John Steinbeck: the Man and the Environment (Intertextuality in the Social Awareness of Steinbeck’S in Dubious Battle, of Mice and Men, and the Grapes of Wrath)

JOHN STEINBECK: THE MAN AND THE ENVIRONMENT (INTERTEXTUALITY IN THE SOCIAL AWARENESS OF STEINBECK’S IN DUBIOUS BATTLE, OF MICE AND MEN, AND THE GRAPES OF WRATH)

AN UNDERGRADUATE THESIS

Presented as Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Sarjana Sastra in English Letters

RINI HANDAYANI

Student Number: 984214162

ENGLISH LETTERS STUDY PROGRAMME DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LETTERS FACULTY OF LETTERS SANATA DHARMA UNIVERSITY YOGYAKARTA 2007

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would express my gratitude to my advisor, Drs. Hirmawan Widjanarka,

M.Hum. for his valuable advice and guidance. I also express my gratitude to my co-advisor Dra. Th. Enny Anggraini, M.A., for her advice and suggestion in revising my thesis. I also would like to thank to all of the lecturers and staffs, especially Dr. Fr. Alip, M.Pd., M.A., Dr. Novita Dewi, M.A.,M.S., Hons. Drs.

F.X. Siswadi, M.A., Arti Wulandari, S.S, M.A., Tatang Iskarna, S.S, M.Hum,

Dewi Widyastuti, SPd, M.Hum., and Mbak Nik.

Thanks to Medira Ferayanti in the University of London, Cik Irene Amelia in Amsterdam and Dra. Milda M.Si in Bandung for your lovely friendship. Good luck with your study! To my beloved friend, Peter Healey in Midland, West

Australia, thank you for your sympathy when “The catastrophe of May, 2006” happened. You empowered me emotionally. To the family of Nora Robbers in

Amsterdam and my parents who love me, I appreciate your valuable advice to face unpredictable life. I will never forget you, all.

My deepest gratitude is also addressed to my former colleagues in the following companies. First, it goes to all of the staffs in PT. Rekayasa Industry

Construction and Engineering, Kalibata, Jakarta, PKT Bontang, and BNI 46

Bontang, Kal-Tim thank you for trusting me to work with you all.

To all of the staffs and the former superintendents in PT. Badak NGL,

Bontang, Kal-Tim, thank you supporting my husband in the plant site. To the former manager of PT. Total Indonesiee, Balikpapan, Monsieur Michele

Monkerhey and my friend Drs. Roni Suryo Baskoro, M.Hum., thank you for

iv spending your time with me to teach me French. I’m so sorry I could not finish my project in Balikpapan. I hope some day I can complete it. I also thank all of the lecturers of Bandung Institute of Technology who have been in Bontang, especially Dr. Sanggono, M.Sc. who is always humble lecturer. Thank you to teach my husband to know more about chemistry and dedication in work.

To all PRAMIS community in Bandung and Jakarta, thank you for accepting me to be the member of PRAMIS. To Drs. B. Rahmanto, M.Hum. thank you for the same hobby of reading Pram. To the family of the late P.A.T, thank you for your warm welcome in your nice house. To Egi, QB Bookshop Senayan

Plaza, Jakarta, thank you for choosing me Steinbeck’s books. To Mrs. John Szot and all of the American citizens in Bontang, who did not want to discuss the

American policy and the communism in America during 30’s with me, I’m so sorry if you think that talking about the American politics is “useless”. I just want to get the complete data for Steinbeck.

Lastly, I would like to thank my husband, Purwito and my daughter,

Jasmine Purwitaningrum, for their constant love. I promise I will be home soon. I

LOVE YOU.

RINI HANDAYANI

v TABLE OF CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE ...... i

APPROVAL PAGE ...... ii

ACCEPTENCE PAGE ...... iii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS...... iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS...... v

ABSTRACT ………………………...... vi

ABSTRAK ...... viii

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION...... 1

A. Background of the Study...... 1

B. Problem Formulation ...... 3

C. Objectives of the Study ...... 3

D. Definitions of Terms ...... 3

CHAPTER II THEORETICAL REVIEW...... 5

A. Review of Related Studies ...... 5

B. Review of Related Theories...... 10

1. Theory Character and Characterization...... 10

2. Theory of Socialist Realism ...... 11

3. Theory of Capitalism...... 14

4. Theory of Marxism...... 15

C. Review on the Historical-Biographical Background ...... 17

D. Theoretical Framework ...... 21

vi CHAPTER III METHODOLOGY ...... 23

A. Object of the Study ...... 23

B. Approach of the Study ...... 25

C. Method of the Study...... 27

CHAPTER IV ANALYSIS ...... 29

A. The Suffering of the Lower Class; Weak in Bargaining, Power,

and Poverty as seen in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice

and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath...... 29

B. Possible Backgrounds that May Influence John Steinbeck’s

Tendency to Shape his Social Consciousness by Revealing the

Social Issues in the Three Novels ...... 39

CHAPTER V CONCLUSION ...... 43

BIBLIOGRAPHY...... 45

APPENDICES ...... 48

vii ABSTRACT

Rini, Handayani (2007) John Steinbeck: The Man and the Environment (Intertextuality in the Social Awareness of Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University.

In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of, are related in the stories and written by the same writer, John Steinbeck. These novels reveal the social realism issues. The writer lives during the Great Depression in America in which people dream of the future land and the prosperity. In the Promised land, California, all their dreams are ruined and the poor remain poor. Every character tries to struggle and reach his or her dream. It is obvious that John Steinbeck uses his own research and interview with the migrant people to give the detail condition of the lower class people. Steinbeck sees the dominant ideologies neither communism nor capitalism actually bring a better hope for its participants. Therefore in this study on social awareness, there are two questions that should be answered to reveal the intertextuality in the social awareness of John Steinbeck’s novels. The questions are (1) How are the lower class’s sufferings described in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath?, (2) What possible background may have influenced John Steinbeck’s tendency to vocalize the lower class’s sufferings and their struggle in the term of social issues? There are two approaches of the study used in analyzing the problems. They are Marxist approach and History-biographical approach. Both approaches are used to have a deep understanding on John Steinbeck’s social awareness of the lower class people. The discussion of problem one points out the characteristics of each character in Steinbeck’s novels as the part of the lower class people who often suffer and they can not control the holistic system. The ruling class people try to preserve their position and prosperity for themselves. During the Great Depression, most of depressed people, represented by the lower class people posses impossible dream. The discussion of problem two is the possible background may have influenced John Steinbeck to vocalize the suffering and the way of the lower class people struggling. Steinbeck lives in the period of the Great Depression and settles in California. He himself is a poverty witness. He is obsessed with the ideology of communism. Then, he changes his mind after realizing that communism also exploits its participants. He is still on the side of the poor, but he is not a member of communist party. The conclusions of those discussions on each character in John Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath and the possible background may have influenced Steinbeck to vocalize the lower class’s sufferings and the way of their struggling are the changing step of Steinbeck to bring the democracy spirit and to respect all of kind of humanity.

viii ABSTRAK

RINI HANDAYANI (2007). John Steinbeck: The Man and the Environment (Intertextuality in the Social Awareness of Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath). Yogyakarta: Department of English Letters, Faculty of Letters, Sanata Dharma University.

In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, dan The Grapes of Wrath adalah novel-novel yang saling berhubungan dikarenakan ditulis pengarang yang sama, yaitu John Steinbeck. Kita bisa mengetahui isu-isu realism sosial. Hidup di masa Depresi tahun 1930an, orang-orang cenderung memiliki impian yang tidak dapat terwujud, yaitu tentang kemakmuran. Orang-orang bermigrasi ke California yang dipercaya sebagai “Tanah yang dijanjikan”, sayang, seluruh mimpi orang-orang kelas bawah hancur di negeri yang korup ini. Dalam karya-karya Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, dan The Grapes of Wrath terlihat gambran penderitaan orang murba.Ia sadar bahwa apapun itu ideologinya, komunis ataupun kapitalis merugikan bagi yang mengikutinya. Karenanya dalam studi kesadaran sosial, ada dua pertanyaan mendasar yang dijawab untuk menyingkap studi dalam karya-karya Steinbeck. Pertanyaannya adalah (1) Bagaimana penderitaan kaum bawah dalam tiga novel tersebut digambarkan? (2) Kemungkinan apa saja yang melatarbelakangi Steinbeck untuk menyuarakan penderitaan kaum kelas bawah dan daya juang mereka selama masa Depresi? Pendekatan yang digunakan untuk menganalisis permasalahan tersebut adalah pendekatan secara Marxis dan pendekatan sejarah-biografi tentang Steinbeck. Pendekatan-pendekatan ini digunakan untuk mendapatkan pengertian kesadaran sosial bagi kaum marginal, dan berdasarkan biograpi sang pengarang, penulis bisa berasumsi bahwa Steinbeck dipengaruhi lingkungannya untuk membela kaum lemah ini. Dalam diskusi pada permasalahan pertama menghasilkan gambaran penderitaan kaum murba.Kaum kapitalis berusaha mempertahankan kemapanan dan kenyamanan hidup serta menolak berbagi dengan kaum murba. Bagi kaum murba, hidup dalam masa Depresi memungkinkan mereka memiliki impian yang tak pernah terwujud. Pada diskusi bagian kedua adalah kemungkinan yang melatarbelakangi Steinbeck untuk membela kaum murba . Pada awalnya, ia terobsesi dengan komunis di Amerika lalu berubah pikiran setelah ia menyadari bahwa sistem komunis juga memperdaya pengikutnya.Ia terus berpihak pada kaum murba, namun bukan berarti ia adalah pengarang yang beraliran komunis. Kesimpulan dari diskusi tentang karakteristik setiap tokoh dalam karya Steinbeck dan latar belakang Steinbeck untuk memihak kaum murba adalah mencerminkan perubahan sikapnya untuk menyuarakan semangat demokrasi dan kemanusiaan.

ix CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background of the Study

Among the Communist revolutionary activities, one which played an important role is artistic activity, whose style of creation is called socialist realism.

Lenin says that art should stand on the side of the working class and grow with them. He believes that it is a must for a writer to be a partisan and especially literature is an obligation to be part of the proletariat or the working class.

In www.tparents.com, one of the articles of Maxim Gorky, the founder of socialist realism (1868-1936), states that it is necessary for the writers to stand on the high viewpoint to see the filthy crimes of capitalism, and all of the greatness of the heroic activities of the proletariat.

One of the American writers, who concerns with the suffering of the lower class is John Steinbeck. His writings often make the government and Associated

Farmers, Inc.in California inflamed. Detractors accuse the author of everything from harboring communist sympathies to exaggerating the conditions in migrant camps. The uproar draws the attention of Eleanor Roosevelt, who came to

Steinbeck's defense, and eventually led to congressional hearings on migrant camp conditions and changes in labor laws.

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Eleanor Roosevelt in Warren French’s syndicate column in May Day, states that The Grapes of Wrath was exaggerated by Steinbeck. Gratefully,

Steinbeck responds and says if Eleanor Roosevelt constantly calls him a liar.

In Kern County, meanwhile, the president of the Associated Farmers of

Kern County asserts that a book obscene in the extreme sense attacks them.

John Steinbeck states that The Associated Farmers, which presumes to speak for the farms of California, failed. He, in his book America and Americans

(2003:83), shows us the wage cut for the tenants and Associated Farmers’ contribution to make people hungry.

Born in Salinas, California, in 1902, John Steinbeck grows up in fertile agricultural valley about twenty-five miles from the Pacific Coast. He is the witness of the poverty, injustice, and the suffering of the lower class. California, supposed to be the “Promised Land,” is a corrupt land. He has written three powerful novels of the late1930s, focusing on the California laboring class: In

Dubious Battle (1938), Of Mice and Men (1936 ), and The Grapes of Wrath

(1939).

In this study, In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of

Wrath are intertextualized as the main objects of this analysis by revealing the suffering of the lower class to see the continuum thematic structure and to see the possible background that may influence Steinbeck’s tendency to shape his social consciousness by revealing the social issues in the three novels above.

B. Problem Formulation

Based on background above the problems of the thesis are formulated as follows:

1. How are the lower class’s sufferings described in Steinbeck’s In Dubious

Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath?

2. What possible background may have influenced John Steinbeck’s

tendency to shape his social consciousness by revealing the social issues in

the three novels above?

C. Objectives of Study

The aim of this study is to answer the problems that have been formulated.

There are two objectives of this study. The first objective is to analyze the lower class’s suffering and the second is to analyze the possible background which may have influenced John Steinbeck’s tendency to shape his social consciousness by revealing the social issues in the three novels above.

D. Definition of Terms

In order to understand the subject matter of this undergraduate thesis, to avoid misunderstanding, some terms need to be defined clearly.

The first term is intertextuality. According to Julia Kristeva in The Harper

Dictionary of Modern Thought (1980: 436), intertextuality is the relationship between texts, especially literary texts. She says that it is a description of the

necessary interdependence that any literary has with a mass of others, which preceded it. A literary text is not an isolated phenomenon, it is “constructed from a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another.”

In Phenomenona, Journal of Language and Literature Vol.4 No.3-

February 2001 page 22 Novita Dewi in her article “Intertextuality in John Koch’s

Living Dangerously”, says that intertextuality is concerned with the production of new texts out of others in order to create meaning.

The second term is social awareness. In www.campwest.org according to

Daniel Goleman, social awareness refers to a spectrum that runs form instantaneously sensing another’s inner state, to understanding his or her feelings and thoughts, and complicated social institutions. It includes:

1. Primary empathy: feeling with others; sensing nonverbal emotional

signals

2. Attunement: listening with full receptivity; attuning to a person.

3. Empathetic accuracy: understanding another person’s thoughts,

feelings and intentions.

4. Social cognition: knowing how the social world works.

CHAPTER II

THEORETICAL REVIEW

A. Review of Related Studies

Tim Morris, in www.uta.edu/english/tim/lection/index/html, says that the characters as seen in In Dubious Battle are not notable for depth of characterization. The rural setting does not offer much good place writing because the place is too generic. It is a novel of action, but the action is conveyed mostly through talk. Much of the novel takes place in the tents of the strikers where their leaders discuss the day's action and the plan for the next strike.

Erica Frank, in www.gradesaver.com Problem vs. Picaresque states that In

Dubious Battle is a picaresque novel that portrays the rascal people. Jim and Mac could be described as rascals in In Dubious Battle. In this novel, Mac asks Jim if he has blue jeans and Jim's response is no. Mac insists, "Well, we'll have to go out and buy you some in a second-hand store, then" (39). However, Mac and Jim were not dressed as migrant workers because they were migrant workers, but because they wanted to look as if they were. Failing in this characteristic would not be as bad, but In Dubious Battle also fails to be episodic in nature.

The events leading up to the death of Jim are not interchangeable. The novel has a set structure that needs to be followed to maintain the given plotline.

A writer could not place the arrival of strikebreakers before the strike and you could not put the arrest of Dakin before the gathering of the strikers in Mr.

Anderson's field. Steinbeck designed a set development for Jim's character that

5 6

takes a certain path to accomplish. As seen in the movie The Grapes of Wrath, its sub-stories are interchangeable. The episodes still make sense for the plotline to move, add, or delete.

In www.creighton.edu, Michael Levant, “A struggle to achieve identity: the story of Curley’s wife “, states on the surface. The character of Curley's wife in John Steinbeck's classic novel Of Mice and Men seems insignificant and one- dimensional. She appears briefly in only three scenes and often repeats the same questions or statements. Critics consequently disregard her as "characterless, nameless”.

Mark Spilka claims that Steinbeck himself has given this woman no other name but 'Curley's wife,' as if she had no personal identity for him.

Charlotte Hadella concurs in her criticism of the novel, "The fiction does not offer an authoritative or absolute statement on the woman's character". She believes Steinbeck even has "difficulty in finding his own words to describe the character once he has taken her out of the context of the story" in a letter he wrote to Claire Luce, the actress who portrayed her in the 1930s play version of the novel.

These comments seem to suggest that John Steinbeck is careless or lax throughout the novel in his development of Curley's wife. However, neither

Steinbeck nor his fiction is truly to blame for Curley's wife's lack of identity.

Charlotte Hadella helps illuminate the reason why Steinbeck creates

Curley's wife without a distinct identity when she says, "neither the context of the play nor the context of the woman's life allows her full humanity; for this reason,

her portrait is incomplete". A psychological analysis of Curley's wife reveals what

Hadella touches upon in the latter part of her statement: Curley's wife has yet to establish an identity for herself. The "context" of her life has left her deprived of many of the established means necessary for the development of an identity.

Therefore, it is essential that Steinbeck omits both a name and a definite identity in his creation of Curley's wife in order to accurately portray her character's psychological state.

In www.Bookrags.com, Attell, a doctoral candidate at the University of

California, Berkeley, explains that Steinbeck departs from the depiction of a woman in Of Mice and Men. Curley’s wife functions almost as a force of nature.

She leaves only shattered dreams in her wake. The ending appears to be at odds

Steinbeck’s explicit exhortation for social change. He seems to appeal a higher form of wisdom in the character of Slim, who does not aspire to anything beyond the sphere occupies.

There is a criticism from Rod W. Horton and Herbert W. Edwards in their book Backgrounds of American Literary Thought (1952: 242) criticizes the tendency of John Steinbeck to be an opportunist in the “leftist” eye. The writer who has being the most effective person in portraying the plight of the disposed farmers is John Steinbeck, whose Grapes of Wrath (1939) has often been called the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of the Depression. However, Steinbeck does not always present the poor and outcast as objects of pity or as in need of social reformation.

Steinbeck’s treatments for the happy poor are, of course, the labor novel In

Dubious Battle (1938) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939). The Marxian are not at

all pleased with the former, because the methods of the labor organization in the novel were portrayed as being frankly opportunistic, and the author refuses to take sides, leaving the issue in doubt.

In www.home.pacific.net.au./greg.hub/BattleHymnTwain.html.com, an article of G. Smith states that, Steinbeck is fully aroused and unequivocally on the side of his disposed farmers. His treatment of entrepreneurs and businessmen of all types is scathing in the extreme, and the chapter on the sales methods used by the second hand-car dealers is a minor classic of savage irony and satire.

Steinbeck still hardly conforms to the rest of the Marxian doctrine although he openly expressed his dislike to the system of capitalism. His description of the caterpillar tractor tilling the fields and his implied solution of everyman on his own forty acres of the good earth is the opposite of the Marxian call for the creation of a vast industrial proletariat. In short, to Marxist Steinbeck is merely a sentimental reactionary.

Wilfred L. Guerin et al. in their book A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature (1999: 329) state that the Marxist critic wishes to go beyond mere concern with literature’s inevitable disclosure of tensions and contradictions within a society. He or she may espouse the production theory of Louis

Althusser. According to his theory, through the ideology that capitalism has degenerated-the structures of thought, feelings, and behavior that maintain its control over society-ideology. Thus, we get fictions that gloss over the contradictions in order to justify capitalism. A writer who is fully committed to

Marxism would feel compelled to transform the modes of production so that his

or her work would show the transformation of social relationships. The ideal

Marxist work would present not just a powerful story but also a workable solution to socioeconomic ills. Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath might have the first part; the second remains to be found.

In www.filmcritic.com/misc/emporum/nsf, Christopher Null states that

John Ford's adaptation of the John Steinbeck novel is moving and heartfelt, beside its random structure and rambling, as well as overwrought (and overly political) narrative. Henry Fonda owns the show as Tom Joad, a greedy corporation has ousted a prison parolee in the 1930s that returns to his Oklahoma home to discover his family from their farm when the infamous "dust bowl" hits. The family packs it up for California to try to make a go of it as migrant farm workers, which doesn't necessarily pan out for the best, thanks to Tom's penchant for getting into fights with "Okies go home" types. The Grapes of Wrath pours on the populist and neo-Communist schmaltz, but Fonda's portrayal of the permanently- down-on-his-luck Tom really makes us feel sorry for him.

The reviews of those critics can be used to develop this thesis as a new study which scrutinizes three novels The Dubious Battle, The Mice and Men, and

The Grapes of Wrath in social realism issue revealed from the characters and the suffering of lower class. Most previous critics discuss the failure of John

Steinbeck to be a leftist. However, this thesis will defense that Steinbeck is still a proletarian writer with the spirit of individualism and libertarian by revealing the continuum of three novels from the social context to reach the thematic relation.

In this case, the thematic relation of three works is the social injustice issue.

B. Review of Related Theories

1.Theory of Character and Characterization

In An Introduction to Literary Studies (1999:17-21), Mario Klarer states that the character can be differentiated into two method of presentation. First, explanatory characterization is the character, which is presented with selective, and judging narrator; in short, it is a kind of telling characterization. Second, dramatic characterization where the character can be analyzed from the way he or she acts. There is no direct judge to recognize the character, but our perception is needed.

M.H. Abrams, in his book A Glossary of Literary Terms (1981:20-21) divides characters in fiction into flat characters and round characters. Flat characters are “a single idea of quality”. Flat characters also has few characteristic and even has no desires, motivations, or conflicts such as man against man, man against his society, or man against himself. Therefore, a flat character does not change from the beginning to the end of the story making the character is easy to remember. Since the character is a simple or static character, it is presented without much individualizing detail and can be described in single phase or sentence. On the other hand, round character is more complex than a flat character. Flat character has many characteristic and complex desires, motivations and conflicts. Because of the characteristics, he must be changing his character from the beginning to the end of work.

M.J. Murphy, in his book Understanding Unseen (1972: 161-173), explains another theory of characterization. The first way is from personal description. He states that the reader from a person’s appearance in many sides can describe a character. The author can tell the details of a character, such as the face, the eyes, the skin, or the clothes. The second way is character as seen by another, besides describing the character directly. The character can be described from another opinion. The third way is from the speech. The reader can understand the character’s way of saying. It can be the clue to the character when she/he speaks, in conversation with the other, give opinion. The forth way is from character’s past life. The character shapes the clue of character’s past life. The reader can understand the character’s past from direct comment of the author, through person’s thought, through the conversation or through the medium of another person. The fifth way is from the conversation with others. The sixth way of the characterization is from the reaction of the character about various events.

The seventh way is from the direct comment from author. The eighth way is from the thought of the character. The last way is mannerism, which author describes from the character’s habits.

2.Theory of Socialist Realism

Pramoedya Ananta Toer explains to us that the socialist realism is an official doctrine governing the authors to write the governmental propaganda in the former Soviet Union. It reveals the hypocrisy of the church and all events accord with the Marxism view that the struggle among economic classes is the essential dynamic of the society. Lenin sees how important the power of culture

through the literature, which is hoped to bring the victory of the communism. The authors must depict the life of the working classes, who are oppressed by the cruel system of the capitalism.

Maxim Gorky, the founder of the socialist realism, in Pramoedya Ananta

Toer’s Realism-Sosialis Satra Indonesia (2003: 20) states that literature must be part of the proletarian people. This method brings the triumph of the socialism and the integral part of the human beings to vanish the exploitation and the oppression for the working classes; the peasants and the farmer. Gorky thinks that the bourgeoisies are promoting fascism and discarding their humanism like an out worn mask, which can no longer conceal the fangs of the beast of pray, is discarding. They have come to understand for their personalities and decays.

This theory places the reality as the global ingredient to make the dialectic thought perfect. On the contrary, the bourgeoisie realism or humanism realism only does emphasize on the materialism. It is obvious that humanism realism is just for the rich people who have already in the established position and living in luxury, include their education system for their children.

Socialist realism emphasizes on the lower class’ sufferings. First, the militancy because they have no compromise with the foe is the main feature for class sufferings. Second, the efficiency by making his foes surrender. As stated by

Maxim Gorky if the foe does not surrender, he must be destroyed. This system tries to abolish the social stratification, abolishment all the possibilities the rising of minority class who exploits the majority who is productive and creative. This militancy preserves the spirit to fight against the international capitalism.

With this militancy, the social realism author who has controlled the reality tries to change it based on the social justice. The spirit of the changing is completely revolutionary because social realism does not teach people to accept the reality and give up easily. This condition demands the continuum revolution in his thought.

Literature as the device of the struggle must be on the side of the proletarian. Literature and arts, like all other activities, can not be taken apart from the economic and political fields, but they must be included in them.

The social realism authors do not have to be afraid to conjoin with politics.

They must bring the patriotic spirit and the triumph of the socialism. Using the dialectic philosophy or the dichotomous way sees the social contradiction and the division between the exploit and exploited class.

Generally, the Marxian thinks that bourgeoisies and capitalists are the prime enemy for the working class people. The capitalists have succeeded to make a significant gap between the capitalist and the labor because they tend to appreciate everything from the parameter of materialism. They are profit-oriented persons and no matter what they do include exploiting the working class and brainwashing for people to think of the suffering of the lower class. It is obvious for the upper class to preserve his position. He has strong position and can get profit from what the lower class. For the lower class, he has to work to get food and salary because he has no other choice. If he does not want to work, other will replace him.

The upper class exploits the lower class continually. This state seems to maintain and support the upper class. Here the bound between the upper class and the state is clearly defined as a fact. They are not undeniable. The minority whose power to rule people with his economical power dominates the structure of the state. The state firstly makes a policy to preserve the ruling class or the upper class. There is always a tendency for the state to maintain the ruling class’ position. No wonder if the state’s policy gives much advantage for the upper class.

3. Theory of Capitalism

Capitalism has something to do with religious point of view, especially that of Calvinist. Heibroner in his book The Making of Economic Society (1962:

54) states that according to the theories of the German sociologist Max Weber and the English economic historian, R.H. Tawney, the underlying cause lay in the rise of a new theological point of view contained in the teachings of the Protestant reformer, John Calvin (1509-1564).

The changing in religious matter based on the attitudes towards the material world. Catholicism and Christianity in general before Calvin “tended to look upon worldly activity as vanity”. In contrast, Calvinism provided a religious atmosphere by encouraging people for wealth seeking and the temper of a business-like world. Calvinists see the energetic merchant as a Godly man. The meaning of work and worth is clearly defined as the arising notion that the more successful a man, the more worthy he is.

4. Theory of Marxism

Charles E. Bressler in his book Literary Criticism (1999: 213) explains the thought of Marxism. According to Marx, history and therefore an understanding of people and their actions and beliefs is determined by economic conditions.

Marx maintains that an intricate web of social relationships emerges when any group of people engage in the production of goods. For example, a few will be the employers, but many will be employees. It is the employers (the bourgeoisies) who have the economic power and who readily gain social and political control of their society. Eventually this upper class will articulate their beliefs, values, and even art. Consciously and unconsciously they ill force these ideas, or what Max calls their ideology, on the working class, otherwise known as the proletariat, or the wage slaves. In effect, the bourgeoisies will develop and control the superstructure. In such a system, the rich become richer while the poor become poorer and more oppressed.

In such a system the bourgeoisies’ ideology effectively perpetuates the system on which it is founded. Referred to as false consciousness, this ideology also describes the way in which the dominant class shapes and controls individual’s self-definition or class-consciousness.

In a capitalist society, Marx declares that such an ideology leads to fragmentation and alienation of individuals, particularly those of the proletariat.

As a direct result of division labor within the capitalist society, workers no longer have contact with the entire process of producing, distributing, and consuming material goods. Individuals are therefore cut off from the full value of their work

as well as from each other; each performing discrete functional roles assigned t him by the bourgeoisies. To rid society of this situation, Marx believes that the government must own all industries and control the economic production of a country to protect the people from the oppression of the bourgeoisie.

James William Coleman in his book Social Problems (1980:16-18) says that class conflicts arise in part because people share the same values. If two groups of people palace a high value on wealth and power and only one group have access to them, conflict is likely to result. Such conflicts are usually class conflict. Many sociologists believe that class conflict over wealth, power, and status is the basic cause of most social problem.

A conflict theorist need not focus only on either class conflict or values conflicts. Indeed, most sociologists recognize that conflict can arise both from differences in values and from difference in the distribution of wealth, power, and status. Class conflict, according to Marx, is a result of an inevitable historical process. He thinks that the workers (proletariat) would develop a growing awareness of their exploitation by the bourgeoisie and predicted that their growing political organization would eventually lead to violent class conflict. A revolution won by workers over their masters would, Marx contended, leads to a classless society. Private property and inheritance would be abolished, steeply graduated income taxes would be introduced; education and training would be free; and production would be organized for use, not profit.

The division employer and employee is the binding system which shows the wage work done and when employer side tries to maximize its own interests

regardless of the interests of the other. In other word, employer exploits the employee. This case depersonalizes employee people relation by turning them into simple economic transactions subject to market forces. The employers however try creating loyalty among their employees by creating ties of a non-economic nature.

For Marxian author, they are hoped to reveal the proletariat consciousness.

They become aware of its objective class position vis- á vis the bourgeoisie and the historic role in the transformation of capitalism into socialism. The proletariat would develop its own class. This consciousness would develop out of the working class’s concrete experience of the contradiction between capitalist relations of production based on individual private property and the emerging collective forces of production, which created a proletariat whose power is collectively based and experienced.

C. Review on the Historical-Biographical Background

In October 29, 1929, the stock market crashed, triggering the Great

Depression, the worst economic collapse in the history of the modern industrial world. It spread from the United States to the rest of the world, lasting from the end of 1929 until the early 1940s. With banks failing and businesses closing, more than 15 million Americans (one-quarter of the workforce) became unemployed.

The rich people became poor because their money which they invested American share market has got collapsed. They went bankrupt in 1930’s even some of them gone crazy and went to the asylum.

By the 1930s money was scarce because of the depression, so people did what they could to make their lives happy. In the Great Depression the American dream had become a nightmare. The land once was the opportunity and now the land of desperation. What was once the land of hope and optimism had become the land of despair. The American people were questioning all the maxims on which they had based their lives - democracy, capitalism, and individualism. The best hope for a better life was California. Many Dust Bowl farmers packed their families into cars, tied their few possessions on the back, and sought work in the agricultural fields or cities of the West - their role as independent landowners gone forever.

Steinbeck witnessed great social changes caused by high spirit of capitalism and materialism. His characters in the three novels above are invested fruitlessly in an effort to achieve social position. During the American experience, the characters are written fully aware of what it suggested about his/her time and place. They have something in common i.e. people intend to go to West America to pursue their dream becomes rich.

Accompanying the flourishing capitalism and the technological innovations they affected almost all of the social interactions of the American society. To Wright et al. The Democratic Experience: A Short American History

(1963: 348), the decade was one of profound change in American history, a time when motion picture, radio, automobiles, and electricity were changing the whole scenery of the society.

Writers of the 1920’s experienced a growing dissatisfaction with and alienation from American society and twentieth century values. In particular, they were disillusioned by the ease with which Woodrow Wilson had converted moral idealism into a zeal for war; they were alienated by the triumph of materialism and business values in the postwar period; and they were exasperated by the smug self-satisfaction of the American upper classes.

Capitalism places individuals in their fullest capacity to achieve the most possible expectation in human life. There is no chance for the working class people represented in John Steinbeck’s three novels above to come out of their economic pressures, both from the production and commercial sides will be left aside during the Great Depression.

American government takes the greatest part in realizing the welfare of the nation by emphasizing the expansion of the agriculture, manufacture, and commerce. So that, since capitalism can operate on each of those fields of economy as well as affect the life of the society in general. It was the business of the government to achieve the balance of economy. From social point of view, the balance must include the welfare state of the nation including the interests of both upper and lower class.

In any case, the bad side of capitalism occurs when the accumulation of wealth in certain hands represented by the landowners and Associated Farmers.

The accumulation of power is also in their hand. For the working class people, they become the victims of others’ freedom. They have no access to get respectable lives and even to get liberty and property.

In The Portable Steinbeck (1971: xix), Covici states that Steinbeck has capacity to express his emotional truth, moral value, and social relevance all come down to life upon the page, and the experience of being human. His works should long give to his readers the delight in which all lasting art has its beginning and its end.

Steinbeck’s heart goes out to these humble people. He tries not pitying them; he empathizes. He himself knows how to work hard. In his boyhood, he works as a fruit picker, ranch hand, bricklayer, and delivery boy. His own experience gives him a genuine appreciation for labor. As an adult, Steinbeck travels extensively through the West from Oklahoma to California, experiencing first-hand the sad and frightening conditions of migrant workers. He lives in their camps, listens to their authentic stories and collects material for his writing. The author lives through the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic collapse grows severest in the center of the country after a prolonged drought turned

Oklahoma into a "Dust Bowl."

Parini, his biographer, reveals the painful experience of writing for

Steinbeck, who endures numerous ailments from the early days of his career. The biographer In the case of Steinbeck's master work, The Grapes of Wrath, the author carefully researches California migrant camps, a major element of the story as Oklahomans fleeing the great dust bowl resides in them on the way to establishing their own roots moving westward. Steinbeck has an excellent guide,

Tom Collins, who managed the Kern County Migrant Camp and became a friend of the author's. Steinbeck's great novel is dedicated partially to Collins as he

wrote: "To Tom —who lived it." It is a simple dedication which meant so much, so typically earthy, and so typically Steinbeck. Tom Collins, Steinbeck’s chief source, guide, discussant and chronicle accurate migrant information. Collins not only put Steinbeck in touch with the real life prototypes of the Joads and Jim

Casy, but also himself serves as Steinbeck’s real-life prototype for Jim Rawley, the fictional manager of the Weedpatch government camp. Collins possesses a genius for camp administration- he had the right mix of fanaticism, vision, and tactfulness.

D. Theoretical Framework

The theory of characters and characterization, social realism, and historical- biographical background will be useful in order to solve the problem formulation that has been stated. The theory of character and characterization is important to understand the pattern of a character and the making of a character.

Some experts explain about the theory of character and characterization. They are

Mario Klarer, Perrine, M.H. Abrams and M.J. Murphy. The theories help the writer to analyze the kind of personality from the various characters of both novels have and find the action they are doing in the novel in order to analyze the social injustice issue.

The theory of Social Realism, Capitalism, and Marxism help to understand the basic concept of the proletariat’s suffering and the contribution of author to promote a social revolution. Lenin, Maxim Gorxy, Pramoedya A.T, Charles E.

Bressler, Heibroner, R.H. Tawney, James William Coleman, and Wright et al. have given their contribution to the objects of scrutinization of the thematic

relation through the very significant for the analysis of the inequality issue of the wage division and the background of the dichotomous system in labor place, and the tendency for the capitalist to exploit the working class people. We will see the accumulated money in the hands of the ruling class, represented by Associated

Farmers. The last, the review on the Historical-Biographical Background of John

Steinbeck is useful to understand the situation of politic, economy and social during the three novels were written.

CHAPTER III

METHODOLOGY

A. Objects of the Study

The Viking Press published In Dubious Battle in New York in 1938. The central figure of the story is an activist for “the Party” (the American Communist

Party) who is organizing a major strike by the migratory workers. They rise up to against the landowners.

Protagonist Jim and Mac are sent from the City as emissaries of the Party the migrant workers of the fictional Torgas Valley. Mac, the veteran, wants bloodshed, headlines, and celebrity. Jim wants to take revenge for his father. Mac and Jim find allies among the fruit tramps.

Much of the novel takes place in the tents of the strikers in which the leaders talk over the plan of strike. The jaded Doc Burton, an educated physician who helps the Party without believing its rhetoric, represented the voice of John

Steinbeck himself.

Of Mice and Men was published in 1936 in London by Penguin Group.

The story is about two traveling farm workers trying to work up enough money to buy their own farm. It encompasses themes of racism, prejudice against the mentally ill, and the struggle for personal independence.

The story is all about the dreams of a pair of migrant laborers working the

California soil, is critically acclaimed, and is rapidly adapted into a 1939

Hollywood film, starring Lon Chaney Jr. as Lennie and Burgess Meredith as

George.

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This novel has been filmed twice. In the story, George encourages Lennie to pursue his dream by himself. They have ideals and that separates them from the animals, they dream of their own promised land, but the dreams are always too far away and cannot come true in real life. George and Lennie’s dreams of their own little farm, the dream of Curley's wife for a happy marriage to a devoted husband and Crooks on the other hand, dreams of a place where he will be equal to white men. His play, Of Mice and Men, performed at the Savoy Theatre, nominated for a 2004 Laurence Olivier Theatre Award for Best Revival of 2003.

The Viking Press published The Grapes of Wrath in 1939 in New York.

The story is all about the long saga of Joad family from their tenant farm in Dust

Bowl Oklahoma to the Promised Land, California and verdant fields. Hollywood producer, Daryl F. Zanuck, purchases the film rights to John Steinbeck's novel

The Grapes of Wrath within a month of its publication in March 1939, paying

Steinbeck $75000.

The film is released less than one year later - an extremely short time for such a major film, even by Hollywood assembly-line standards. Because

Steinbeck is concerned that his novel be left undiluted, he suggests that 20th

Century Fox should contact Tom Collins, the administrator of the Weedpatch

Camp, and makes him act as an advisor.

John Ford’s greatest films, documents an American social tragedy, which gives the victims a voice through art. Based on the classic John Steinbeck novel, the film recounts the painful, poignant odyssey of the Joad family, Steinbeck’s

Depression-era tenant farmers from Dust Bowl Oklahoma, whose story has come

to represent the plight of the "Okies" for generations of readers—and, through

Ford’s masterpiece, generations of moviegoers too. Indeed, viewing Ford’s film today, more than fifty years after the Depression and the catastrophe of the Dust

Bowl, one realizes just how flawless and wonderful The Grapes of Wrath is, its characters and drama just as moving and sympathetic as when it was first released.

B. Approach of the Study

There are two approaches used here. First is Mimesis approach. This approach sees a literary work as a reflection of its author’s life and times of the characters in the work or in another word according to M.H. Abrams, in The

Mirror and the Lamp (1976: 6) mimesis means the explanation of art as essentially an imitation of aspects of the universe.

Wellek, in Theory of Literature (1956: 102-103) states that literature is a social institution, using as its medium language, a social creation. And, it is only in society that “conventions and norms” in the forms of traditional literary devices as “symbolism and matter” can arise. He finds out that much work has been done upon political and social views of individual writers. So that, literature occurs only in a social context, as part of culture, in a milieu. Therefore, it is understandable that he comes to the opinion that the most common approach to the relation of literature and society is the study of literature as social documents, as assumed pictures of social reality by which literature can be made to yield the outlines of social history.

The second approach is Marxist approach. It sees the problem of the poor and the effects of capitalism. The capitalist exploits the working classes, by determining their salaries and their working conditions. This approach sees the relation of a literary product to the actual economic and social reality of its time and place.

As an approach to literary analysis, Marxism’s methodology is a dynamic process declaring that a proper critique (proper being defined as one that agrees with the socialist or Marxist beliefs) of a text cannot be isolated from the cultural situation from which the text evolved. Necessarily, Marxists argue, the study of literature and the study of society are intricately bound.

Such a relationship demands that a Marxist approach to a text deal with more than the conventional literary themes, matters of style, plot, or characterization, and the usual emphasis on figures of speech and other literary devices. Marxism must move beyond these literary elements to uncover the author’s world and his or her worldview. By placing the text in its historical context and by analyzing the author’s view of life, Marxist critics arrive at one of their chief concerns: ideology. It is the ideology expressed by the author, as evidenced through his or her fictional world, and how this ideology interests with the reader’s personal ideology that interests theses critics.

Such an ideological and obviously political investigation, assert Marxist critics, will expose class conflict, with the dominant class and its accompanying ideology being imposed either consciously or unconsciously on the proletariat.

The task of the critic, then, is to uncover and denounce such anti proletariat

ideology and show how such a destructive ideology entraps the working classes and oppresses them in every area of their lives. Through such an analysis the

Marxist critic wishes to reveal to the working classes how they may end their oppression by the bourgeoisie through a commitment to socialism.

A Marxist approach seeks to expose the dominant class, to demonstrate how the bourgeoisie’s ideology controls and oppresses the working class, and to highlight the elements of society most affected by such oppression. The Marxist critic will lead to action, social change, revolution, and the rise of socialism.

C. Method of the Study

Library research was employed to analyze the novels. There were some steps taken to make this research appropriate. First step was reading the novels.

After reading the novels, the significant points were taken to find what to be analyzed. After finding some significant points, formulating interesting topic was done to find a good research.

The second step was about secondary sources to support the analysis.

Some secondary sources were collected, including the related studies, the related theories, and possible approach. Those secondary sources were consulted to some books, internet sites, thesis, and encyclopedia to extend the quality of this research.

The third step was answering the problems formulated before. The first was analyzing the sufferings of the lower class by using characters and their characterization of In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath the writer assumes that three novels as continuum thematic novels. By applying

theory of characters and characterization, it was useful to elaborate the next problems. The last was analyzing the possible background may have influenced

John Steinbeck’s tendency to shape his social consciousness by revealing the social issues in the three novels above.

CHAPTER IV

ANALYSIS

The analysis is divided into two parts. The first part is the analysis on the lower class’s sufferings described in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and

Men, and The Grapes of Wrath. The last part is the analysis of the possible background may have influenced John Steinbeck’s tendency to shape his social consciousness by revealing the social issues in the three novels above.

A. The Sufferings of the Lower Class: Weak in Bargaining Power, and

Poverty as seen in Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and

The Grapes of Wrath

Most characters in the three novels above share something in common: weak in bargaining power and poverty.

In Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle Jim was in jail for thirty days for vagrancy. Jim is enthusiastic to join the Party and obsessed with the new ideology. He feels that the system of wage is not proper for the working class because it always oppresses them. He has an obsession to make a revolution to change the situation. He believes that for the ruling class represented by the bourgeoisie, who possesses capital, is not deserved to exploit the working class.

Jim smiled. “I’ve read a lot. My old man didn’t want me to read. HE said I’d desert my own people. But I read anyway. One day I met a man in the park and he made me a list of things for me to read. Oh, I’ve read a hell a lot. He made me lists like Plato’s Republic, and the Utopia, and Bellamy, and like Herodotus and Gibbon and Macaulay and Carlyle and Prescott, and like Spinoza and Hegel and Kant and Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. He even made me read Das Kapital. He was a crank, he said. He said he

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wanted to know things without believing them, He liked to group books that all aimed the same direction. (1938:6)

He protests the wage system where the labor has to be faithful to the company where he works, if the worker wants to get higher wage, it means he is a member of “Red” party. If he still wants to work, he has to be faithful to the company. It is impossible for the working class to raise his wage.

Did you ever work at a job where, when you got enough skill to get a raise in pay, you were fired and a new man put in? Did you ever work in a place where they talked about loyalty to the firm, and loyalty meant spying on the people around you? Hell, I’ve got nothing to lose. (1938:7)

He insists to struggle through the violent way to get the triumph of revolution and the prosperity for the working class. The checker in Anderson’s apple orchard thinks that “Reds” is only trouble maker. What “Reds” doing is just provoking the working class. “Reds’ in American history has a stigma and people are scared for this new ideology.

Jim has converted his own religion and absorbed the spirit of atheism; he hates everything related to religion matter. Doctor Burton can feel Jim’s spirit in religious matter but Jim tries to deny it. Jim with the new spirit of communism believes that a religion as a consolation for the oppressed, but believed that such consolation is illusory; religion is the opium of the people. Doctor Burton advices him that it is impossible for a group of men to be God but Jim insists that the economic conditions that produced poverty are overturned, religion will become obsolete. Oppression of the working class is the hallmark of a social and economic system designated” capitalism and the established church are guilty of helping to uphold the capitalist status quo.

“Religion, hell!” Jim cried.” This is men, not God. This is something, you know.” “Well, can’t a group of men be God, Jim?” Jim wrenched himself around. “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 my effect on me. (1938:185)

London is a good guy whose power of authority. He has been alerted that

Jim and Mac is just a trouble-maker but he still keeps working with them. Even he got an offer to work with sufficient wage but with one condition; getting rid of the

“Duo” Marxist but he rejects it.

“They’re reds. They’re getting a lot of good men into trouble. They don’t give a damn about your men if they can start trouble. Get rid of’ em and you can back to work.” The ‘super’ stepped closer pressing his advantage.” Don’t be a fool, London. You know as well I do what the vagrancy laws are. You know vagrancy doesn’t want you to do. And if you don’t know it, the judge here’s named Hunter. Come on, now, London. Bring the men back to work. It’s a steady job for you, five dollar a day.” (1938:83)

Old Anderson is an owner of the small farm land. His ranch is burnt by the

Reds. The Reds manipulates him.He wants to get a better life but the communist represented by Jim and Mac deceive him.

In Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men, George Milton is a companion to Lennie.

They are separated from the normal life and ranked the lowest class because their powerlessness. He has low wage and he can not get a better job but he still has a dream for the land that means he can determine his life and no need to work with other rich people. His dream seems a device to free himself from the exploitation in the ranch.

‘Go on,’ said Lennie. “How’s it gonna be. We gonna get a little place.’ ‘We’ll have a cow,’ said George, ‘An’ we’ll have maybe a pig an’ chickens…an’ down the flat we’ll have a… little piece alfafa…’

‘For the rabbits,’ Lennie shouted. ‘For the rabbits,’ George repeated. “And I get to tend the rabbits.’ ‘An’ you get to tend the rabbits.’ Lennie giggled with happiness: ’An’live on the fatta the lan’.’ ‘Yes’ (1936: 93-94)

Lennie Small is an incapable man with monstrous body. George and

Lennie look after one another and live together. They have the same dream. They dream of their future when they may have job and land. With George beside him, he will safe.

Lennie broke in.’ But not us! An’ why? Because…because I got you to look after me, and you got me to look after you, and that’s why.’ He laughed delightedly. ’Go on now, George.’ “ An’ live off the fatta the lan’,’ Lennie shouted. (1937:18)

At the end of the story, his own friend George ends Lennie’s life tragically. He has to kill Lennie. Lennie never gets what he wants: the barn with the rabbits, and the further land. The tragic life is undeniable for him.

Crooks is a Negro who is treated prejudicially. He is isolated himself from his surrounding because he is black and a cripple man.

‘Why ain’t you wanted?’ Lennie asked “Cause I’m black. They play card in there, but I can’t play because I’m black. They say I stink. Well, I tell you, you all of you stink to me.’ (1936:62-63)

Curley’s wife treats him badly by calling him “Nigger” because she is his master and he is a black slave. Here the obvious division of the rank: the master and slave. Curley’s wife in her strong position may influence Curley to fire him and no more place for him in the barn. Crooks can not do anything to stop her sarcasm remarks.

. In Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath Tom Joad has killed a guy in a big dance in Shawnee, Tulsa and tried to defense himself People assume him as an outlaw since he did something horrible: homicide..

Joan leaned toward the driver.’ Homicide.” he said quickly.” That’s a big word-means I killed a guy. Seven years. I’m sprung in four for keepin’ my nose clean. (1939:11)

He just met Muley Graves who told him that the bank came to tractoring off Joad’s house. His family wants to live and to work in the West work in the ranch.

He is inspired by Jim Casey. He likes to join with Jim to bring the spirit of communism. People who live in the same condition: being exploited will have solidarity among them.

‘Hm-m, he said. “Lookie, Ma. I been all day an’ all night hidin’ alone. Guess who I been thinkin’ about? Casy! He talked a lot. Used ta bother me. But now I been thinkin’ what he said, an’ I can remember-all of it. Says one time he went out in the wilderness to find his own soul, an’ he foun’ he didn’ have no soul that was his’n. Says he foun’ he jus’ got a little piece of a great soul. Says a wilderness ain’t no good’ less it was with the rest, an ’was whole. Funny how I remember. Didn’ think I was even listenin’. But I know now a fella ain’t no good alone.” (1939: 373)

Tom thinks that the life of the working class is not proper at all; they live in the worst situation. It is obvious the different life between the ruling class and working class. As the part of minority, the ruling class makes a decision to preserve his prosperity. On the other hand, the working class is starving everywhere. His weak in bargaining power, he has no choice at all. The lower class is always oppressed and no sufficient energy to take revenge. They have to be solid and well-organized to fight against the ruling class. Tom decides that he

will continue Casy’s struggling to against the ruling class. He likes to be an outlaw and keep searching for the social justice.

“Yeah,” said Tom. “He didn’ duck quick enough. He wasn’ doing nothin’ against the law, Ma. I been thinkin’ a hell of a lot, thinkin’ about our people livin’ like pigs an’ the good rich lan’ layin’ fallow, or maybe one fella with a million acres, while a hundred thousan’ good farmers is starvin’. An’ I been wonderin’ if all our folks got together an’ yelled, like them fellas yelled, only a few of’em at the Hopper ranch─”

“Then it don’ matter. Then I’ll be all aroun’ in the dark. I’ll be ever’where-wherever you look. Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. If casy knowed, why, I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad an’- I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An ‘when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build-why, I’ll be there. See? God, I’m talkin’ like Casy. Comes of thinkin’ about him so much. Seems like I can see him sometimes.”(1939:374)

Jim Casy lives after time in jail, he becomes involved with labor activists.

A human is a complete human when he can love people around him, when he can serve them, and the solidarity is in the air of their life. Then he converts his religion. He thinks that people need to be kind and generous. He has his own definition of holiness; the unity of men and God. He thinks that God just brings people in a disastrous condition and God has no more merci by seeing the poverty and involve in the activity of the working class.

Casy said sadly, “I wish they could see it. I wisht they could see the on’y way they can depen’ on their meat-Oh, the hell! Get tar’ad sometimes. God-awful tar’ad. I knowed a fella. Brang ‘im in while I was in the jail house. Been tryin’ to start a union. Got one started. An’ then them vigilantes bust it up. An’ know what?” Them very folks he been tryin’ to help tossed him out. Wouldn’ have nothin’ to do with’im. Scared they’d get saw in his comp’ny. Say,’ Git out. You’re a danger on us.’ Well, sir, it hurt his feelin’ purty bad. But then he says,” It ain’t so bad if you know.’ He says, ‘French Revolution, an’ after, them fellas that figgered her out got their head chopped off. Always that way,’ he says.’ Jus’ as natural as rain. You didn’ do it for fun no way. Doin’ it ‘cause you have to. ’Cause

it’s you. Look a Washington,’ he says. “Fit the Revolution, an’ after, them son-a-bitches turned on him. An’ Lincoln the same. Same folks yellin’ to kill ‘em. Natural as rain” (1939:343)

Casy stared blindly at the light. He breathed heavily. “Listen,” he said. ”You fellas don’ know what you’re doin’. You’re helpin’ to starve kids.”

“Shut up, you red son-of-a-bitch.”

The heavy man swung with the pick handle. Casy dodged down into the swing. The heavy club crashed into the side of his head with a dull crunch of bone, and Casy fell sideways out of the light.

“Jesus, George. I think you killed him.”

“Put the light on him,” said George. ‘Serve the son-of-a-bitch right. “The flashlight beam dropped, searched and found Casy’s crushed head. (1939:344-345)

Casy is a real socialist. By giving the rest of his life for the poor and finally died. His death brings and builds the tune of evolutionary optimism as the death of Jesus. Though in his doubtful, he still believes in God. He had joined and had many much contact with working class people. He brings ‘soft utopian” in the sense of setting out to build an ideal social order, as against the “hard utopian” of the Marxist kind of who sees it arriving after the conflict and struggle.

Here Casy is the focalization of Steinbeck. Steinbeck does not want to make any revolution, what he did is the revealing the truth and hopes that the governance will bring prosperity for the working class, represented by the oppressed peasant who has to work for the landowner to get some food and money. He with his basic point has out a serious question to capitalism a by itself a sufficient ordering of society. If the three basic factors of production, land, capital and labor (persons) are treated as land and capital (things), it is hardly to see how this can be justified by the spirit of Jesus.

The ruling class can exploit the lower class as they like it. They want to get much profit by pressing the system of wage and it is not necessary for ruling class to give the peasants the sufficient facility and the basic material needs. The basic social process is the satisfaction of the material needs for food, clothing and shelter. In the camp for the peasants where they work, it can not be found. People satisfied these material needs in the natural world that surrounded them, a world which they transformed for their own needs through the process of labor.

Unfortunately, the working class is still oppressed and they do not have any access to have a proper life.

Casy is a real hero. He has already had four categories of proletarian priest. First, he is the part of proletarian milieu by forming apostolic cells in the breath of community especially the lower class, represented by the peasant.

Second, his presence likes an insertion into the working class. Third, he shows his solidarity with his experiential participation in the struggles of the working men and women and the last his engagement by involving himself in the proletarian existence.

Ma Joad has replaced Pa’s position. She decides everything and keeps

Casy with them. Ma Joad thinks that Casy has to be with them, no matter happens with them. People have to help each other.

Ma stepped in front of him.” I ain’t gonna go.”

What you mean, you ain’t gonna go? You got to go. You got to after the family.” Pa was amazed at the revolt.

Ma stepped to the touring car and reached in on the floor of the seat. She brought out a jack handle and balanced it in her hand easily.” I ain’t gonna go,” she said.

I tell you, you got to go. We made up our mind.” looked helplessly about the group. “She’s sassy,” he said. “I never seen her so sassy.” Ruthie giggled shrilly. “So goddamn sassy,”Pa murmured. “An’ she ain’t young, neither.” The whole group watched the revolt. They watched Pa, waiting for him o break into fury. They watched his lax hands to see the fists form. And Pa’s anger did not rise, and his hands hung limply at his side. And in a moment the group knew that Ma had won. And Ma knew it too. (1939:149-150)

Ma may come from the real person: Steinbeck’s mother and Carol, his first wife whose uncompromising heart. Ma is described as a tough mother but when she tries to be assertive.

Pa Joad has forty acres land but ruined by the bad weather and the monster of the bank system.

Rose of Sharon dreams of the next life in California. She and Connie have a dream to get a job in town and own their store. She believes in the possibility of living a decent life with her husband and eventual child. Rose of Sharon Connie and Connie will leave Joads and start their own family. This poverty makes people keep on dreaming for prosperity. They tend to have a dream in which they can have many things to make their life easy. In fact, they have nothing.

“Well, we talked all about it, me an’ Connie. Ma, we wanna live in a town,” She went on excitedly. “Connie gonna get a job in a store maybe a fact’ry. An’ he’s gonna study at home, maybe radio, so he can git to be a expert an’ maybe later have his own store. An’ we’ll go to pitcher whenever. An’ Connie says I’m gonna have a doctor when the baby’s born; an’ he says we’ll see how times is, an’ maybe I’ll go to a hospiddle. An’ we’ll have a car, little car. An’ why—they even get you a job when you take that course—radios, it is — nice clean work, and a future. An’ we’ll live in town an’ go to pitchers whenever, an’—well, I’m gonna have ‘lectric iron, an’ the baby’ll have all news stuff. Connie says all new stuff— white an’ —Well, you seen in the catalogue all the stuff they got for a baby. We don’t want nothin’ fancy, but we want it nice for the

baby—“Her face glowed with excitement. ”An’ I thought —well, I thought maybe we could all go in town, an’ when Connie gets his store — maybe Al could work for him.” (1939:145)

Here Sharon with her dream represents the life of the middle class. She wishes the standard life of American at that time; living with electricity, refrigerator and radio. With these stuffs, they can live happily. No more darkness by using electric lamp, they can get ice in the long drought and by using radio will connect houses and the world.

Tom is teasing Rose of Sharon to make her forget Connie but she still mourns for Connie’s abandonment. Tom with his sarcastic word mocks Connie.

Maybe Connie has preparation to be the president of U.S.A to change their life and bring them to the prosperity and the stability of economic and politics which contrary with the real condition when Roosevelt at that time could not make any progress at all in every aspect of economic and politics.

In their way to come to the cotton field, Ma asks Rosasharn to feeding the dying man by offering him Rosasharn’s breast symbolizing her sacrifice by giving food for the dying man. For lower class people who live in communal way, they have to sacrifice each other as Sharon has done for the dying man by feeding him because of starvation.

Rose of Sharon loosened one side of the blanket and bared her breast. “You got to,” she said. She squirmed closer and pulled his head close. “There!” she said. “There.” Her hand moved behind his head and supported it. Her fingers moved gently in his hair. She looked up and across the barn, and her lips came together, and she smiled mysteriously. (1939:405-406).

B. Possible Backgrounds that May Influence John Steinbeck’s Tendency to

Shape his Social Consciousness by Revealing the Social Issues in the

Three Novels

If we read In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The Grapes of Wrath and also had the knowledge of Steinbeck’s biographical background we will identity some of the characters are the writer himself and his male friends. He often wrote the lives of the working class during The Great Depression and the cruel system of the capitalist in the world of American Materialistic.

Steinbeck found the material for his novels took place in Salinas, and neighboring valleys, along the shore of Monterey Bay, in the Corral de Tierra on the Big Sur. He was inspired by the lives of the commoners and he uses it to be an agent for the social change.

The future wealth or poverty of California depends on the success or failure of their agricultural pursuits. From the beginning, the dream seems doomed to fail. The uncontrolled growth of the monopolies, as well as by natural difficulties the drought which produces dust and the rains which turns the fertile lands into impassable mud. This fact is identified as the present chief danger and disgrace of California.

The hard conditions, the lacking of food, no home for them, living in camp and barn with its insufficient facility is something common. People have to survive in all condition. It gets worst when the force of nature; drought, scarcity of food and jobs approach them. They cannot live peacefully, no place for to get safety feeling and privacy.

Here Steinbeck using the social realism style, focuses on the expressing his disappointment to the whole structure and the social system in which is hardly to find the social justice. He has a stigma from the governance called as a communist and subversive author in the period of “American Red Hysteria”

He converts his ideology of communism to democracy because he thinks that communism only does emphasize on the outer social revolution through the conflict and struggling, but Steinbeck uses not only outer revolution but also internal revolution; the internal way of spiritual revolution.

The way of violent revolution is the wrong way, as the realities of today's socialist society-including oppression of human nature and corruption of bureaucrats-indicates. On the other hand, the way Steinbeck chose is the true way, in that it is the way to recover human nature. It must be pointed out, however, that it still had its limits in saving society as a whole.

Again California remained “A Promised Land’ but people there were disappointed with the scarcity of food and job. The replacement of the tenants with machine made them jobless and impoverished all the farmers.

In the first novel In Dubious Battle is the story of poor field worker fighting a lost cause against prosperous ranch-owners.

Steinbeck uses Soledad, a place for lonely people represented by George and Lennie, the ranch workers. In the novel Of Mice and Men, people with the poor condition try to change their life by working in the ranch. The life of a ranch- hand is one of the loneliest in the world. Their dream to have a farm together is vanished with all the worst condition. The novel takes place during the Great

Depression, begins beside the Salinas River near Soledad, California, with the plight of migrant workers,

Steinbeck idealizes male friendships, suggesting that they are most dignifying and satisfying way to overcome the loneliness that pervades the world.

The bond between Lenine and George, who exist on the margins of the society, is rare and precious because the majority of the world never appreciates or understands them.

Steinbeck lived through the Great Depression of the 1930s. The economic collapse grew severest in the center of the county after a prolonged drought turned

Oklahoma into a “Dust Bowl”, between 1932 and 1935; violent wind and dust storm ravaged the southern

Most migrants ended up competing for seasonal jobs picking crops at extremely low wages. Millions of Americans were out of work. Bread lines were a common sight in most cities. Hundreds of thousands roamed the country in search of food, work and shelter. The poverty and desperation inspired an era of soul-searching that Steinbeck was happy to encourage.

The Grapes of Wrath focuses on the lives of migrant workers, poverty, and social stratification during the dry spells within the Dust Bowl region (Kansas,

Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado), which is brought about by drought and dust storm in these states.

Steinbeck emphasizes on the wide gap between the rich and poor classes and the failure of the tenant system. Muley remembers how he as the dispossessed farmer, was driven off the land by the Shawnee Land and Cattle Company. The

coming of mechanized farming, combined with severe weather conditions, caused landlords to notify homes of possession and force hundreds of tenant farmer families off their lands.

In short word, Steinbeck is inconsistence bringing the spirit of communism. From the beginning, he is obsessed with this ideology but then he does choose any ideologies, neither communism nor capitalism. He chooses democracy where everyone has to respect one another. The American governance has to seek and to create economic stability and protect the interests of indigenous capital and labor, the regulation of company and by controlling wages, salaries, and prices at times. He believes if there is an active contribution from the society to deal with the case of poverty, the establishment law and constitution, the clean and proper governance, it is possible to have prosperity for the American community.

The active contribution from the society is needed to help each other. Then it is hoped that the accumulation of wealth is no more on the hand of the ruling class but for every one. The facility to get credit must be selective. The credit is given not for the consumption but for production. It is necessary for government and the bank to be prudent to give the credit.

CHAPTER V

CONCLUSION

With the publication of In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men, and The

Grapes of Wrath Steinbeck has written an integrated body of work about his native California.

He is a truly hero for the poor. His social awareness is defined clearly in his speaking up against social injustice, his creating awareness of how people affect the environment, and the way of promoting racial tolerance and respect.

Steinbeck founds the golden heart among the poor. They are uprooted and suffering but in their worst condition, they try to survive in the political chaos and the great depression.

His experience among the working classes in California influences him to write the lives of migrant workers, poverty, and social stratification during the dry spells within the Dust Bowl, which is brought about by droughts and dust storms in some states in America.

He explains the social aspect of America’s history through the depiction of the migrant people who try to pursue their dream but they fail. His three novels focus on the migrant workers, the exploited men and union organization. His works call for action from the American. It is obvious that Steinbeck’s

Depression-ere novel relates to the changing political view of himself and his vision of the common-man.

The previous ideology which he believed in; the communism is no longer useful to solve the problem of the poor. The utopian that he wants to build in the world of the American materialism is impossible.

He is labeled as a communist writer, but actually not. During the

American’s Red Sacred, every writer who reveals the spirit of the communism is a propagandist. He is labeled as a communist writer besides the Oklahomans dislike his way of describing their people using derogatory term’ Okies” and spread out entirely in United States of America.

The writer wants to defense that Steinbeck is still a proletariat author. Here

Steinbeck disclosures the sufferings of the lower class. He clearly describes the conflict that faced by each character in the three novels. This conflict occurs primarily at the economic level, manifest, for example, in wage bargaining, strikes or absenteeism.

Steinbeck brings his success to the American parliament and influences the policy maker to improve the law of wage system and the migrant law. His works are monumental novels. To be a proletarian writer, it does not mean that he has to be part of communism. What he did is just revealing the social injustice and he does not want to make any revolution.

Steinbeck’s works are moving, full of adventure and it is a completely reflection of American life lived on this particular level: The Great Depression and American Red Hysteria.

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APPENDICES

1. In Dubious Battle

It is a dispassionate analysis of an agricultural strike. This novel

focuses on two people who work in picking fruit or cotton field. They just

part of ordinary people but they plot the sabotage in the land by provoking

the fruit picker to strike.

They are given a poor reception. As unemployed laborers what

they do is just wandering aimlessly through this state.In squalid

encampments, they live in desperate situation when this place is surrounded

by growers who can not eat food properly. So the growers who are agitated

by two guys, Mac and Jim, try to make a plan of strike, unfortunately this

strike erupted into costly violence. The fruit pickers who work in the field,

the owners of the little orchards, watch and calculate. The workers are paid

low and work in oppressed situation.

Jim dislikes the system of their working. They have to work in

long hour and very oppressing.Their wage is not enough to fulfill the daily

needs. Mac tries to deceive them by showing his caring but he actually takes

advantages from the strike by getting money from it. If the social revoution

works out, he will show his own ambition to lead these people and he is still

in the top of the power.

2. Of Mice and Men

This novel is all about two men who wander from place to another

place in order to get a job.They live in a lonely ranch. They posses dream for 49

the land. What they wish is by owning their land, they will have their

freedom. When they are free from the exploitation and work by themselves.

There is no more command.They will get a secure income by planting their

land and cultivating their cattle. This dream makes them satisfied.

Lennie, incapable man who always depends on George, ruins

George’s dream.Lennie feels that they are not lonely ranchmen because they

keep and protect each other.

People from the lower class, unskilled workers, have no choice. If

they want to get job, what they have to do as the master says. The lower

class people are represented by the ranchman whose no power to determine

their wage and the cripple and black man who are treated unfair.

3. The Grapes of Wrath

It is an epic about the Joad family in Oklahoma during The Great

Depression decade.The bank system oppressed them.The land will belong

to the bank.Their orchard wil be part of a great holding year, for their debt

will have chocked the owners. Only the great owners can survive for their

own canneries too.

They have to move to California but they still suffer in this fertile

state. There is no sufficient job avaliable, food and shelter. Tom meets Jim

Casey in his way home from the jail. Jim Casey inspired Tom to involve in

social revolution.

The Joad family is just poor, almost illiterate, simple-minded

people. Pa is rare to send Tom letters. 50

By moving to California, they hope get splendid job. But all they find, when they get there, is exploitation, intimidation, and hatred from native Californians, and they end up starving and desperate, living in misereable camps by the road-side, like animals enganged in a struggle’s for sheer survival.