Book Review: In Dubious Battle

Working through Steinbeck

“That’s the hardest part,” Mac agreed. “Everybody hates us our own side and the enemy. And if we won, Jim, if we put it over, our own side would kill us. I wonder why we do it.”
- In Dubious Battle

In Dubious Battle was the book Steinbeck wrote in between his breakout work Tortilla Flat and the famous Of Mice and Men. Telling the story of two “radical reds” that initiate a strike among apple pickers in response to slashed wages, the novel is set in dusty farmland of California like much of Steinbeck’s future work. This book is foreshadowing for Steinbeck’s most famous work The Grapes of Wrath; both focus on the plight of the working man in the face of capitalist forces, although ultimately as an earlier novel it has weaker character development and a more academic message. While this makes In Dubious Battle less compelling as a literary work than his later writing, its investigation into the dynamics of organized labor, power, and resistance are interesting in their own right.

In my view, Steinbeck is an author that builds his stories around a specific message he wants to convey. In East of Eden it’s his interpretation of Cain and Able and the question of nature versus nurture in human behavior. In Grapes of Wrath it is conveying the story of the displaced Okies that he witnessed in real life. In Dubious Battle explores the structure of organized rebellion; how it starts, sustains, and dies. In the novel he specifically explores the paradox of how creating momentum for these strikes requires an exploitation of the individual. Accidents are leveraged as emotional currency, influence is accumulated in the labor camp, and the concerns of an individual fall away. The same patterns that are being rebelled against have to be harnessed in order to have any leverage at all.

The central character of the story is Mac, as seen from the perspective of the main character Jim (kind of in a On the Road style of secondary narration). Mac is capable, driven, a reverent believer in “the cause,” and the main organizer behind the strike. He’s able to sweet talk cops, cut deals with shop owners and ranchers, and chat with the working farmhand. Over the course of the story we build a healthy respect for his capabilities (through the eyes of Jim, who is a newbie to the cause and absorbing all the techniques Mac has to offer) but also start to realize that in order to organize the strike, Mac has to dehumanize the men himself. He has no time to consider the individual, or really to question his base motives at all. And we believe it - we are witness to how difficult and unfair their cause is in the face of political and military power. Steinbeck is pointing out that perhaps a certain amount of close mindedness is necessary to create change.

The doctor in the strike is an intellectual foil to Mac, and perhaps the devil on the other shoulder of Steinbeck. He questions the cause and the suffering, while still working alongside it. When is exploitation a necessary tool to fight a larger evil? I don’t think Steinbeck has a clear answer; he just wants the reader to see the paradox for what it is. The destructive nature of power, and the gentleness that is still capable of blooming in response to that destruction; it seems like these ideas are what Steinbeck is exploring throughout his whole body of work. The ending of the book drives this home in a chilling final scene.

Take one guy that you know ever’thing about him, an’ take ten more the same, an’ you can’t tell what in hell they’ll do. -London

Steinbeck is also really good at building a sense of unease and struggle through basic action and dialogue. Life was clearly tough in the time period portrayed, and the logistics of managing a strike make up the bulk of the actual text. Actions were very conformed to basic needs: getting food, handling sanitation, coping with rain. There is a real physical presence in the novel that settles into your mind scene by scene. In a way it is similar to Murikami. Both authors layer simple dialogue and scenes on top of each other in a way that build up in the reader to something quite sophisticated an evocative. For Murakami it’s blasé conversations in coffee shops and making toast that builds up to postmodern nihilism, and for Steinbeck it’s muddy latrines and three day old pots of pork rind and bean soup building up to the paradox of building power to fight power, the nature of change, and an awareness of the exploitation and unfairness that underlies most of history.

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