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In John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Mac describes the Party’s methodology when he says: “You get a hell of a drive out of something that has some meaning to it, and don’t you forget it. The thing that takes the heart out of man is work that doesn’t lead any place. Ours is slow, but it’s all going in one direction” (261). Mac is correct when he states that people find that work is more valuable when it leads to a common goal.
However, too much focus on the final objective, (in this case, a classless society) can lead individuals to become narrow-minded and abusive to those they swore they would protect.
Steinbeck uses imagery of lightness and darkness to describe these changes and inner conflicts that occur within Jim when he joins the Party. Jim undergoes a metamorphosis from a hopeless individual to a mere pawn of the Party illustrating how a religious order or political organization can take advantage of an individual’s desperation in order to advance the goals of the group.
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As a result of Jim’s membership in the Party, he transitions from a despairing, half-dead individual to an optimistic person who has found meaning in his life.
Steinbeck begins his novel with “At last it was evening” as if Jim had been waiting all day for his life to begin. Even Jim’s gray eyes reflect a kind of living death. Nilson notices immediately Jim’s lackluster personality and wonders if his vacant expressions are due to alcoholism or drug addiction.
But Jim says, “I want to work toward something. I feel dead. I thought I might get alive again” (7) Jim disillusionment with capitalism stems from his downtrodden family life.
Jim grew up in a state of “hopelessness;” where his father had to fight alone in his battle to better his family, and his mother lost her faith, after his sister May disappears. Through his experiences growing up, Jim discovers that he cannot act alone nor rely on the teaching of a church in order to change society. He discovers that this political group may provide the answers he needs. When describing his initial exposure to members of the Communist Party is states: “The hopelessness wasn’t in them.
They were quiet, and they were working; but in the back of every mind there was conviction that sooner or later they would win their way out of the system they hated. I tell you, there was a kind of peacefulness about those men” (20). After verbalizing his own feelings, Jim laughs and smiles for the first time since the reader meets him. Nilson, noticing his change, says, “You’re waking up Jim. You’re looking better. ” (9). Nilson only sees the very beginning of Jim’s conversion from disillusioned individual to a cold-hearted party member.
Through his use of contrasting images of lightness and darkness, Steinbeck demonstrates Jim’s increasingly simplified belief that he must use any means necessary to bring about a classless society. The pairing of a white object with a black one foreshadows some of the most disturbing scenes in Steinbeck’s novel illustrating the dangers of seeing the world in terms of strictly good and evil. For example, when Jim is walking with Mac, the white park lights cast ominous black shadows. The white and black description precedes Jim’s story of his experience of police brutality and his jail time with members of the party.
This unwarranted attack by members of the government and the influence of the party member initiate Jim’s journey to become a “radical. ” Another instance of coupling black and white images is when the train conductor waves at Mac and Jim with his black glove and blows white steam towards them (44). Although at first this does not appear too alarming, the “shrieking white steam” occurs right before Joy’s death. In response to Joy’s murder, Jim “clung shivering to Mac’s arm (148),” which shows he is disturbed by the bloodshed that is attached to the Party member’s life.
Steinbeck continues to pair black and white images when Mac and Jim find the tent of the apple-pickers unofficial leader, London. London’s white tent has “huge black figures” moving about on the inside (44). In this tent, Mac uses a woman’s birth as a way to gain the trust of the men even if it means killing her. At first, Jim seems perplexed by Mac’s extreme measures to persuade the apple-pickers to work together when he says: “I didn’t know how you were going to go about it” (54). But later, in that same tent, Jim welcomes the Party’s extreme tactics when Mac disfigures a young boy’s face to make him an example to others.
Jim appears to accept the brutality better than Mac himself and he becomes one of those “dark figures” seen against the white backdrop. Jim shows how he doesn’t seen individuals as people any longer, but as pawns to be used to achieve the party’s goals when he says to Mac: “It wasn’t a scared kid, it was a danger to the cause. It had to be done and you did it right” (248). Jim is so concerned with the future that he forgets about the individuals that he is supposedly fighting for. Steinbeck’s description of the light reflects Jim’s increasing embrace of pain and violence in the name of the Party’s final objective.
When the light is too bright, it becomes oppressive. When Steinbeck describes light, he often uses very violent adjectives. For example, the Neon sign outside of Jim’s apartment does not merely blink, but it “ . . . jerked on and off, exploding its hard red in the air” (1). Comparing an everyday street sign to a bomb indicates that Jim himself feels ready to burst due his lack of action to remedy an oppressive political system. When he types letters under the lamp, the light is “hard” and “unshaded” (16).
Even when Mac and Jim are returning to the apple-pickers camp with a large supply of meat, the sun is “high” and has “no warmth” (216). In addition, when they are checking up on Al, the “sun struck them with soft warm blows” (296). Even though the sun was “soft” and “warm,” it still has a rather violent undertone. Also when Mac and Jim discover that the Anderson barn has been destroyed, the “sun cut downward” and “both the trees and ground seemed to quiver nervously” (301). Steinbeck continues to use these vehement adjectives to describe the light.
The light is usually dangerous, but on the other hand, the darkness is often a source of safety. For instance, Jim sleeps soundly in the dark train on the way to the apple-pickers valley. Steinbecks writes: “His sleep was a shouting, echoing black cave, and it extended into eternity. ” (35) Although a black cave would normally be frightening, it reveals Jim’s longing for meaning and immortality. Furthermore, anti-communist vigilantes will shoot at light during the night. Instead of providing them a haven, the light actually makes them a target therefore they find refuge in the dark.
When they are in the Anderson home, they have to cover the windows with curtains (181). However, the imagery of darkness that Steinbeck utilizes is not always positive. In fact, after Jim is shot in the shoulder, a dark cloud stretches across the sky representing how Jim’s belief in the Party’s ideal becomes a kind of religious fanaticism. After bandaging Jim’s wound, the doctor says, “I mean you’ve got something in your eyes, Jim, something religious. I’ve see it in you boys before” (181). But Jim becomes defensive, arguing that he has no need for religion.
At the height of his fever, Jim becomes almost god-like, persuading even London to follow his orders. In describing Jim new state of mind, Steinbeck writes, “His young face was carven, his eyes motionless; his mouth smiled a little at the corners. He looked steadily and confidently at London” (251). Jim tells London to organize a police group to punish anyone who tries to escape or falls asleep. He changes so much that he frightens Mac. Mac says “What makes your eyes jump like that? (253). Through Jim, Steinbeck illustrates the hazards of complete political single-mindedness.
Jim is willing to use any means necessary in order to mobilize the people to strike even if it means transforming their camp into a dictatorship. Doc recognizes that hazardous logic in Jim’s new belief that the ends justify the means. He says, “But in my little experience the end is never very different in its nature from the means. Damn it, Jim, you can only build a violent thing with violence” (230). Jim becomes so extreme that he does not even wish to discuss his decisions. He says to the doctor: “You make too damn many words, Doc. You build a trap of words and then you fall into it.
You can’t catch me. Your words don’t mean anything to me. I know what I’m doing. Argument doesn’t have any effect on me” (231). Jim is even willing to rip a part his bandages in order to arouse the men into action. Furthermore, another instance of Jim’s religious fervor is when he begins to resent Mac for protecting him. Jim states darkly: “I wanted you to use me. You wouldn’t because you got to like me too well” (249). According to Mac, Party members cannot allow emotion to dictate their actions even though he allowed himself to become too close to Jim.
Jim announces his superiority to Mac when he says, “I’m stronger than you, Mac. I’m stronger than anything in the world, because I’m going in a straight line” (249). Despite the surfacing of a kind of religious fundamentalism in Jim, he has doubts about his actions. Even though Jim appears confident in himself, he still laments the loss of his individuality. When he and Mac are walking through the apple fields he says, “Well, just once in a while you get that feeling—I never look at anything. I never take time to see anything.
It’s going to be over, and I won’t know—even how an apple grows” (198). In an effort to console Mac, Jim states that “Sympathy is as bad as fear” (249) but yet he knows that sympathy for his fellow men is what compelled him to fight for social change in the beginning. Steinbeck uses the candle and the dawn analogy to describe Jim’s inner turmoil. He writes: “The candle and the dawn fought each other so that together they seemed to make less light than either would have made alone. The room was cold” (111). Perhaps Jim could give selflessly to the Party while still retaining his individuality.
The ambiguity of the novel’s ending indicates Steinbeck’s refusal to support one ideology or group above another. If Steinbeck would have showed that Jim had found his way to martyrdom, he would be implying that sacrifice is important element in social change. But Steinbeck’s cliffhanger ending implies that the battle for raise up humanity is cyclical and there are no simple answers or clear cut right or wrong. Jim literally dies faceless; he looses all individuality. And conveniently, Jim does bring the people “to the light” but he does so in death.
There is a supernatural quality that comes to us when we work together. Jim explains: “It’s something that grows out of a fight like this. Suddenly you feel the great forces at work that create little troubles like this strike of ours. And the sight of those forces does something to you, picks you up and makes you act. I guess that’s where authority comes from” (253). But we can still gain that feeling of immortality without giving up who we are. Our journey to find meaning is a very ambiguous one and unfortunately Steinbeck gives few answers.
This novel is more about political ideology; it is about finding a balance between our roles as individual and our roles as components of a group. Steinbeck provides moving insight into those willing to battle for social change and demonstrates through Jim and in every other character in this novel that we are not alone in our search to advance ourselves. Steinbeck reminds us that we each have much to offer one another, both as individuals and as members of a larger whole.
Works Cited
Steinbeck, John. In Dubious Battle. New York: Viking, 1964.
Light and Dark Imagery in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle. (2017, May 01). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/re-light-and-dark-imagery-in-steinbecks-in-dubious-battle-essay
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