In Dubious Battle: Major Themes
At the Pixley, California,Cotton Strike in 1933, eight armed farmers wait to ambush strikers/unionizers as they cross over to the union hall. Farm Security Administration photo.
Greed
As is the case in The Grapes of Wrath, greed is the primary cause of the workers' poverty and strife in In Dubious Battle. The Growers' Association lowers wages after most of the workers arrive. Because the workers have to spend nearly all of their money traveling to the ranch, they do not have the resources to look for work elsewhere. The Growers' Association knows the workers will have no choice but to work for lower wages. To make matters worse, the workers are forced to buy on credit from the company store where they are charged exorbitant prices for goods. The wealthy landowners take advantage of their power and position to manipulate the already downtrodden workers.
Mac explains the situation to Jim, "Now these few guys that own most of the Torgas Valley waited until most of the crop tramps were already there. They spent most of their money getting there, of course. They always do. And then the owners announced their price cut" (26). When property falls into the hands of only a "few men," these men are able to wield their wealth and power in forceful ways (26). The irony is that while cutting wages a few cents will only net the growers a minor gain in profits, that few cents has a significant impact on the lives of the migrant workers who live hand to mouth.
When the workers decide to strike, the landowners utilize every resource in town to cut the strikers' supplies. Their power reaches well beyond the orchards as they control the politics and the police force of the town. They manipulate the media and public opinion to keep a firm hold on their power and undermine the strike at every turn. Another irony is that it is perfectly acceptable for the Growers' Association to be well organized, under the guise of protecting their interests and that of the public welfare, and wield their power in unjust ways against an oppressed class of laborers. However, when the workers attempt to organize to protect their interests, they are automatically branded as "radicals," "reds" or "communists" and are accused of being anti-American. While Mac and Jim are affiliated with the "Party," there are others like London, Dakin, and Burke who strike to protect basic human rights and dignity that have nothing to do with political affiliation. Nonetheless, their desire to be paid a decent living wage is branded as "radical," highlight a pervasive discrimination against the underclass. The interests of the wealthy in their quest to obtain more wealth, supersedes the basic rights of the impoverished.
Purpose
While on the surface In Dubious Battle is a fast-paced narrative that records the events of a fictional strike, it also records the abbreviated maturation of Jim Nolan as he comes to embrace a larger life purpose. When readers meet Jim, he is packing up his entire life possessions in a small paper bag. In his interview with Party recruiter Harry Nilson, readers learn that Jim has only one living relative, an uncle, whom Jim never mentions again. The description of Jim in the first few chapters shows him to be a man with few ties to anyone or anything. Jim mentions to Mac that he rarely even dates women because he does not want to get "trapped". Jim seems to have up to this point in his life bounced aimlessly from one thing to another not ever finding satisfaction. He even contemplates a name change, thinking that might provide motivation for change in his life: "I wonder if I ought to change my name. I wonder if changing your name would have any affect on you" (11). His decision to join the Party after a brief stint in jail seems to give him direction for the first time in his life. After Harry questions Jim a second time about his reasons for joining the Party, Jim explains, "In jail there were some Party men. They talked to me. Everything's been a mess, all my life. Their lives weren't messes. They were working toward something. I want to work toward something. I feel dead. I thought I might get alive again" (8).
Considering Jim's family history, his childhood seems punctuated by purposelessness, lack of direction, and needless self-sacrifice. His sister's disappearance as a young teen ruined his family life as his mother became distant and his father bounced from fight to fight looking for a way to dispel his outrage. Jim's parents die having lived rather meaningless and miserable lives. He tells Harry, "My whole family has been ruined by this system" and Jim does not want to end up defeated like his parents (6).
Jim's involvement with the Party gives him a newfound purpose in life. He continually voices his desire for action and never baulks at the sacrifices required of a Party man. He tells Harry, "Hell, I've got nothing to lose" (10). As Jim works under Mac's instruction, he quickly exhibits leadership qualities and transforms himself from an aimless youth to a potential Party leader. In the process, he does lose one important thing. Harry advises Jim he will ultimately lose his "hatred […] You're going to be surprised when you see that you stop hating people. I don't know why it is, but that's usually what happens" (10). Hatred, characteristic of the small and narrow mind, dissolves as Jim matures and recognizes the role individual men play in a system that is much larger than any man.
Commitment
Parallel to Jim's new found purpose when he joins the Party is his intense commitment to the cause. Though Jim finds himself for the first time by joining the Party, he ultimately loses his life because of his passionate commitment. For his entire life, Jim has lived completely free of responsibility and commitment. His decision to join the Party is a major commitment, which necessitates a complete lifestyle change for Jim, demanding strict adherence to Party rules and total dedication to the cause, even when the people you are desperately trying to help hate you for it. Having his face, the physical marker of his identity, shot off and his faceless corpse used to further the intentions of the strike symbolically represents the subsuming of Jim's individual identity into the mass identity of the Party.
Under Mac's tutelage, Jim learns the importance of remaining committed and exercising patient dedication, even in the face of certain defeat. Mac reminds Jim several times, "We got to take the long view" (26). Because Party members take the "long view," the ends always justify the means, especially for Mac. Mac is patient and completely opportunistic. He will utilize any event, good or bad, to further the Party's agenda. He tells Jim, "We use everything we can get hold of" (38). Mac seems terribly callous when he uses Joy's death to fuel the strike. He uses Jim's corpse at the end of the novel in a similar fashion, even though he has known all along that the strike is doomed to failure. Mac is not at all concerned with the immediate well-being of the strikers or wage raises. He knows there will be casualties, but thinks they are necessary and inevitable if long term change is to be achieved. Later in Jim's apprenticeship, when Mac feels regret after roughing up one of the youths who set fire to Anderson's barn, Jim exhibits a new ruthless attitude and heightened level of commitment when he reassures Mac with authority that it was the right course of immediate action. His burgeoning exercise of authority and dedication reiterates Mac's mantra that, "The thing will carry on and on. It'll spread, and some day—it'll work," if only the men keep at it in the meantime (121).
The strike itself is the ultimate exercise in commitment for the men involved. For a strike to have any chance of success, all participants must sacrifice self-interest for the interests of the collective group. When the men become disheartened and act on self-interest by abandoning their posts or ignoring orders, the strike flounders. Mac tries his best throughout the process to reignite the strikers' indignation and anger to keep them committed, but ultimately it seems self-interest takes precedence over group interest. The tension in the novel between commitment to self and commitment to the group, or "cause," calls into question the ability of mass movements, such as strikes and political rebellion, to actually succeed.
Collective Behavior/Group Man/Phalanx Theory
Pat Chambers addressing a crowd of strikers during Pixley Cotton strike rally.
From his studies in biology, Steinbeck believed the tendency of the natural world was to combine individual, yet interdependent parts into unified wholes, called superorganisms, which take on larger and more complex significance than any individual component possesses in isolation. Since, like other organisms, humans exhibit characteristics as part of a group that they do not necessarily possess as individuals, Steinbeck found it useful to apply the concept of the superorganism to human behavior. He referred to this concept as the "phalanx," a term taken from an ancient Greek warfare maneuver in which soldiers grouped together in dense units to form a wall of protection. In much of his fiction, Steinbeck examines the ways in which humans either succeed or fail in their attempts at achieving the orderly cooperation necessary for ensuring the continued survival of the whole. He also strives to reconcile human individuality with people's intense drive to be part of the larger and often oppressive and dangerous wholes constructed by culture (also commonly known as mob mentality). In Dubious Battle is one of Steinbeck's early explorations of group behavior and of how individuals seem to lose their identities and significance in groups.
Mac and Doc Burton offer interesting perspectives on group behavior that show how the tendency to work collectively is both innate and very powerful. And the desire for collective action can be used for either great good or great evil. Whatever the result of collective action, however, both men seem to indicate self-interest lies at the heart of group endeavor. In describing the power of unified action Mac tells Jim:
Men always like to work together. There's a hunger in men to work together. Do you know that ten men can lift nearly twelve times as big a load as one man can? It only takes a little spark to get them going. Most of the time they're suspicious, because every time someone gets 'em working in a group the profit of their work is taken away from them; but wait till they get working for themselves. Tonight the work concerned them, it was their job; and see how well they did it (49).
Doc Burton describes collectivism a bit more clinically than Mac:
I want to watch these group-men, for they seem to me to be a new individual, not at all like single men. A man in a group isn't himself at all; he's a cell in an organism that isn't like him any more than the cells in your body are like you. I want to watch the group, and see what it's like. People have said, "mobs are crazy, you can't tell what they'll do." Why don't people look at mobs not as men, but as mobs? A mob nearly always seems to act reasonably, for a mob. (113-114)
The more practical Mac knows that a mob, though fickle, can be very persuasive and so he is constantly seeking opportunities to enflame the men's passionate about the strike to reinforce the desire for collective action. He explains to Jim that "a mob with something it wants to do is just about as efficient as trained soldiers, but tricky […] It's different from the men in it. And it's stronger than all the men put together" (249). Mac's vocation seems to be learning how to harness the mob's power to achieve a greater good.
Doc's vision of group man seems a little more insidious. He tells Mac, "Yes, it might be worthwhile to know more about group-man, to know his nature, his ends, his desires. They're not the same as ours. The pleasure we get in scratching an itch causes death to a great number of cells. Maybe group-man gets pleasure when individual men are wiped out in a war" (114). Perhaps Docs' perspective is best illustrated in the behavior of the vigilantes and the strikers who attack scabs. The vigilantes do terrible things against the strikers, but always only the groups from which they draw their gumption and courage. The high school kids who burn down Anderson's barn destroy not only Anderson's property and apple crop, but kill Anderson's dogs in the process. When one of the kids is caught, he cowers and whimpers showing how people, even youths, are prone to committing atrocious acts in groups that they would not otherwise commit.
Mac's struggle to manipulate and direct a mob to achieve a "good" purpose highlights the complexity of group behavior as it is very difficult to pinpoint where the individual's personal ethics end and mob mentality begins. Can a mob be controlled and utilized to achieve a larger aim independent of the self-interest of the constituent individuals? That is a complex question that Steinbeck examined from a multitude of perspectives throughout his career. He dramatizes similar concepts of collective behavior in fiction such as "The Vigilante" in The Long Valley, "The Leader of the People" in The Red Pony, The Grapes of Wrath, and The Moon is Down, and examines the concept from a more scientific perspective in The Log from the Sea of Cortez. Always beneath the surface of his explorations seems a vague hope that people will eventually figure out how to work together to achieve common good.
Inhumanity
The novel's primary themes ultimately tie together to illustrate the inhumanity that people seem prone to perpetuate. Nearly every group in the novel exhibits inhumane treatment of others while justifying their actions as protection of the greater good. Primary examples are:
- Actions of the Growers' Association toward the strikers
- Actions of the strikers towards scabs
- Actions of the party organizers towards the strikers
- Actions of the strikers towards each other
All participants in the drama seem to act primarily out of self interest and are willing to hurt and even kill others in order to achieve their own ends. Doc Burton, who views violent collective action as antithetical to advancement tells Jim: "The other side is made of men, Jim, men like you. Man hates himself. Psychologists say that a man's self-love is balanced neatly with self-hate. Mankind must be the same. We fight ourselves and we can only win by killing every man" (199).
Doc's statement points out the both sides are willing to destroy each other to further their self interest, yet in destroying others they are ironically really destroying themselves as they are all part of mankind.
