for his country? (271)
Steinbeck says on the fly page of The Winter of our Discontent that
the novel is “about a large part of America today.” The hero this novel is
out of tune with the corrupt practices of New Baytown. But the creeping
disease is so powerful that soon he succumbs to it. The all pervading
quality of the disease is best reflected in the attitude of Ethan’s boy, Allen,
who is already steeped in the public philosophy of fast buck. When Ethan
pulls up the boy for not rendering even lip service to morals he relies
“shucks, everybody does it” (27). Allen has hardly anything to learn from
his mother. Mary Hawley actually supports the son instead of attempting
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to educate him. It is so because Allen’s rottenness stems from his very
roots. His mother is no Ma Joad.
Steinbeck warns that the leisure, the gift of modern technology, is
far from a blessing. Steinbeck dramatically portrayed through the first
person point of view, Ethan Allen Hawley’s struggles against the
temptations of an emerging new morality which stressed materialistic
success at any cost. From the first offer of a five percent kick back by
a salesman to his own son’s rationalization for plagiarism in an essay
which won the “I Love America” contest, Hawley repeatedly heard the
argument “everybody does it” (27). Everybody he, too, agreed that his
inherited morality of honesty and puritan ethics was as outdated and
impractical as his ancestral talisman in the contemporary society of New
Baytown with its mores of dishonesty, laziness, opportunism, and
cynicism toward all vestiges of the older morality. In the final redemptive
act at the novel’s end, explores the depths of individual and societal
corruption and it offers insight into the means for our redemption. The
Winter of our Discontent, like Hamlet, The Bible, and Dante’s Inferno, is
a work whose message is for the ages.
Steinbeck’s novels stride mostly towards the decided directions
without being detrimental to the natural way of handling of his themes,
preferably the protesting ones. Apart from the manmade economic,
religious and cultural causes, there are causes triggered by the vagaries of
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nature which have considerable impact upon changing the peaceful state
of existence of the people. Steinbeck as Warren French observes “was not
trying to justify God’s ways to men but to call forth for an end to man’s
inhumanity to man!” (“Introduction” xxvii). The tireless efforts towards
striving for an end to non-humanitarian thoughts, attitudes and activities
are finding place in many of Steinbeck’s novels but very often and
vehemently in the novels selected for the present study. Some of them are
summed up for immediate understanding and rumination.
The protesting traits of Steinbeck are evident not only in his
writings through characterization but also in his own self. When asked by
his friend and editor Pascal Covici to change the ending of the novel The
Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck retorted saying “I am sorry. I cannot change
that ending. The Giving of breast has no more sentiment than giving of
a piece of bread. … It is a survival symbol, not a love symbol” (qtd. in
Benson 243). Steinbeck’s steadfast allegiance to the dictates of his mind is
revealed in the above defiance, irrespective of persons, places and times.
Steinbeck elevated the entire history of the migrant struggle into the realm
of art, and he joined the mystic western journey with latently heroic
characters. He “To love and admire the people who are stronger and purer
that braver than I am” (Benson 256).
A writer with sympathetic understanding of the sufferings of the
poor people could not simply be a silent spectator but transform himself to
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be a responsible exponent, having considerations towards the deprived lot.
Steinbeck’s writings carved a different path of his own by projecting the
bitter truths of his times and the society tutored by his own personal
experiences and his regional geo-physical background namely California,
the Salinas Valley, and Monterey Bay. A writer is not only the product of
his age but also of his inner urge. Having tasted the bitter fruits of life,
Steinbeck’s experiences got explosive expressions in his writings
variedly. And a novel is a macro world in itself stuffed into a few hundred
pages in the possible extent containing the vestiges of the experiences
coupled with that of the realization and the relevant emotional outlet of
a creative writer. When speaks about the humanitarian concern of
Steinbeck, Robert DeMott observed that,
He stood by the side of truth and reality related to humanity.
Wherever human beings dream of a dignified and free society in
which they can harvest the fruits of their own labour, the
Grapes of Wrath’s radical voice of protest can still be heard.
(“Introduction” xl)
The key answer to the secrets of Steinbeck’s ideologies of
protesting lies in his having a full-fledged understanding of the light and
darkness of humanity with all its ups and downs, psychological mould of
mind and the echoing of which is extensible discernible in his nonteleological thinking. His humanitarian outlook is not one sided but
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multilayered. Man is the combination of both good and evil, the
proportion of which differs in degrees and not in kind. Parochial
understanding of men and matters will do no good. Therefore he laid
stress on know thyself well and try to know others still more well. The
inner self must be the criterion to enter into any judgment involving
others.
A close analysis of the structure and materials regarding
Steinbeck’s fiction reveals as Warren French remarks that “he has
a continuing difficulty in fusing them into a harmonious unity”
(“Introduction” ii). This struggle in a sense, forms part of his own
protesting milieu getting its expressive dimensions through his characters.
Critics point out that there is no Torgas valley in California, but the area
Steinbeck depicts resembles Tagus Ranch in Tulare County, the sight of
a Peach strike in 1933 that in some respects resembles the strike depicted
in his novel. Different portrayals of the workers’ organization take place
in his fictions. Steinbeck decided to make use of the experiences of one
Pat Chambers, a labour organizer working in the field with a view to
providing more viability and realistic base to his writings. It gleans from
his letters that he intended to write more or less a biography of the fugitive
communists hiding out nearby seaside. Susan Shillinglaw points out “But
the novel In Dubious Battle evolved into the troubling saga of the farmer’s
intransigence poised against the labour organizers’ ideological fervour and
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psychological dislocation”(x). This is treated as the best strike novel ever
written. Steinbeck’s usages of analogies are between war in heaven and
the strike in California. The warring characters are in the human and
celestial spheres. It may be assumed that the similitude in the above
battles is that both are dubious. But as Warren French adduces, “the
battles are dubious not because of the outcome is dubious but that they are
unnecessary and unjustified” (“Introduction” xx). Herein Steinbeck’s “Is
Thinking” has its own say on the events and their end. It does not lay
emphasis on the ends but on the process of life, otherwise called in
Aristotelian verb logy as “efficient cause of nature.” Steinbeck’s friend
Edward F. Ricketts coined the term “Non-Teleological” to denote the “Is
Thinking”, a favourite conceptual under current in his writings.
Generally the exploited people earn the sympathy of any socially
committed writer. The novels particularly the select novels of Steinbeck
stand in tune with the above presumption. Instead of staking the claims of
men at the expense of the rights and liberties of women, Steinbeck did
choose a golden mean and rather he was a spokesman for the cause of
women, especially concerned with their problems, potentiality, their
possible nature of rising up to the calls of time and above all their
compassion and co-coordinating attitudes and activities. One is
immediately reminded of Ma Joad the pivotal personality and then Rose
of Sharon in The Grapes of Wrath. There may be exceptions such as the
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character of Cathy Ames rather a demoniac woman in East of Eden.
However we come to notice that Cathy is also prone to our sympathy
despite being a bleak character. In Of Mice and Men Steinbeck treats
Curley’s wife, a nymphomaniac in a merciful manner. The novelist here
distinguishes himself by his outstanding characterization and individual
outlook stemming out of his sense of protest.
Steinbeck’s retaliation in vehement terms without fear or favour
came in the wake of his missionary zeal which he carried out in his
writings based on what he believed to be sincere, genuine, and doing
something good for the ailing populace. As Thomas Fensch remarks,
… the discussion regarding the poor and the downtrodden appears
to be a recurring ingredient in his novels as exampled through the
characters of Lennie in In Dubious Battle, George in Of Mice and
Men, Joads and the other Okie families in The Grapes of Wrath,
and the poor personages in his other novels such as In Cannery
Row, and Sweet Thursday. (xviii)
Since Steinbeck was guided by the dictates of his own inner voice, he
neglected any external ideological or associational pressures. Resultantly
he refused to be serving as an ideologue to anything, or anybody in any
manner. According to Steinbeck the committed writer must not become
ensnared in political ideologies.
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Just like other celebrated champions such as Henry David Thoreau
for self-reliance and transcendentalism, Harriet B. Stowe for the slaves'
cause, Mark Twain for humour and Hemingway for courage and
manliness, history will record John Steinbeck as a champion for better
social and labour conditions.
CHAPTER V
CONCLUSION
There is writing promoting social change, writing punishing
injustice, writing in celebration of heroism, but always that
base theme. Try to understand each other.  John Steinbeck
Steinbeck is a novelist with reformative messages who preferred to
speak through his works. He is actually a humanist who has brought out
the simmering discontent of the day in his works. From dark days of
Depression (1929-1933) till the very end of his life, he thought about
human problems and crisis ridden civilization and raised in voice against
what he considered wrong, unnatural, arbitrary oppressive and immoral.
Though he was mistaken for a communist and branded as a bitter critic of
the establishment, he actually belonged to the group of the “loyal
opposition.” Steinbeck is no doubt an idealist and optimist. He is at the
same time a pragmatist too. Influenced by mystical transcendentalism of
Emerson (1803-1882) and the pragmatic instrumentalism of William
James (1882-1910) and John Dewey (1859-1952), he sets before us very
simple ideals which are need of the hour. James Gray has thus remarked
on his role as a critic of society
... no other writer of our time has found so many ways of
reminding us that man must be beneficiary of his institutions, not
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their victim. His best work dramatises the plight of man how
tragically, how humorously with the aid of challenge, irony,
homely eloquence and subtle insight – as he indomitably struggles
to make his environment a protective garment, not a hair – cloth
shirt. (6)
Steinbeck has exposed many social evils such as hypocrisy,
corruption, violence, unfair business practices and dehumanization. The
character who covet or practice these things are the antagonists of his
fiction. He has portrayed and condemned the social in justices in his
novels. He has shown his concern for the less fortune by emphasizing the
way society treats them as the growers in The Grapes of Wrath to reduce
the migrants to the level of animals. He has condemned the efforts of
society to force a hypocritical system of values on all people. Those who
do not go with the society’s way of thinking are misfits. They are
destroyed or institutionized by the hostile and uncaring society.
Steinbeck’s concern with morality is visible in all his works from
Henry Morgan’s a morality to Ethan Hawley’s conversion to conformity.
His criticism of organised religion and conventional morality abounds in
such work as The Pearl and The Winter of Our Discontent. Although he
does not criticise any one’s belief in God, he does find fault with certain
products of organised religion; intolerance, fear, hypocrisy and greed. He
repeated by advocated a humanitarian religion based on love and
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understanding as shown in the character of Jim casy and the songs of the
pearl. He has established free moral choice for man in East of Eden. He
believed that man is capable of great cow, only he has to learn his cosmic
identity, that is, to learn that he is an integral part of the whole design of
existence.
The novels of this conscientious artist represent successive efforts
to play his debt to man. Wide in range of their interest, diverse in mood,
passionately concerned in their sympathies, they all celebrate the worth of
man. For that integrity Steinbeck demands justice and respect; to that
integrity he lends the support of his own conviction that all men
everywhere are and must be in extricable identified with their kind. Much
more clearly than in the instance of any other American writer of his time
Steinbeck’s consistent effort to establish the dignity of human life offers
the measure of the man. A curious view of Steinbeck, expressed by some
of his critics, presented his as a kind of native natural genius who, having
limited resources of technique and an even more severely limited
vocabulary, blundered occasionally into displays of impressive, if brutal
power. Closer examination of his way with words should have to dispel
that illusion. He was in fact, a stylist of originality and grace. Just as be set
up the structure of each of his best book in accordance with a well–
planned architectural design, so he brought together the elements of his
sentences with an artist’s disciplined awareness of his won values. He
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expressed his attitudes, his sympathies, and his ideas in figurative
language that remains fresh because his metaphors were entirely his own.
A special dimension is evident in Steinbeck’s work when it is
compared with that of most of the writers of his time. He was not content
to be hereby an observer of moves and recorder of the movements of the
moment. His books were all products of a speculative intelligence: the
writing of fiction was for him a means of trying, for his own benefit and
that of his readers, to identify the place of man in his world. His
conception of that world included not merely the interest of economics
and sociology but those of science and the reason of the sprit as well. Into
the bloodstream of his work he released a steady flow of ideas to enrich its
vigour. In his Nobel address he made two significant declarations: first,
that he lived, as a writer to “celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness
of heart and sprit, courage, compassion and love” second, that “a writer
who does not believe in the perfectibility of man” (Gray 42) cannot claim
to have an true vocation.
He made it clear that a sense of man’s oneness with the universe
should not drug the mind into passivity. Man is not merely the creature of
an unknowable pattern of existence. He has made himself unique among
animals by accepting responsibility for the God of others. His problem is
to learn to accept his cosmic identity, by which Steinbeck means: to
become aware of himself as an integral part of whole design of existence.
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Tom Joad said it for him more succinctly in The Grapes of Wrath “well,
may be ... a fella got a soul his own, but on’y a piece of a big one” (43). It
was readiness to search behind the facts of life for a philosophical
resolution of their complexity that gave depth and a rich texture to
Steinbeck’s picture of the life of his time. He had a rare ability to blend
speculation into his fiction making it an integral part of the life of his
time. Steinbeck also nourished within himself the attitudes toward social
reform that were growing slowly in the national consciousness of his time.
His protests, his rejections as well as his affirmative convictions about the
hope for regenerations, were exactly those that have been taken up by
leaders of opinion in a later day enabling them, as teachers and registators
to change our minds in the direction of greater sensibility concerning
human rights. Always Steinbeck, never a practicing reformer, Steinbeck
dramatized situations in American life and exposed beliefs about the need
of room for growth in a way that helped to awaken the conscience of his
fellow Americans.
As a writer, Steinbeck always felt the tensions and anxieties of his
age. He says in his America and Americans that
Americans, very many of them, are obsessed with tensions. Nerves
are drawn tense and twanging. Emotions boil up and spill over into
violence largely in meaningless or unnatural directions. In the cites
people scream with rage at one another, taking out their un ease or
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the first observable target. The huge reservoir of the anger of
frustration is full to bursting of love, only the word, bent and
bastardized remains. (171)
Steinbeck’s opinions were founded upon what he saw in
contemporary American scene, modern degeneration and spiritual chaos.
He felt strongly that inspite of material prosperity and plenty, the people
were morally and spiritually poorer than before because, “we have the
things and we have not had time to develop a way of thinking about
them”(174). Steinbeck did not have to go outside his long valley for
evidences of the characteristic sickness of modern society. He says,
The merciless 19th century was like a hostile expedition for loot
that seemed limitless ... There has always been more than enough
desert in America; the new settlers, like over indulged children,
created even more. (146)
Steinbeck was in addition a kind of working Freudian in the broad
sense that he used the novel to remind readers that the myth of the past
contain the wisdom of the race, that they tell us more about ourselves than
sources of factual information can convey. Many, perhaps most of the
novelists of the 1930s and 1940’s were deeply imbued with the same idea
but Steinbeck consciously and unconscientiously exploring the suggestion
for Freud and covered a far broader field than did his fellow writers. His
was an ambitious and inclusive effort to relate cotemporary about “the
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human condition” to that of great witnesses of the past. His work suggests
again and again that the story of mankind is a steadily continuing one, full
of passions that seem as familiar in a setting of the thousand years ago as
they do in our own time. It is a sense of the past made present that gives
Steinbeck’s best books their universality of tone.
Steinbeck said that the one commandment of life is “to be and
survive.” His work may be said to fulfil that commandment. His concern
over the materialistic element in society dates from his very first work
Cup of Gold, and is expressed in every subsequent work he published. The
holistic view point so frequently adopted in his books, proclaiming as it
does the oneness of all creation, exemplifies one manifestation of this
desire of his to promote understanding and unity between people. If
Steinbeck was guilty of anything at all, it was certainly not of prostituting
his art, but rather of immense artistic courage. He was never content to
rest on his laurels, as he might easily have done, by continuing reproduce
what he had already demonstrated he could do supremely well. Steinbeck
work is firmly established in the mainstream of traditional American
literature, the main stream formed in part from the three converging
streams of transcendentalism, vernacularism and regionalism. He learned
his lesson well from the old masters. It is this quality which endows his
books with their enduring stability, timelessness even, so that in the long
run one can speculate with some assurance his work will date neither as
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rapidly nor with such finality as the work of some of his more stylistically
daring and currently more highly regarded contemporaries.
The philosophy of John Steinbeck that emerges during the 1930’s
and 1940’s is deeply concerned with the isolation felt by the reified
proletarian subject, and the hope that comes in the form of collectivity as
expressed in Steinbeck’s notion of the phalanx. The novels that have been
discussed here provided Steinbeck with the opportunity to work out these
ideas through the medium of fiction., In many ways Steinbeck’s position
on the cusp of the radical tradition may very well have helped to give his
novels the popular reception that they received, as well as the greatly
heightened shelf life that continues today.
Steinbeck has constantly reacted to the social attitudes and
changing values without caring for his personal gains or losses. His
writings steam with anger at injustice, with anger at injustice, with hatred
for self pity, with bitter attacks and scorn for the cunning and self
righteousness and also the system that encourages exploitation, greed and
brutality. As a writer, he always trying to reach perfection. Steinbeck
constantly experimented certain views on the art of fiction. Since he has
used myths and legends as artistic devices to enrich meaning, to
universalize themes of topical interest, to draw parallels and to establish
contrasts for ironic exposure of pretentions and moral degradations.
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It has been noted in the foregoing chapters that the thematic inputs
of Steinbeck’s novels are structured around certain pre eminent issues
concerned with man, society, and nature. Some of which are as summed
up as below: Man in relation to his land and society; highlighting of
individual and communal life; scientific advancements and psychological
probing of human mind; challenging the evils of capitalism and
industrialization; voicing out against male chauvinism and environmental
hazards.
The above-noted elements are interlinked with one another though
the proportion of which differs in degrees. It has been the duty and
responsibility of a socially committed writer like John Steinbeck to give
proper weightage and vent while employing them in his fiction in its own
echelon. At the same time it is pertinent to assign larger and deeper
significance to some of the predominant themes based on the inevitable
calls of time and the social necessities. Abiding by the dictum of
humanistic concerns, Steinbeck did all his best to express the plight of the
labouring people in his select novels, in addition to exposing their living
conditions in the south of America during the bleak thirties and forties
when the people were driven to the extent of wallowing in problems and
poverty, though rising at times up to the extent of protesting and
trespassing. The present writer being the product of his age, has given
faithful and moving expression to the sufferings, solace, and the
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aspirations of the masses and thereby unfolded his underlying sympathy
for the under dogs while at the same time bringing out their qualities of
mutual understanding; helping with each other at times of distress; rising
in revolt if the conditions so warranted unmindful of the gain or less, and
also cementing themselves by fostering the feeling of oneness amidst
scattered human groups. The people herein are represented in their own
flesh and blood and Steinbeck does not take undue advantage of entering
into the psychological domains of his characters by thrusting his own
ideas or sentiments without any rhyme or reason, in the novels. Steinbeck
observes that: “A novelist is a kind of flypaper to which everything
adheres. His job then is to try to reassemble life into form and of order”
(qtd. in Timmerman 276).
Steinbeck found himself occupied with the woe-stricken conditions
of the labouring multitudes during the times of migration in search of
a promised land. His own conscience did not allow the depravity of the
American psyche which, instead of realizing the “American dream”
worked against all sorts of its fundamental ethics towards achieving the
sole aim of amassing wealth. Industrialization and Capitalistic pursuits
resulted in the loss of human identity, individual honesty, disintegration of
national prowess, and the ruining of the congenial co-existence by
distancing the people from their own lands. Steinbeck in almost all his
novels emphasizes the responsibility and stewardship that human beings
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should show to the land and its inhabitants. He also demonstrates the
reverence to land. He dwells on the means of the way of interaction and
the human processes throughout life and death. These interactions with
their environments help the characters to know more about themselves
and the surrounding world. Steinbeck also reminds the ecological disaster
that would take place in course of time if land and nature are not properly
nurtured. He stresses the importance of living in tune with nature. This
harmony teaches the characters to have a right relation with earth and its
creatures. Steinbeck’s novels reveal how nature shapes and sharpens the
vision of human beings. His novels also show how the place becomes
“a way of thinking” (GW 48).
The post-colonial issues in the twentieth century America sowed
the seeds for creative literature giving expressions in the social, political
economic and cultural dimensions, The major one being the loss of
identity, displacement from one’s homeland, conflict of race and what is
more the devastation brought about by the demoniac hands of exploitation
by the moneyed people. The poor people had to fall prey to them far
beyond redemption. The havocs done by the merciless nature also
contributed to the pitiable flight of the people. The Dust Bowl, the Great
Depression of 1930, and the world war-all these played an alarmingly
disastrous role. Steinbeck’s enthusiasm for humanity and his desire to
fight Fascism did not diminish. Perusal of the details available in the
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letters of Steinbeck reveals the fact that he desired to have first-hand
experience and information connected with the war and its aftermath,
American policies and administrative complications and under-treatment.
He served voluntarily for about three years in the Government Intelligence
and Informative agencies between 1940 and 1942. In order to stake up his
inner voice, preferably his predilection was to favour even antagonistic
forces, if he believed in their sincerity in aim and endeavour.
Among the orchestration of varied themes employed by Steinbeck
in his works, Protest has the prominent place in the novels shortlisted for
the present study. The anger and the wrath of the novelist himself were
intensified by the inhuman attitudes and activities of either the individuals
or bureaucratic set up or by the ‘self-centered landlords of the’ Californian
region at a particular time in the American history. His revolting
temperament has exploded itself into powerful and at times violent verbal
expressions. They are identified in the form of contextual thinking, talks,
trends, tendencies and consequent retaliatory measures. The following are
some of them: discontinuance of work, communal demonstration by the
affected people, the tool of counter arguments, thinking aloud, and the
very powerful weapon called strike. In the foretold novels the insurgence
of the labouring class has found an exponent in the guise of a writer
namely Steinbeck, who, goaded by his sense and sensibility, consideration
and commitment, innate goodness, straight forwardness, and courage to
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call the spade a spade has exhibited his undaunted caliber by his deft
delineation of the social protest, in all the possible dimensions.
The characters of his novels exhibit the bitter facts though at the
expense of inviting adverse criticisms. Steinbeck did not get ruffled on
account of such enervating responses from the readers particularly hard
core critics. History has fetched a favourable answer to him in this regard.
His resisting temper did leap into protesting expressions disregarding the
inimical responses as exemplified in the novel The Moon is Down. After
having read the above novel, contrary to the general trend, the Chinese
people were encouraged by the patriotic eagerness towards Steinbeck’s
characters to resist their conquerors. This may be treated as an eye opener
to other writers to put forth fearlessly what their minds thought to be
truthful and essential. The matter of the social protest occupies a major
portion of his creative writings. At the same time related subservient
thematic elements also contribute to his imaginative literary pursuits. This
has been amply discussed in this study.
Steinbeck’s literary perspectives envisage that he had acquainted
himself with the manifold aspects and prospects of life and also its
limitations. The lives of the migrant farm labourers of California during
the Depression form the content of the novel Of Mice and Men which
deals with the story of two old friends namely George and Lennie who
were haunting about the places in search of work. Their dreams to own
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a piece of farm land becomes a distant one. The alienation of farm
workers from their labour, land, and from other people gets portrayed in
the above novel effectively. Besides focusing on the vast differences in
the living conditions between the landowners and the toilers, the struggle
to be undergone by the poor people for better life is also brought out with
no less vigour. It is known from Steinbeck’s works that he had nurtured an
innate and intense sympathy for the suffering humanity in general and that
of the California Valley in particular. It becomes evident that this kind of
sympathetic undertaking of the people and their problems was the bedrock
on which his protesting expressions stand nurtured. The themes and ideas,
attitudes and leanings, symbols and images, tone and texture of Steinbeck
reveal his love for nature and his faith in it. Steinbeck paints a true and
real picture with precision. Thomas Gray rightly says “He anticipated
attitudes towards the human experience which have particularly engaged
the intelligences of the young in recent years” (6). Steinbeck underscores
the confrontation between man and his destiny. The environment that he
creates in his novels portrays the attitudes of man and satisfies his needs.
Steinbeck is extremely sensuous to and passionate about the scenes,
sounds, scents, touches and tastes of things both animate and inanimate.
He accepts that all living things share the same basics and believes in the
unity of man with man and with nature.
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Owning the land, having an intimate association with it and
showing deeper affinity towards it are the innate traits of farmers. But the
land in the Salinas Valley has now been deprived of its emotional
attributes and treated merely as a device for producing commodities and
nothing more than that. This commodification objective is self-centered
and highly pernicious. Making use of the land is not deemed evil. But
killing it in the name of mechanization with the sole aim of accumulating
undue monetary profit by exploiting the poor workers is not justified by
any means. The ordinary people are the sons of the soil and driving them
away ruthlessly from their land is akin to cutting off the roots of a plant.
Steinbeck, as a novelist cared immensely for the ordinary people,
their place of living, their emotions, aspirations and their simple and
straight forward living. He has given vent to their problems in his fiction
and his words of protest are nothing but the result of his genuine
humanistic considerations. One has to vouchsafe John H. Timmerman
remarks that no two American writers except Mark Twain and Steinbeck
throughout American history had a firmer sense of the ordinary man and
of ordinary life and maintained the common touch even after they became
rich and successful (122). Steinbeck’s deeper and emotional attachment to
the land has found its brilliant expression in many of his novels. In The
Grapes of Wrath the land attains the status of a mother feeder. Therefore it
is a life and death issue for a farmer who is compelled by indirect coercion
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to forsake his land for a paltry sum. The farmer’s own emotional bondage
will utter tales of woe at the very thought of getting drifted away from his
own land which was the very icon of his sustenance and succor in this
world. Steinbeck delves deep into such moving thoughts when he portrays
the predicament of the tillers, through fiery words. His utmost concern
goes to the Sons of the Soil. The driving force for this was his personal
attachment and identification with his much loved Salinas valley and other
related country sides. The first concern can be to analyse Steinbeck as
a landscape writer and to emphasize his sense of place with the native,
geographical space and the social domains of actions which he elaborately
describes in his novels. He chooses a microcosm to represent the
macrocosm which finds expression in his California Monterey country
and especially his hometown the Salinas valley that influenced him and
augmented his love of nature. His affinity to his native land is unique that
it does not provide a backdrop but becomes a character itself. Steinbeck
himself avers:
I think I would like to write the story of this whole valley, of all the
little towns, and all the farms and the ranches of the wilder Hills.
I can see how I would like to do it so that it would be the valley of
the world. (qtd. in DeMott “Introduction” xiii)
Steinbeck the writer of place has understood the power of place to
connect us to our cultural heritage.
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Protesting ramifications in writing necessitate the powers of
individuals to rise against social ramshackle and atrocious attitudes for
getting remedial measures. The individual may rise up to the occasion
with the support of the mass as evident in the case of Mahatma Gandhi to
get freedom from the British yoke, though his preferred mechanisms were
non-violence and non-co-operation. The manifestations of protest, their
scope, purpose and results are identified under various socio-economic
and cultural contexts. The contours of them take their directions based on
the immediate and long term benefits. The nature of protest itself takes
different turns which range from individual man to group men. The
underlying motive seems to have its proliferation in the welfare of not
only society anchored in a particular region, herein the South of America,
but that of mankind in general. It is not restricted to a specific period but
applicable to all the ages to come. To Steinbeck, the group organism is
more than just the sum of its parts, and the emotions of its unit parts
merge into a single group emotion, Steinbeck’s fundamental world view
involves the Non Teleological Thinking which comprises of a love of
freedom and acceptance of the reality, God, Church and the religious
matters and so on. It also gets expressed in his less consideration for
material things and the value he imparted to friendship more than money
and power. A kind of non-conformist bent of mind is witnessed in the
mechanisms of protest, though most of his time he used to accumulate
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himself with the changing social milieu and the temperaments of the
individuals taking into task their pathetic conditions of living. Critics are
of the firm view that Steinbeck had an understanding of human nature in
terms of supernatural naturalism.
Prominently, unbounded avarice on the part of the moneyed class
resulted in utter exploitation of the social group having no means of
subsistence. Further, want of ethical precepts and practices had
invigorated open plundering under the guise of industrialization. The
ramifications of such spleen less pseudo agricultural development had
brought about poverty, indescribable hardships, animosity and the general
unrest. The sons of the soil were driven from pillar to post even for partly
stuffing their stomachs under such wretched conditions. Nowhere in the
history of the globe such an exodus dreaming of a Promised Land’ but
driven to tasting of the pernicious fruits of experiences has taken place.
And Steinbeck’s climatic and proverbial pronouncement that “grapes are
stored for vintage” is nothing but his heart felt operational alternative for
such social evil. It can be said that the thought of social protest is the
foster child of sympathetic understanding of the people afflicted with
problems and oppression for none of their faults.
Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath is the Odyssey of the Joads
who stand as the shining instance of surmounting undue hardships by
means of sympathetic understanding of the fellow-beings and extending
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helping hands to those who are in distress. The Joads set out for livelihood
but get dismayed by the troubles at the Promised Land. Exhibiting
steadfast will and an amicable attitude, they impart succor and sustenance
to the needy. They symbolize all that is good and endowing in human life.
Steinbeck insisted upon understanding the people properly in order to set
right things properly. This ideology enabled him to present the Joad
family as an invincible example in this regard. The story of The Grapes of
Wrath is a story of a community of immigrants. The novel does not focus
exclusively on the Joads, but it gives a multi-dimensional’ portrait of all
the Okies through using the Joads as a vivid instance of the socioeconomic tragedy of the 1930s. For this reason, the people at power,
especially the large ranch owners, regarded the novel as a ‘mere’ piece of
propaganda, and Steinbeck as one of the most threatening men in
America. Steinbeck places his criticism of the American system of
capitalism by resorting to American ideas developed by Jefferson and
other ideologists of the time. So if we look at the idea of the dispossession
of the small farmers by the banks, it is the idea of Jeffersonian democracy
and agrarianism that comes first to mind. Marxist ideas are evoked only
when they fit in with American ideas. The secular ideas of Jefferson are
further supported by the social gospel philosophy.
Steinbeck identifies his social protest with a rhetoric of suffering
and sacrifice that is consolidated by certain biblical references. For
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instance, as in the Biblical story of Jesus, Jim Casy sacrifices himself for
the community. He organizes a strike of peach peakers and cried out to the
vigilantes who come after him “They know not what they do.” These
words echo Jesus Christ’s words. Another reference to Jesus Christ can be
found in Matthew 28:20, where Jesus tells his disciples “I am with you
always.” The same idea is told by Casy to Tom during the first meeting
“yeah, I am goin’ with them. An’ where folks are on the road; I’m gonna
be with them” (GW 77). In fact, Casy “deserts” gospel-preaching because
he is unable to collocate his “sensual” life with his “theological” life.
Thus, for Casy, the solution is to accept his “humanitarian” mission
among the Joads and the other Okies, because Casy begins to see himself
as responsible not only for the Joads but to all people in flight.
Steinbeck’s virulent depiction of the protesting elements involve
varied factors. He remarkably brings forth to our attention the motley
facets of the social problems then in prevalence and their culmination in
concrete retaliatory measures on the part of the affected people for one
cause or other. An author like Steinbeck with an exemplary sympathy and
concern for the poor people could not simply be the silent spectator of the
inhuman attitudes and atrocities that let loose on the migrants by the
landlords, bureaucrats and bank men who all joined together at a crucial
time with a view to fleecing the helpless people treating them merely as an
indiscriminate bolus of flesh. Steinbeck’s own sentiments augured with
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anger and thereby paved the way for their verbal outlets characteristics of
his rebellious thoughts. He raised his voice against human avarice which
was the root cause for the heartless ill-treatment of one’s fellow beings.
Accumulating money by the haves at the expense of the fundamental
necessities of the poor is not only a baneful affair but also unpardonable
sin. Economic squandering has led to typical and tyrannical malpractices
and maneuvering and therefore such unhealthy dealings are to be averted
as the mob was anticipating a new deal. At the region, the inertia on the
part of the American ruling sector was also one of the reasons for not ably
controlling and handling the situation effectively and that too at the proper
time.
Exploitation under the guise of Industrialization was the crucial
issue which went unheeded. We find this aspect, expressed with more
stress and strain in the novels dealt with, in this study. Imposition of
autocratic norms in the name of regulation of the influx also brought about
negative results. Oppressive rules and the senseless wastage of food items
especially the fruits and the other related things prone to rot, have posed
inexorable mismanagement and malevolent behaviours of the affluent
people who were devoid of basic human considerations. Further,
monopolization of powers played its own vital and vitriolic role in
harassing the already perturbed and afflicted migrant mob. Corruption,
nepotism and selfishness, discrimination-all these had an indelible impact
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on the already ecologically imperiled, economically devastated, socially
shattered, politically prejudiced, and culturally de-rooted migrant workers,
for no fault of their own. The cruel destiny of the Dust Bowl and the
economic depression of the 1930s went hand in hand and wrote the human
history indescribably in a massive level far beyond recovery. Steinbeck’s
writings proved to be loyal and honest to the core in the sense that he has
translated his heartfelt ideologies concerned not only with the
bereavement of the humanity but also of its betterment. He raises a clarion
call against the evil of oppression and abuse by his writings which are
charged with imagination and reality. At the same time he was not
sentimental and not oriented to any isms and outmoded political
marooning. His faith and realization as to the potentiality of the pen did
not jettison him into pessimistic ends.
The author also did extend his supporting hands to the Roosevelt
administration at that time, which attempted to offer a new deal to the
affected people. This proves that he was not only interested in underlining
ideologies but also in stepping up for practical solutions. It is explained by
critics that in the East of Eden Steinbeck erected an explicit American
Adam in the character of Adam Trask. But he finds his American myth of
the Eden shattered, the dangers of the myth exposed. He had to identify
a new path towards a new consciousness of commitment instead of
displacement.
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True to his ideology, Steinbeck turned himself to be the watch-dog
of the American society of his times, exposed the silliness, and attacked
the faults and injustices of the selfish people especially the money lenders
and the exploiters. He articulated either positively or negatively all that
came into his creative domain. The impact of environment on man and the
strength of the family are no less powerfully portrayed in his novels
though social protest occupies the major thematic euphoria. His mission
had been to declare and celebrate man’s proven capacity for greatness of
heart and spirit. He reemphasizes that the pursuit of wealth does not lead
to fulfillment. The form of a work itself inspires a writer to generate ideas.
Francis Christenson notes
It serves the needs of both the writer and the reader, the writer by
compelling him to examine his thought, the reader by letting him in
the writer’s thought. The interplay between the text and the reader,
the writer and the reader would be an enlightening dissertation
(Timmerman 276).
Another dimension in Steinbeck’s treatment of myth is to show the
significant and ultimate theme of love and altruism. The co-existence of
the mythical and modern world can be brought through love which unifies
them. The myths bridge the gap between the past and the present, the
material and the spiritual, the historical and the imaginative aspects of the
world; “it is a palimpsest’ upon which he has inscribed a realistic tale of
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contemporary men” (Fontenrose 6). Myths exercise a magic spell on him.
A few attributes of myths are chosen; the importance that Steinbeck gives
to nature is highlighted by analyzing the myths – its core, course, content,
colour and the compulsion found in it, for man’s future safety for myths
are eschatological and presents life as a continuous process. Biblical
legends, Garden of Eden, Exodus, Holy Grail, Fisher King myths,
Vegetative myths, Leviathan and the story of Joseph fascinate and lure
him so much that he uses them in his novels. All his novels dilate upon the
quest myth and the Eden myth. The characters are constantly in search of
a place to belong, a paradise. Their longing for an Eden is exemplified in
their Westward movement. They make an Exodus thinking that the
Golden West is the heaven and haven for peaceful life similar to the
Israelites of the past. Steinbeck insists that the myth of American Eden is
illusory and wishes to awaken the American consciousness to have a new
vision, a sense of commitment to place and to the whole thing. He
employs the Fisher King myth in which the king sacrifices his blood for
the rejuvenation of the parched land and to instill in man the predicament
of his relationship to land. The contemporary events are as portentous for
the future as was the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt. Though
Steinbeck uses myths to educate the people for the future, he has modified
and trans inversed the myths to suit his purposes and situations so that
they can impart a vision of the whole and bring the unity of all mankind.
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Throughout his literary career Steinbeck continually attempted to
reconcile several incompatible views of mankind. It is due to his wealth of
themes forms and techniques that a categorization of his works is
a difficult task. He has successfully merged scientific ideas, social
realities, economic thoughts, biological views and non teleological
reflections with moralistic approach, artistic forms and cosmic
consciousness. His desire to convey social realities sometimes caused him
to over sympathize with characters who are victims of society to the point
of being accused for sentimentality. On the other hand his tendency to be
objective left him to the charge of being too detached. His Nobel Prize
Acceptance speech very clearly defines the role of a writer;
The ancient commission of the writer has not changed. He is
charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with
dredging up the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the
purpose of improvement … I hold that a writer who does not
passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication
nor any membership in literature. (Oliver ed. 691)
Steinbeck wrote with his purpose he has advocated. He has
exposed the economic system, organized religion, middleclass values,
businessmen’s world, the hazards of war and the way society treats its
misfits. He has given vent to feelings of disillusionment many times
because of the great depression, economic upheaval and the ethical
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erosion and he has depicted human existence as a conflict and often as
a savage battle but he was essentially an affirmative writer. He has
expressed faith in the capacities of men to make life worth living. The
heterogeneous racial structure of the American society, the world of
commerce with high headed business executives engaged in all exclusive
worship of goddess success, the world of letters, determined by
practicalists and dewey eyed visionaries, all result in a wide variety of
characteristics in American life and all are represented in the works of
John Steinbeck.
Critics are of the general view that protest literature is seen as
sacrificing the political efficacy of more moderate critiques in favour of
galvanic emotional force. Works in the protest and naturalist genres tend
to rely on exaggerated depictions of hopeless scenarios which leave the
reader without much in the way of plot or character that they can relate to
their own lives. And there lies the greatest criticism of these genres that
they are not life like; their characters are too circumscribed by forces
beyond their control, too deprived of agency to strike the reader as being
real. The novels of Steinbeck mostly belie the aforesaid statement in that
they are not carried away by emotional tint but by his rationale steered by
the understanding of humanity at large. As such the protesting expressions
admit no superfluous conditions. A genuine care for the hapless people
was the underlying motive of his fiction and his style accordingly matched
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itself with the content in all of its flamboyant manifestations. The present
study unfolds these traits appropriately. Apart from the external aspects of
human life, it comes to our notice that Steinbeck had inner psychological
fabrications, the traces of which are obviously identified in his remarkable
characterization. To understand man had been his declared mission and
motive which gradually culminated in the form of Joad family. The author
speculates that if people understand one another there is every possibility
of averting unfavourable consequences. He is of the firm conviction that
all the possible ways and means have to be resorted to for dispensing with
the problems, even by violent ones. Yet another dimension of this caliber
for oneself as put forth by Steinbeck is to rest content with the result
however negative it is. Leave the problem to the course of events for
settlement. “What it is” is more important than “what it has been” or
“what it should be.” Called by Steinbeck as Non-Teleological thinking
such temperaments have more justification in his writing ethos, and
evidently we come across the gleanings in the course of actions and
thought processes of the characters in his novels taken up for the present
study.
Selfishness on the part of the party leaders, under the guise of
working for the labouring class has found a fitting critical exposure in
Steinbeck’s novels. Though he had strong faith in them and their policies
and rebellious activities, he did not lag behind in uttering negative
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remarks through his characters as and when the situation warranted. The
guts for such an unafraid statements had come from his own fair
mindedness as he once remarked that he did not favour any ism for its
own sake. It is obvious that the voices of protest and the corresponding
practices found in Steinbeck’s writings transcend the barriers of time,
place and action. They may well be applied in another level to any time
and any place under certain restrictions. It is understood that though
having their anchorage in particular region and specific time, his
protesting tenors born out of his spotless humanistic traits, have such
vitality surely approach universal validity by virtue of their essential
sympathy and ingrained honesty.
Undoubtedly man is shaped by all the influences. Man is born free
but he encounters various problems and is in trouble everywhere. All the
characters in Steinbeck’s novels - major and minor - are part of the group
organism and perform functions in relation to the social groups. They lose
their selves and enforce the will of the group. Thus they establish larger
relationships in human society as well as with their forebears through
collective racial memory. Donne observes that man does not live in
isolation and he is a social being. Steinbeck goes a step forward to say that
man is not an isolated being; he is a vital organ in the body of the
universe, a lynch pin, the machinery of the cosmos and an important
element in the composition of the world. Regarding the biological
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principles, Steinbeck was influenced by many of his predecessors
ushering in wider panorama of the vision of the world. In each and every
novel, the interface where the protagonist actively reacts with the
environment focuses the crux of the problem. This interface is where the
protagonist who has so far lived in isolation from his surroundings comes
to realize that an important part of himself is the environment. His
identification of himself with some specific natural object is the
consummation of his life and living. In his emotional reaction lies his
actual realization of all the biological principles underlying the reaction of
the world itself. With this man’s evolution is complete. Steinbeck views
humanity as an inextricable part of the whole cosmos in which the living
and non-living play an important role. All forms of life on earth are
interrelated. He is aware of the behaviour of several types of organisms.
The wide vision of the whole takes into account the interrelations of
nature and working of things in this larger network. Natural selection as
a progressive force and the struggle for survival result in comradeship,
cooperation and mutual help. In essence, we are all together in a great
whole and every struggle contributes to the selection and tends to the
progress of all processes - a natural system of progress interrelated.
His strong ideologies such as understanding of people; importance
of family as the eternal hope; freedom not freezed by the practice of
owning and avarice; freedom from discrimination based on race, colour,
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gender and the resulting ill treatment, ethical domination - all these are
surging ahead in his novels which are stewarded by realistic delineation
and imaginative fervour. In the Nobel prize citation, he was eulogized as
an “independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased instinct for what
is genuinely American, be it good wicked” (New York Times 12).
F.W. Watt has rightly said:
Like America itself, his work is a vast fascinating paradoxical
universe: a bash experiment in democracy: a native quest for
understanding at the level of the common man: a celebration of
goodness and innocence: and display of chaos violence, corruption
and decadence. (2)
A writer lives on only for as long as his books are read. It is safe to
predict that Steinbeck’s books will continue to be read long after the
critically acclaimed books of many of his contemporaries have become
merely listed titles in dusty treatises. In one sense, it is remarkable that in
this posthumous period his work enjoys continuing popularity among
readers of all ages, and particularly among the young. It seems that he has
something meaningful to say to each successive generation discovering
him for the first time. He has not suffered the usual slump in interest and
popularity which follows the deaths of most writers. His books sold by the
thousands, as attested by considerable and unending turnover on the
booksellers paperback shelves. Steinbeck’s books for all their outdated
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surface topicality, express universal and enduring truths. Even regarded as
parables, they are the stuff of which life is composed. Thomas Heggen,
the author Mr. Roberts (1946), defending Steinbeck’s portrayal of the
Oklahoma tenant farmers in The Grapes of Wrath has expressed the
general view “His characters live and breathe also they cuss and drink and
carry – on, but only because their real life prototypes cussed and drank
and carried on” (234).
How can one, for instance, equate the uncompromising realism and
violence in In Dubious Battle gentle satirical humour of Tortilla Flat or
the carefully paired theatrical construction of Of Mice and Men with the
sprawling saga of East of Eden; Steinbeck of course was fully aware of
the problem. In an interview given to a British journalist in 1959, he stated
I once worked out a thing about criticism that it hates to change its
mind. The only safe writer is a dead one for the critics. If he
changes, a writer confuses critics, and yet if he doesn’t change he’s
really dead. I’m surprised there’s been any continuity at all in my
books. (7)
John Steinbeck was a very unassuming type of man and written,
who never ran after popularity. As his social attitude and relationship to
society changed, his literary career also witnessed changes. Peter Lisca
seems to hold the view when he says that
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… in the thirties Steinbeck had been under the influence of Jungian
thought, thinking in terms of archetypes and racial memory, but
after 1950 he became much more ‘Freudian’ and thus individual in
his outlook. (15)
Steinbeck principal thematic method is closely tied to his wellknown teleological thinking. And this thinking is in turn closely tied to an
“ecological” point of view, which is derived from his pastoral impulse. It
is interesting that Steinbeck used the term “ecology” more than twenty
years before the word become so popular. Steinbeck’s main contribution
is his thematic method rather than any original thematic idea, because we
have learned from Richard Astro’s exhaustive research that “the nonteleological thinking” essay was written not by Steinbeck but by Ed
Ricketts and was reproduced almost verbatim in The Log from Sea of
Cortez. The efficacy of non-teleology as a critical tool will be tested in
studies of Steinbeck’s novels dealing more with the soul of the individual
such as The Winter of our Discontent. Steinbeck for his inheritance took
the orchards and growing fields of California, The wasteland of the
Depression, the refuse camps of rebels and the slums of poverty. He found
pity and pity and terror among fellow human beings but, like Fitzgerald,
he also found beauty, charm and wit. Through the two men would never
have thought of themselves as collaborators, they shared the responsibility
of presenting in fiction all the conflicts that have confused our time and
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yet confirmed its aspirations. Steinbeck speaks to us with special
immediacy because in curious way be anticipated attitudes towards the
human experience, which have particularly engaged the intelligences of
the young in recent years. Many of Steinbeck characters seem to have
been the forebears of the rebels who have gathered in carters of protest
from Greenwich village to the Haight – Ashbury district of San-Francisco.
Steinbeck’s spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings and thoughts takes
cudgels against the culprits concerned as in the ensuing lines from The
Grapes of Wrath: “There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation.
There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure
here that topples all our success” (365).
This is a powerful argument that challenges some of the basic
assumptions of free market capitalism; it shows the human cost of
decisions that are made on purely economic grounds. One can say that
Steinbeck use his innovative techniques to present a fragmented, classbased, and alienated American society. He experiment with modernist
techniques, which are sometimes transferred from the cinema. However,
his experimentation with techniques does not lead him to an art for art’s
sake. On the contrary, those modernist techniques are put at the service of
his themes.
The basic function of arts, according to Steinbeck is to provide
society with a focus in its own social, moral, economic and political
conditions. It is social and political responsibility to use his literary
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creativity and skill to inform, reform, raise and enhance social
consciousness. For him, “… the hopeless corruption of modern age was to
be met not by love, religion, or social protest but by art-the highest
possible resistance to the swindle of the modern social world” (Parker
215).
Steinbeck literacy career spanned four decades. As Jay Parini
observes that, Steinbeck is “the author remains unfailingly attractive to
readers of all ages and levels of sophistication” (23). He wrote about
poverty, hunger, the social outcastes, the misfits of life and the mentally
handicapped. He wrote of the underdog: the skilled worker, the exploiter
and the exploited; he wrote about the dream and frustration of the humble;
and above all he wrote of the loneliness of man in society. The
culmination of the voice of protest is found ripe indelibly in his novels
such as Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath, and In Dubious Battle.
Steinbeck tries to show what really makes man, that’s why in 1938 he
wrote in a journal: “There is a base theme. Try to understand men; if you
understand each other you will be kind to each other. Knowing a man well
never leads to hatred and nearly always leads to love” (qtd. in DeMott 10).
This wide world of Steinbeck is as full of tragedy, laughter as the world of
Dickens’s. Through all these writings of social concern over the years if
there was one unifying and common factor, it was his compassion for
man.