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A review by dee9401
In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck
5.0
John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle has moved into my top tier of books. I rate it higher than the Grapes of Wrath, a book that strongly impacted my political and life philosophies. Steinbeck's novel of an apple pickers' strike in Depression-era California is a deftly written piece on labor relations, capital and how men can work together and against each other. Like the Grapes of Wrath, this book is timeless. If you changed the peoples' names and updated the vernacular, you could easily believe this story was from right here, right now. That is one of Steinbeck's greatest assets.
One of the main characters, Mac, says "Anybody that wants a living wage is a radical." He's talking about doing a strike and how the business owners will say its radicals (i.e. "reds" and "commies") that want to stir things up and cause problems. These leaders use the fears those words incite instead of addressing the real economic and social problems of the day. They seek to divide those who, if they stood together, could easily overcome the business owners. It's sad that this sentence from a novel written in 1936 is still an accurate description of right wing politicians and capitalists today.
Once the strike gets started, though, the business leaders turn to another tactic. The first elected leader of the strikers tells the men, "They say we got a right to strike in this country, and then they make laws against picketing'. All it amounts to is that we got a right to quit." True then, still true today. Perhaps even worse today with the politics we've seen in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Another great quote is regarding the vigilante gangs that go after the strikers in the novel. It was a comment on American history then and you can see and hear it today as well. "They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution." I recently read Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, by Jay Feldman. If you're interested in some of the background that influenced Steinbeck and is played out throughout the novel, give his book a read.
There's another important asset that Steinbeck brings to bear in this novel. To quote from the introduction by Warren French, "a secret of Steinbeck's technique in his greatest work is his ability to avoid telling readers what they should feel and to make them participate in discovering the characters' feelings by collaborating with the author in creating them." As you read this novel, you come to understand Jim, Mac, London, Al, the doctor and others. You start to see the world through their eyes.
My advice is: Now, take what you have seen and put it into action.
One of the main characters, Mac, says "Anybody that wants a living wage is a radical." He's talking about doing a strike and how the business owners will say its radicals (i.e. "reds" and "commies") that want to stir things up and cause problems. These leaders use the fears those words incite instead of addressing the real economic and social problems of the day. They seek to divide those who, if they stood together, could easily overcome the business owners. It's sad that this sentence from a novel written in 1936 is still an accurate description of right wing politicians and capitalists today.
Once the strike gets started, though, the business leaders turn to another tactic. The first elected leader of the strikers tells the men, "They say we got a right to strike in this country, and then they make laws against picketing'. All it amounts to is that we got a right to quit." True then, still true today. Perhaps even worse today with the politics we've seen in Wisconsin and Ohio.
Another great quote is regarding the vigilante gangs that go after the strikers in the novel. It was a comment on American history then and you can see and hear it today as well. "They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution." I recently read Manufacturing Hysteria: A History of Scapegoating, Surveillance, and Secrecy in Modern America, by Jay Feldman. If you're interested in some of the background that influenced Steinbeck and is played out throughout the novel, give his book a read.
There's another important asset that Steinbeck brings to bear in this novel. To quote from the introduction by Warren French, "a secret of Steinbeck's technique in his greatest work is his ability to avoid telling readers what they should feel and to make them participate in discovering the characters' feelings by collaborating with the author in creating them." As you read this novel, you come to understand Jim, Mac, London, Al, the doctor and others. You start to see the world through their eyes.
My advice is: Now, take what you have seen and put it into action.