In Dubious Battle (1936)

In Dubious Battle is a novel by John Steinbeck, written in 1936.

The central figure of the story is an activist attempting to organize abused laborers in order to gain fair wages and working conditions. Despite its political themes, Steinbeck intended for the book to represent "man's eternal, bitter warfare with himself", instead of "ranting about justice and oppression".

Background

The title is a reference to a passage from John Milton's Paradise Lost:

Innumerable force of Spirits armed,

That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,

His utmost power with adverse power opposed

In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven

And shook his throne. What though the field be lost?

All is not lost—the unconquerable will,

And study of revenge, immortal hate,

And courage never to submit or yield:

And what is else not to be overcome?

Prior to publication, Steinbeck wrote in a letter:

This is the first time I have felt that I could take the time to write and also that I had anything to say to anything except my manuscript book. You remember that I had an idea that I was going to write the autobiography of a Communist ... There lay the trouble. I had planned to write a journalistic account of a strike. But as I thought of it as fiction the thing got bigger and bigger. It couldn't be that. I've been living with this thing for some time now. I don't know how much I have got over, but I have used a small strike in an orchard valley as the symbol of man's eternal, bitter warfare with himself.

The novel likely recounts a fruit worker strike that occurred in Tulare County, California.

Plot summary

In Dubious Battle deals with a fruit-workers' strike in a California valley and the attempts of labor unions to organize, lead, and provide for the striking pickers.

Jim Nolan meets Harry Nilson who initiates Jim's application process to become the newest member of the Communist Party. Mac "Doc" McLeod, the Party organizer, tells Jim they will go to the Torgas Valley (a composite location) in an attempt to rouse the two thousand fruit pickers against the Growers' Association, and to encourage the strike to spill over into the cotton fields in Tandale.

Momentum for strike action builds after old Dan breaks two rungs out of a ladder and falls. London becomes chairman of a committee of seven men, while Mac convinces Al Anderson's father to loan five acres as a base for the fruit pickers in exchange for them picking his crop for free. Doc Burton is hired by Mac to maintain the sanitation of the strikers' camp, so as to prevent it from being disbanded by the Red Cross.

The course of the strike is recounted in some detail, including the politics of the local growers, the support by Al through his little luncheonette, the "sweet-talking" of some locals in order to garner food and other help for the pickers, and personal crises and tragedies in individual cases. Mac emerges as a heroic but quite single-minded figure; Jim's occasional doubts are presented as well.

Jim joins Sam in a picket as they go after some 'scabs' in the apple orchard. Sam's pickets violently injure them. While out on the road Dakin, the leader of the pickers, is ambushed by a vigilante group at gunpoint. Later, the Anderson barn is burned down by vigilantes. In the aftermath, Jim is killed by a high powered shotgun. As the book ends, Mac is continuing to rouse and motivate the picketers, in spite of seemingly hopeless odds.

Characters

Doc Burton – A doctor who, despite his skepticism of leftist views, works in the strikers' camp, ensuring that it cannot be disbanded on the basis of a lack of sanitation.

Jim Nolan– New member of the "Party," whose political development is one of the book's central themes. His father was a labor organizer himself, and was legendary as one who fought.

London – the second, but more significant, elected leader of the striking workers

Mrs. Meer – Jim's landlady

Harry Nilson – Party official who initiates Jim's application process for the Party

Roy Nolan – Jim's father (killed three years earlier)

Mr. Webb – Manager at Tulman's Department Store, where Jim worked who denies knowing Jim when he hears he is a radical.

May Nolan – Jim's older sister who mysteriously disappears at a young age

Mac McLeod – Party organizer and Jim's mentor. He becomes the main driver of the plot after taking Jim under his wing.

Dick Halsing – "pretty boy" party member in charge of soliciting Party sympathizers for donations

Joy – a radical of the time. Had spent many years fighting for workers rights.

Alfred Anderson – Owner/operator of Al's Lunch Wagon; son of a small apple farmer in the valley.

Sam – "lean-face", a picker

Lisa – London's daughter-in-law who is assisted by Mac when in labor

Dan – an old picker whose fall from a rotten ladder initially causes the other workers to take strike action

Dakin – leader of pickers at the Hunter place

Alla – Dakin's wife

Jerry – a picker at Hunter's who favors strike

Al Anderson – Alfred's father, small farm owner, proud of his dogs

Burke – Dakin's assistant

Albert Johnson – truck owner

Bolter – President of the Fruitgrower's Association

Reception and legacy

On publication, New York Times reviewer Fred T. March compared it to the "genial gusto" of the "picaresque" Tortilla Flat. He commented that "You would never know that In Dubious Battle was by the same John Steinbeck if the publishers did not tell you so." He called it "courageous and desperately honest," "the best labor and strike novel to come out of our contemporary economic and social unrest," and "such a novel as Sinclair Lewis at his best might have done had he gone on with his projected labor novel..."