Customer Reviews

In Dubious Battle

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"In Dubious Battle" is basically the first of Steinbeck's socially-engaged novels, in which he portrays a strike staged by itinerant fruit-pickers against price-cutting orchard owners. This is hardly a pamphlet for the labor movement or the Communist Party, though, as Steinbeck is less interested in pontificating than showing the frustations of the workers and the toll that their resistence actually takes on them and the local community. It also shows the organizational difficulties involved in getting a diverse group of dissatisfied workers to work for a common cause. The characterization is vivid and brilliant. Aside from its obvious literary value, this novel also has historical value, for like Sinclair's "The Jungle" (although with greater realism and much less pathos) it provides a powerful description of the plight of working people in America earlier in the 20th century. "In Dubious Battle" gives readers a good idea of the type of courage it took, and still does take, to fight for positive change and social justice.

Steinbeck masters several different purposes with this book. First, he provides us with, in typical Steinbeck fashion, an in-depth character study of several figures worthy of discussion. The characters are intriguing, life-like and hold our attention as they move through their existence.

Second, he weaves a picturesque and spellbinding story with this ability to animate scenes with his words. He truly captures the idea of "suspension of disbelief;" the reader has no doubt he/she is reading about real places and people.

Last and most important, Steinbeck turns the tables on the reader in the last paragraph of the book. While this book may superficially appear to be a scathing commentary on the ruthlessness of unchecked capitalism, its really a singular question on human nature, regardless of the dominant socio-economic system, be it capitalism or communism. The reader must make up his/her mind at the end on which is the worse crime: exploitation of the masses for profit or exploitation of the masses for personal power and position, especially at the expense of a friend and allie.

One of the most powerful books I have read in such a few number of pages.

By far, Steinbeck had his finest moments writing this story. That says a lot about a man who did such great character studies as Of Mice And Men, The Grapes Of Wrath, The Winter Of Our Discontent, and The Pearl. In this story, Steinbeck hits a raw note rarely reached in American Literature. Few people would have it in them to write a story about the "Reds" in the 1930s. Steinbeck not only wrote the story, he made it his masterpiece. The story alone is the best he ever published. A story about a migrant worker strike in California and the effects of an ununionized strike unfold in the novel. The more important part of the novel is the humanist views Steinbeck took. Every man can feel the hate of the system tearing you apart. He captures that hate in all 300 pages of this story. In every aspect, he captured people who have been pushed too far in In Dubious Battle. He told the story of men who had nothing to lose and in the end lost anyway. This is not another story of the underdog. This is the story of the American Dream being left unfulfilled.

Like the preceding reviewer, I felt that Warren French's essay offered a very poor introduction to this novel. It isn't simply that French gives too much of the story away; that could be solved simply be reading the 'introduction' later. More bothersome is how his analysis is based mainly on elements that are exterior to the novel (a few comments in Steinbeck's personal letters, historical anecdotes...) but remains largely at odds with the novel itself.

Contrary to French's convoluted claims, the novel is first and foremost a careful study of various aspects of worker/capital confrontation, played out in the form a depression era fruit pickers' strike. Steinbeck uses his two main characters, Mac and Jim - two 'communist agitators' who are instrumental in whipping up sentiments of resistance among the workers - to offer a 'big picture' perspective of the organizational aspects of the confrontation. The bulk of the novel explores tactics, with many of the typical property owner ploys and worker counterploys represented, and it attempts to dissect and explain the vicissitudes of worker morale (and, to a lesser extent, to explore the psychology of those acting on the side of the forces of repression). The specifics may be dated, but anyone involved in social struggles today will immediately recognize most of the tactics and the psychology. I am thinking less of contemporary strikes in North America, which have generally evolved into less violent confrontations, and more of struggles where people are still fighting to gain the power of solidarity. Worker struggles in the third world come to mind, but also the larger struggle to establish unity against the neoliberal agenda. Participants in recent 'antiglobalization' protests, for instance, will see many familiar elements in "In Dubious Battle" .

French's contention that "In Dubious Battle" is a 'bildungsroman' is also pretty far off the mark. It is true that Jim, undergoing his apprenticeship as an organizer/agitator, is revealed to be a natural tactician. But generally the characters remain constants throughout the novel. I would agree with other commentators here who have complained that the personalities are somewhat stiff - ceratinly, that is, in comparison with the depth with which Steinbeck usually imbues his characters.

Steinbeck is only minimally concerned with 'character development' in this novel. He is more concerned with the ways in which broad social solidarity develops, and also with some of the concomitant tactical and moral issues. Steinbeck shows strikers resorting to violence, and yet he describes the overall situation accurately enough to make the reader fully aware that, faced with an enemy which has overwhelming control over property and legal apparatus, these are very often the only means for workers to trigger awareness of the need for larger solidarity.

French claims that the battle "is dubious not because the outcome is uncertain... but rather because it was the kind of struggle that should never have occurred at all." This, in my mind, totally misses the point. Steinbeck clearly recognizes that the battle *must* be fought for workers to improve their lot. The failure of the apple pickers' strike is certain, but just as certain is the fact that it will pull workers together in future and discourage the growers from being quite as mercilessly exploitative. The "dubious" part has to do with the means by which the battle is fought, and particularly the tendency to sacrifice individuals and small groups unscrupulously to a larger cause. Doc Burton is the only character who fully grasps the implications of this; namely, that the ultimate goal towards which Mac and the 'reds' are fighting - i.e. a classless (and non-violent) society - is undermined by the means which they are using.

For those who are new to Steinbeck and are looking primarily for a good read, I wouldn't recommend this as a starting point. "The Grapes of Wrath" offers a much more moving evocation of exploitation and discrimination. "In Dubious Battle" has its fair share of excitement, but it is a primarily a practical (and consequently more prosaic) analysis of the realities of fighting exploitation .

The best book by Steinbeck. Gritty down in the dirt daily lives of workers. In today's world people forget that it was the Communists who fought and won many benifits workers enjoy now.

Having just come out of a 49-day strike myself, I can say Steinbeck captures the logistics of a strike: the manipulation by the media against the strikers, the changes moods of the strikers, the importance of gathering public support. Steinbeck gives a balanced view of manipulators on both sides:the leaders of the strike and the employers. Jim Nolan, the protagonist,is lead by an over-zealous racical, Mac, into riling up disenfranchized apple pickers in a fictious town in California. Steinbeck's talent is in making you experience the strike in real-time, ugly warts and all. Although I felt the ending was harsh, Steinbeck gives the reader a lasting and haunting image of the kinds of sacrafices that were made to fight for the rights of working stiffs. I was most impressed by the vivid characters, an economy and dimension of a Doesteovski novel, as well as an ability to capture scene. I wanted to see more of the aftermath of the strike, but Steinbeck ends the novel like a kick in the gut. Almost too abrupt for my taste, but, alas, this is a classic and well worth the time of anyone wanting to better understand the dubious nature of a strike--its work never finished in a single lifetime.

"In Dubious Battle" is not Steinbeck's best novel. It's heavy on the preaching of workingman values, uses characters to convey belief in that awkward way you see in blatantly political novels, and it ends abruptly and unsatisfactorily, as if Steinbeck were racing against a deadline.

But it's refreshing to read the novel in light of today's capital-dominated society. While the poor get steadily poorer, and the rich richer, Steinbeck's message still resonates today. Steinbeck's characters fight barehanded against orchard monopolies and their collected police and vigilante forces armed with guns, tear gas, and money. The Red agitators at the center of the story spark the day laborers' fear and anger and incite a strike, which brings the men together brandishing hope instead of guns. We could take a lesson from the Depression-era strikers and demand a fairer, more just society, one they so obviously failed to win for us.

Though stiff and ragged as it is, the novel also haunted me as I read it. While the conditions of oppressive capital exists now more strongly than ever, the workingman's struggle is long dead. In fact, today's average working stiff is the guy in the novel who loves his truck so much that he won't risk it in the battle for his own humanity. It's not until the truck is destroyed that he becomes truly vengeful.

So when you're blue about suburban sprawl, when you spend day after day in a cubicle working on meaningless projects, or when you watch our nation's highest offices sell to the highest bidders, pick up this book and howl.

This is one of those books that changes the way you see the world.

I've read a few of Steinbeck's books, including the big ones and some of the smaller ones.

In Dubious Battle is just as excellent as Grapes of Wrath, only in a smaller way. After I finished this book, I sat and thought for a long time, unable to get it out of my mind.

This is not to be missed. Entertaining and thought provoking.

I'm disappointed to read that some folks regard the characters in this great book as caricatures - rather, they reflect the hard-working, strong-willed people that struggled so during the Great Depression, and made huge headway in business, that we today benefit from. With this in mind, I want to sing Steinbeck's praises for a moment, and thank him for making a difference in his own time. He was unafraid of putting the spotlight on a difficult truth in American history, and doing so effectively.

This book is distinct from The Grapes of Wrath, in that it studies closer the reality of an actual strike, and the involvement of the Communist Party therein. As the reader follows the experience of Jim and Dan, the lead characters, their strengths and flaws come to the surface, as they struggle to keep the strike underway, and the men and women involved strong. Their trials and tribulations are realistic, and depicted in an edge-of-your-seat manner. The ending, much like that of Grapes, is a heart-wrencher, perhaps even moreso. Any reader with heart and conscience is left stunned, and provoked. Although the book is a work of fiction, it is surely not far from the truth. Truly a worthwhile read.

Efforts of workers in this country to organize and to fight for fair wages and decent working conditions have been long and extremely arduous. The history of the labor movement has been fraught with violence and bloodshed. It was not until Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal that Congress passed laws allowing workers to organize and to strike for the conditions which should have been rightfully theirs all along.

Set in California in the 1930s, _In Dubious Battle_ accurately depicts individuals who strike when the owners of the orchard in which they pick apples decide to reduce their pay. The book documents these workers' extreme poverty and hunger, as well as their fears of bodily harm or even death at the hands vigilantes and police with whom they must contend during the strike. Their leaders, some of whom are on the extreme left political fringes, are men of fervor and dedication who are willing to sacrifice their own lives in the struggle. Steinbeck who often wrote of the sufferings of the common people, to his credit, presents a balanced portrait of these men. Bullying unarmed strikers into a fighting frenzy against men who possess deadly weapons, exploiting the martyrs in their ranks, and stealthily committing arson as methods of gaining them sympathy, were considered ethical acts that justified their worthy ends. One of the book's great strengths was its non-fictional, documentary feel. Admittedly, Steinbeck's matter of fact approach and dialogue sometimes dulled the book's dramatic impact. On the whole, though, I felt as if I were living amongst very realistic people, experiencing their disappointments fighting a dubious battle in an ultimately successful war for economic freedom of all working people.