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DREAM AND REALITY
- A THEMATIC STUDY OF
JOHN STEINBECK'S TWO MAJOR NOVELS
A Thesis Presented to
The College of English Language and Literature
Shanghai International Studies University
In Partial Fulfilhnent of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts
By Chen Peiqin
Under the Supervision of
Professor Shi Zhikang
November, 1997
CONTENTS
i
Acknowledgments
Abstract (English)
( Chinese)
..
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• 11
• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •• • • • • • •• 111
Chapter One
Introduction
1
Chapter Two
Interrelations between Individual Dreams and
Social Constraints
14
Chapter Three
Failure of Individual Dreams under
the Pressure of Society"
27
Chapter Four
Reformation of Society" in Fulfilling
Individual Dreams
41
Chapter Five
Conclusion
67
Bibliography
73
John Steinbeck: athesis
Acknowledgments
For stimulating encouragement and for timely
instructions, I am most indebted to Professor Shi
Zhikang, my supervisor, whose patience and wisdom
have contributed more than I can express. Had he not
sacrificed much of his precious time to provide me with
inspiring suggestions and precise supervision, the
completion of this thesis would have become absolutely
impossible.
I also wish to express my appreciation to all my
teachers and intimate friends, who have shown much
concern and offered me many valuable suggestions in my
writing of this thesis.
John Steinbeck: athesis
ABSTRACT
John Steinbeck is the foremost writer of the Great
Depression who distinguishes himself by the perfect
capture of the spirit of the thirties. Nurturing much of his
fiction with personal experiences and firsthand materials,
Steinbeck is able to transmit specific happenings into a
spiritual experience common to humankind. The motif of
the tension between individual dreams and social
constraints is remarkably intermingled over the course of
Steinbeck's literary career. In his earlier works, he
portrays the failure of individual dreams under the social
pressure; in the later novels, the individuals gain, after
failing in fulfilling their individual dreams, a selfawareness of group action. In the end, they not only
retain their dreams but actually reform the society in the
process of the search for their fulfillment.
This thesis is to explore this motif in Steinbeck's two
major novels, Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of
Wrath, and to present a survey of the novelist's basic
philosophical beliefs, non-teleological thinking and the
Group Man theory, their evidences being contributed to
the explication of the theme as well.
11
John Steinbeck: athesis
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III
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John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
Chapter One
Introduction
As the sixth American who is honored with Nobel Prize for
Literature, John Steinbeck distinguishes himself as the foremost writer
of the Great Depression. Though he develops as a writer at about the
same time as his great predecessors, William Faulkner and Ernest
Hemingway, who are also Nobel Prize winners, Steinbeck separates
from them in various ways. Unlike Hemingway, he does not belong to
the lost generation, and quite different from Faulkner, he does not
employ the fashionable stream of consciousness technique. Steinbeck,
however, captures perfectly the spirit of the Great Depression, the
indignation and frustration of the thirties. Just as Steinbeck himself
claimed in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in 1962, "The ancient
commission of the writer" is to expose "our many grievous faults and
failures," and to dredge up to the light "our dark and dangerous
dreams, for the purpose of improvement. ,,1 Like Hemingway, Faulkner
and other great writers, Steinbeck gives a permanent value to his
works by his brilliant depiction of the universal human truth.
John Steinbeck was born on February 27th, 1902 in Salinas,
California - an area that provides him with a setting for much of his
fiction. His father was a county treasurer, his mother a former school
teacher. Both parents regarded cultural influences as important and
enjoyable aspects of life. It was the custom after dinner for the whole
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
family to gather in the sitting room and listen to the parents reading
books. The boy was an avid reader, especially of the Bible, Milton's
Paradise lost, Dostoevski, Flaubert, George Eliot and Thomas Hardy,
but his favorite work was Malory's Morte d' Arthur. This book, as
Paul MaCarthy indicates.' is proved to be the most influential next to
the Bible.
High school for Steinbeck began in 1915, and he was elected
president of the senior class, and chosen associate editor of the school
newspaper, £1 Gabilan. In October 1919, John Steinbeck enrolled as
an English major at Stanford University, where he read widely and
spent some time studying marine biology. Attending classes off and on
between 1920-1925, Steinbeck was unable to get a degree with the few
credits he earned. In 1925, he came to New York to try his luck, first
as a laborer on the new Madison Squire, then as a reporter for the old
New Yorker American In "The Making ofa New Yorker", Steinbeck
recalls his lack of distinction as a reporter,
cc
They gave me stories to
cover in Queens and Brooklyn and I would get lost and spent hours
trying to find my way back. I couldn't learn to steal a picture from a
desk when a family refused to be photographed and I invariably got
emotionally involved and tried to kill the whole story to save the
subject. ,,3
After losing the job as a reporter, Steinbeck returned to California
as a deckhand on a freighter. Finally, he found more leisurely work as a
caretaker at Lake Tahoe City. In 1929, Steinbeck managed to publish
his first novel , Cup of God, a historical novel on a Caribbean pirate.
2
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
For the book appeared just two months before the stock market crash
of 1929, a time of financial panics and broken hopes, it was hardly
surprising that few reviewers took the book seriously.
4
For Steinbeck, 1930 was an important year, as this was the year
when he met his lifelong friend, Ed Ricketts, a marine biologist and
operator of a marine laboratory in Montery, who provided the
intellectual and emotional companionship Steinbeck needed. The two
men shared interest in art, music, literature as well as science. Ricketts
was greatly influenced by William Ritter, a biologist, whose studies
support the thesis that in organism life the whole is greater than the
sum of the parts. Steinbeck also accepted the idea, and the thesis
became the source of his group-man idea.'
In 1932 and 1933, Steinbeck published another two novels The
Pastures ofHeaven and To a God Unknown separately. But neither of
the works brought him financial assistance or any critical attention.
Nevertheless, there were some consolations during this dark period in
his life. His several short stories were well received, among which "The
Murder" won the O. Henry Prize in 1934.
John Steinbeck's fortunes changed with the appearance of his
fourth novel Tortilla Bat in 1935. It's a story of a group of poor
paisanos who live a free and easy life in Monterey. With the message
that money isn't everything, the book appealed to the impoverished
audience who still suffered the effects of the Great Depression. The
novel became a national best-seller and received the Gold Medal of the
3
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
Commonwealth Club of San Francisco as the year's best book by a
Californian." His next novel /11 Dubious Battle, published in 1936, is an
account of a strike in California apple fields. This novel, as Stanley
Cooperman comments in his The Major Works of'fohn Steinbeck; is a
"controversial and powerful" novel, "a study of economic violence,
labor strife, and human beings (the group-man) caught up in a maze
of conflicting and interlockingforces/"
In 1937, Of Mice and Men appeared, a novel called "a small
masterpiece" by the Swedish Academy, then in 1939, The Grapes of
Wrath created "a literary explosion both in the United States and
abroadi" G. Robert Carlson, in his American Literature, estimates
that these two novels "represent the author at the height of both his
power and his popularity". 9 Of these two novels, a detailed analysis is
to be given in Chapter Three and Chapter Four of this thesis. Because
of the frequency with which the two novels are quoted, an abbreviated
identification is employed in the context to make the source clear. Of
Mice and Men is represented by M&M, while The Grapes of Wrath by
GP.
As a prolific and versatile writer, Steinbeck created sixteen novels,
some excellent short stories, and a number of nonfiction books, like
Sea of Cortez, Travels with Charley: His other main novels include
Cannery Row, The Wayward Bus, East of Eden, The Willter of Our
Discontent, etc. And his short stories were collected together in the
volume entitled The Long Valley.
4
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
Publishing his major works in the 1930s, a period when a large
quantity of political documents were produced, John Steinbeck was
once unjustifiably dismissed as a social protest writer, a social historian,
lacking the craftsmanship of a real artist, and therefore unworthy of
"serious" attention. Even when the news came that Steinbeck won the
Nobel Prize for Literature, there still appeared an article by Arthur
Mizener with the title "Does a Moral Vision of the Thirties Deserve a
Nobel Prize?
,,10
In fact, this question had been clearly answered as early as in 1958,
by Peter Lisca, an excellent critic of John Steinbeck's works. In his The
Wjde WoJid of'fohn Steinbeck, Peter Lisca gives a thorough analysis
of the theme and techniques employed in Steinbeck's major works,
with special attention given to symbolism used in the works. At the end
of the book, Peter Lisca convincingly concludes that Steinbeck's
craftsmanship has enabled him, "almost alone among of the writers of
his generation, to give
permanent aesthetic values to the materials
of the Great Depression.?" Any careful survey can draw the same
conclusion. Furthermore, the continuing reading and selling of
Steinbeck's works in vast quantities serves another forceful proof of
the eternal value of the works themselves. As time goes on, more and
more critics accept Steinbeck as one of the greatest twentieth-century
American writers. And now Steinbeck's reputation as one of the most
important novelists in American literature is undoubtedly secured.
Throughout his career, Steinbeck has an obvious tendency toward
employing myths and archetypal figures. In Tortilla flat, he deliberately
5
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
implies a parallel between his characters and the characters in Malory's
Morte d' Arther. The chapter titles of the novel are modeled after
those of Morte d' Arther:
U
How Danny, home from the wars, found
himself an heir, and how he swore to protect the helpless"; "How
the poison ofpossessions wrought with Pilon and how evil temporally
triumphed in him"; "How three sinful men, through contribution,
attained peace. How Danny's friends swore comradeship." In the
preface, Steinbeck clearly states the underlying scheme,
"For
Danny's house was not unlike the Round Table, and Danny's friends
were not unlike the knights ofit.,,12
Another excellent example is Steinbeck's masterpiece The Grapes
of Wrath, where biblical allusions and symbolism almost permeate the
whole book. The structure of the novel is based on the Old Testament.
The novel's three major parts, the drought, the journey and California,
correspond to the oppression in Egypt, the exodus and the sojourn in
the land of Canaan. 13 The drought and erosion in Oklahoma parallels
with the plagues in Egypt, while the journey west correlates with the
exodus. California in the Joads' dream is a land flowing with milk and
honey just like Canaan, and the Californians are as hostile to the
immigrants as the tribes of Cannan.
Joseph Fontenrose, in his excellent essay "The Grapes of Wrath ",
asserts that the name Joad is meant to suggest Judah. Like Hebrews
who had lived in Egypt since Joseph time, the Joads had lived in
Oklahoma peacefully since their grand grandpa. The Hebrews migrated
6
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
because "there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not
Joseph," ( Exodus 1: 8) while the Joads have to leave because of the
changed economic order which excludes the Joads and their kin. On
the eve of their departure, the Joads slaughter two pigs, quite similar to
the lambs sacrificed by the Hebrews on Passover. (Exodus 12)14
The title of the novel, taken from "The Battle Hymn of the
Republic" , ( " He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of
wrath are stored") has several symbolic meanings. They mean wrath
and vengeance. In Revelation, the angel "thrust in his sickle into the
earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great
winepress of the wrath of God"
(14: 19) However, the grapes can
also indicate abundance. In Numbers 12:13, Toshua and Oshea return
from their first excursion to Canaan bringing back a huge cluster of
grapes. Christian allegory is also evident in Steinbeck's later fiction
East of Eden, whose title is taken from Genesis, "And Cain went out
from the present of the Lord, and dwelt in the land ofNod, on the east
ofEden." ( 4: 16 )
Even the language of some of his fiction has its parallel with the
Old Testament. Peter Lisca selects a passage from The Grapes of
Wrath and rearranges it according to phrases, in the manner of the
Bates Bible, leaving the punctuation intact.
The tractors had lights shine,
For there is no day and nightfor a tractor
7
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
And the disks turn the earth in the darkness
And they glitter in the daylight.
And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn
There is a life and a vitality left,
There is a breathing and a warmth,
And the feet shift on the straw,
And the jaws champ on the hey,
And the ears and the eyes are alive.
There is a warmth oflife in the barn,
And the heat and smell oflife.
But when the motor ofa tractor stops,
It is as dead as the are it came from.
The heat goes out ofit
Like the living heat that leaves a corpse. 15
The passage is endowed with all the linguistic features that characterize
the Psalms: the parallel grammatical structure, the simplicity of diction,
the balance of the sentences, the concrete details, the summary
sentences and the reiterations. Even the organization of the content issimilar. Four phrases for the description of the tractor, eight
for tl\e,
horse, while the last four for tractor again.
Sentences of this kind are evident in many of Steinbeck's fiction,
furthermore, there are changes in style with the changes of the content.
In some places his prose is slow and full of the dignity of an epic, in
8
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
other places, a hectic style is employed. In Chapter 23 of The Grapes
of Wrath, Steinbeck describes the ecstatic young dancers at Weedpatch
camp, " Look at that Texas boy, long legs loose, taps four times for
ever' damn step. Never seen a boy swing aroun ' like that. Look at him
swing that Cherokee girl, red in her cheeks an' her toe points out. "
( GR, p449) The short rhythmical sentence structure is just in harmony
with the vitality and energy of the dancers. Such rhetorical analysis can
be applied to other works as well.
In The Pearl, Steinbeck depicts the dreadful scorpion which will
strike Kino's baby in a masterful sentence, " Down the rope that hung
the baby's box from the roof support a scorpion moved slowly." The
unpunctuated sentence reads smoothly from beginning to end. The
scorpion, which appears at the end of the sentence, creates suspense.
An inescapable sense of downness is created by the adverb "down"
at the beginning of the sentence. The repetition of "s"
sound near
the end of the sentence echoes and draws out the continuous
movement of the scorpion.
16
As a matter of fact, Steinbeck utilizes a
wide variety of symbolic and linguistic instruments to get at the full
reality he wishes to communicate. A study of the rhetorical technique
of his works can be as rich and revealing as any other for exploring the
author's method and meaning. Stanley Cooperman, in his The Major
Works of John Steinbeck, concludes that for Steinbeck, "the only true
'politics' are the politics ofhuman hearf'. 17
Beneath the "political" surface, Steinbeck had always been
working at exploring the potential of human soul, the meaning of life
9
John Steinbeck: Dream and Reality
and the relationship of individual to society. The tension between
individual dreams and social constraints is Steinbeck's major concern.
This motifis remarkably unified over the course of Steinbeck's career.
In some of his works, he portrays the failure of individual dreams under
the pressure of society. In others, this conflict becomes complicated.
The individuals, after failing in fulfilling their personal dreams, are not
defeated by the society. They learn that a new strength can be
generated from a group. Thus the process of their pursuit of dreams
actually becomes the process of reforming the whole society.
The theme of the relationship between individual dreams and
social constraints in John Steinbeck's fiction is the subject of this thesis.
Steinbeck's two best novels The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and
Men are selected to illustrate this motif, for both novels are about the
dreams of migrant people.
The title of OfMice and Men comes from a poem, "To a Mouse"
by Scottish poet Robert Burns, which contains the theme that the best
plans of mice and men often go awry. The novel begins with two
ranchhands, George Milton and his slow-witted friend Lennie Small,
talking about their future of an idyllic life on a little farm of their own.
In order to raise the necessary money, they come to work at a ranch.
Their dream of an earthly paradise nearly comes true when an old man
at the ranch, Candy, gets captivated by the charm of the dream and
wants to join in with all he has saved. Yet the tragedy is inevitable.
Lennie, whose physical strength is not under the control of an adult
mind, accidentally kills the lonely wife of the boss' son. In the final
10