Ӕ

This was Steinbeck's first serious contemporary novel, published shortly after Tortilla Flat. It's the story of a strike by seasonal apple-pickers trying to reverse a pay-cut, and a painful analysis of the impossible task faced by ordinary workers taking on a well-organised (and unscrupulous) establishment, egged on by equally unscrupulous communists who know that glorious failure will have as powerful a propaganda effect as success.

It's perhaps all a bit too romantic, and there's a lot in the text, especially the dialogue, that feels unnecessarily didactic at this distance, but the storyline remains gripping, and we can't help being drawn into sympathy for all the people who get hurt in the course of the book. And any novel that draws on a Milton quotation must have something going for it... ( )

La novela se desarolla en California y está protagonizada por un activista del "Partido" que se infiltra entre un grupo de recolectores de frutas y, a través de la organización de una huelga, busca atraerlos hacia su causa.

Certainly not a book to read for entertainment, "In Dubious Battle" is a terrifyingly relevant novel about disaffection, polarized groups, manipulation, mob mentality, and the brutality that lies just under America's veneer. Brutality is the core of this novel, and Steinbeck does not hesitate to lay it bare. Again, Steinbeck's portrayal of individuals in speech and behavior is pitch-perfect, but the rub is how they work as mobs:

"It's different from the men in it. And it's stronger than all the men put together. It doesn't want the same things men want-"

While no "side" has clean hands here, and only a few more innocent characters (like the young mother, Lisa) stand apart from the conflict, the bosses and vigilantes take initiative and act while the disenfranchised and unarmed strikers react. What goes on between these groups is identical to race and ideological group behavior in the USA of 2021. And as for the vigilantes -- the empowered, armed, white, paranoid, xenophobic heavies -- well, Steinbeck calls them out by name.

“Why, they're the dirtiest guys in any town. They're the same ones that burned the houses of old German people during the war. They're the same ones that lynch Negroes. They like to be cruel. They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution.”

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. ( )

As a straightforward novel about striking apple pickers, this is a good look at the mechanics of strikes and yet another good look from Steinbeck at the psychology of people placed in nearly impossible situations. The book follows Jim, the son of a famous Communist Party fighter, and his own journey from just another unemployed worker to Party organizer himself. He joins fellow Party men Mac and London in the fictional Torgas Valley and its fight against exploitative farm owners. Steinbeck uses Jim and Doc, the doctor, as the primary mouthpieces for his trademark vernacular philosophizing - Jim slowly changes from bystander to violent vanguard, while Doc is always the cool voice of reason, theorizing on the peculiar characteristics of the mass of men the Party is trying to build out of the unorganized mob of desperate strikers.

A big theme is the way that people get used for bigger things; not only Jim and the "his name is Robert Paulson"-type scene at the end, but throughout the book there are constant discussions of how bloodshed will turn the mob into a machine, an entity that will rampage over the callous and malignant growers. Eric Hoffer must have read this book several times before writing his own The True Believer on the nature of members of mass organizations, and in In Dubious Battle I also see echoes of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle in terms of how the organizers see the Communist Party as savior. What's interesting is that aside from glancing mentions of Hoover (who would have been out of office by the time book is set) there is basically no mention of the government. Steinbeck was probably trying to isolate the characters in the tiny valley setting for dramatic effect, but you could probably write an interesting paper on how the pro-labor liberalism of the New Deal with its Wagner Act helped defuse a lot of the Communist Party radicalism seen here.

I wouldn't say this book is as good as The Grapes of Wrath, its most nearly similar Steinbeck book, but I would recommend it to any fan of The Jungle. Steinbeck is incapable of writing a bad book, and while this may seem too political for fans of East of Eden, he does a great job of dramatizing the times, and the eternal conflict between individual, small, antlike people, and the large, collective, powerful anthills they can become. ( )