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Monstrous Ecology: John Steinbeck, Ecology, and American Cultural Politics Lloyd Willis

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Monstrous Ecology: John Steinbeck, Ecology, and American Cultural Politics Lloyd Willis Monstrous Ecology Lloyd Willis 357 Monstrous Ecology: John Steinbeck, Ecology, and American Cultural Politics Lloyd Willis In the collection of essays, Steinbeck and seems, would be to change the mode of critical the Environment: Interdisciplinary Approaches inquiry from one of diagnosis to evaluation and to (1997), a range of scholars establish that Stein- broaden the focus of such inquiry until it allows beck was an environmentalist. They remain recognition of the complex ways in which envi- strangely uncomfortable with their assertion, ronmentalism interacts with other key elements of however. Warren French, for instance, asks, Steinbeck’s work. In the spirit of such a method- ‘‘How green was John Steinbeck? Did he simply ological shift, the purpose of this article is to in- pay lip service to environmental preservation or vestigate the ways in which the three critical did he work effectively toward mitigating eco- concepts of environmentalism, ecology, and cul- damage?’’ (282). Similarly, John H. Timmerman ture consistently interact through the mediator of concedes that ‘‘Steinbeck’s ethical action is the monstrosity throughout Steinbeck’s oeuvre. In- work of revelation: to make readers mindful of vestigating the ways that monstrosity mediates our despoilation of the land’’ but remarks that ‘‘in the interactions of environmentalism, ecology, regard to a specific program to rectify that course, and culture constitutes one way of escaping however, this ethic, at least as delineated in Amer- a diagnostic approach to Steinbeck’s environ- ica and Americans, is found wanting’’ (312). Joel mentalism that ultimately offers a much broader Hedgpeth seems disappointed that ‘‘Steinbeck is understanding of how Steinbeck viewed the always apologizing for saying bad things and re- workings of American mass culture, why his ec- assuring us that he still loves us all’’ (306), and ological worldviews and environmental activism Eric Gladstein and Mimi Reisel Gladstein are un- stopped where they did, and exactly how high the happy that Steinbeck stops short of excoriating an stakes were for potential radical environmentalists environmental abuse when he ‘‘does not want to in the mid-twentieth-century United States.2 brand the Japanese fishermen or Mexican officials who permitted the dragging [of the ocean floor] as criminals’’ in Sea of Cortez (169). Monstrosity and Monstrous Figures Beyond simply diagnosing Steinbeck as an ec- ologically minded writer who did indeed waffle when it came to environmental activism, how else Near the beginning of Travels with Charley: In might Steinbeck’s relationship to ecology and Search of America (1962), Steinbeck writes that environmentalism be investigated?1 The most his purpose in traveling across the continent is ‘‘to immediately obvious ways to move forward, it rediscover this monster land,’’ repeatedly using Lloyd Willis is a PhD candidate in English at the University of Florida. His dissertation, which engages authors ranging from James Fenimore Cooper and Ralph Waldo Emerson to Willa Cather and John Steinbeck, investigates the environmental politics of American authors and the critics who have shaped the American canon from the 1850s to the 1950s. 358 The Journal of American Culture Volume 28, Number 4 December 2005 ‘‘monster’’ as a metaphor to represent largeness of womanhood (although the purity and virtue of and mystery (6, 24). This simple invocation of Curley’s wife are highly suspect) and restore the monstrosity, however, is hardly the author’s first appearance of human beings as entirely self- engagement with the subject or indicative of his controlled figures living within universally un- deep understanding of the concept. In actuality, derstood codes of conduct. Steinbeck’s use of monstrosity reveals a rather While Lenny himself comes to be declared surprising familiarity with its historicity and its monstrous, Lenny and George together constitute deep connection to politics, in the sense of both a more abstract social monstrosity in Of Mice and broad state/civic governance and in the negotia- Men’s ranch culture. They share an exclusive tion of smaller interpersonal relationships. Stein- homosocial relationship for which they are called beck engaged monstrosity, in fact, as early as 1933 to answer throughout the course of the story. In in To a God Unknown, with a remarkable grasp murdering Lenny privately, interestingly enough, of how monstrosity has functioned historically. George not only denies the larger society the A significant portion of the novel’s plot is haunted public killing that re-establishes community and by the Renaissance belief that monstrous birth reaffirms conceptions of normalcy, deviance, and defects—‘‘children born with tails, with extra the consequences of deviancy, but he also extri- limbs, with mouths in the middle of their cates himself from the dire problem of his rela- backs’’—are caused by the wayward imaginations tionship with Lenny. In killing Lenny and of expectant mothers (99).3 In addition to his rec- allowing the community to think that Lenny at- ognition of its historical tradition, Steinbeck’s tacked him, George proves to the rest of the treatment of monstrosity’s politics almost per- community that his bond with the man was not fectly demonstrates that ‘‘monsters are . polit- closer than that allowed by the community’s ical beings’’ who are ‘‘chosen with deliberation to unspoken codes of normal heterosexual male do quite specific narrative and social work,’’ in- behavior. cluding the clear mapping of the ‘‘edge[s]’’ and ‘‘normal center[s]’’ of social groups and the strengthening of the ‘‘communal body’’ through Monstrous Cultures ‘‘killing the monsters—in as public and showy a way as possible’’ (Ingebretsen, ‘‘Monster-Making’’ 26).4 As Steinbeck uses figures and notions of mon- Steinbeck’s clearest exhibition of monstrosity strosity in his fiction, he also works with the other as a type of sociopolitical regulatory device is side of the coin—the cultures in which these probably Of Mice and Men (1937). The story monstrosities are created. In most of Steinbeck’s confronts monstrosity in the sense of both phys- early fiction, the cultural core is local. Tortilla Flat ical aberrations and abstract, deployable political (1935), while written as a deliberate glorification constructs. Lenny, of course, is an anomaly— of a social class and way of life that lie outside of monsters, after all, are not born but created dis- national norms, focuses entirely on a fringe com- cursively within communities—who possesses su- munity and culture—that of the paisanos who live perhuman strength, works like a machine, and on the outskirts of Monterey. To a God Unknown lacks normal human capacities for judgment and (1933) is largely limited to the workings of a large restraint. With the exception of George, who is family and a small valley community, and Of Mice capable of seeing him as he is (a human being who and Men concerns itself with the goings-on of one means no one any harm), Lenny is a monster to particular ranch. With The Grapes of Wrath the culture in which he lives and must ultimately (1939), however, Steinbeck clearly increases his be ‘‘staked’’ (Ingebretsen’s term), or ceremonially scope. Rather than offering a story, like Tortilla killed, by the dominant culture of the book in Flat, that quietly offers a counterpoint to a main- order to eliminate a threat to the purity and virtue stream culture that never actually becomes a topic Monstrous Ecology Lloyd Willis 359 of discussion in its narrative, in The Grapes of crime to be happy without equipment. Wrath, Steinbeck creates a narrative that overtly The doctrine of our time is that man can’t confronts the national problem of the Dust Bowl get along without a whole hell of a lot of and moves its characters across half the continent. stuff. You may not be preaching it, but you’re living treason.’’ (61) The Joads maintain a system of core cultural val- ues that privilege agrarianism, independence, and toughness, but they face an increasingly frighten- Through negations—explanations of what the se- ing and increasingly more powerful culture of er is not—Steinbeck outlines the characteristics of technology, progress, and capitalism that is ad- America’s cultural core. The seer does not fit into vanced by faceless conglomerates (the business the mainstream because he is reasonable; there- forces that displace them from their farm) and by fore, mainstream American culture is not reason- cyborg men who, merged with tanklike tractors, able. He does not fit in because he is not literally drive the family from its land. After The materialistic, he does not need stuff; mainstream Grapes of Wrath, the cultural core that Steinbeck American culture, in this assessment, is therefore engages is consistently national in scope and un- profoundly materialistic. The most interesting el- derstood as profoundly materialistic, consump- ement of these comments is not that Steinbeck, tive, wasteful, and antagonistic toward any form through Doc, damns the core values of American of individuality. Characters who exist outside culture as wayward, but that he describes the ab- of this core—visionary and prophetic characters errant seer as endangered because of his difference like Tom Joad and Jim Casy—moreover, live pre- and his power of speech. Steinbeck understands carious lives on a cultural border that is vigilantly that although the seer may not be committing a patrolled and violently defended against subver- codified crime by living outside of cultural ex- sives and radicals. pectations, he can be punished simply because his The different levels of political engagement way of life is incomprehensible to those around displayed in Tortilla Flat and The Grapes of him. It is only because he is silent, ‘‘not preach- Wrath also exist in Cannery Row (1945) and ing,’’ it seems, that the seer has not been branded Sweet Thursday (1954), two novels set in the same monstrous and killed in the name of preserving place and inhabited by essentially the same cast of the status quo of progress, materialism, and characters.
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