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Xerox University Microfilms 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, Michigan 48106 e *38* WILSON, JERRY WAYNE JOHN 8TE1NBECM LOVE, WORK, AND THE POLITICS OP COLLECTlVIfY, ' ^ f- SI • ; / •' • T5 THE UNIVERSITY OP OKLAHOMA, PH.D., 1*77 Université Microfilms International 300n zseb road, ann arbor,4 siomi 6 THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE JOHN STEINBECK; LOVE, WORK, AND THE POLITICS OF COLLECTIVITY A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY BY JERRY WAYNE WILSON Norman, Oklahoma 1977 JOHN STEINBECK: LOVE, WORK, AND THE POLITICS OF COLLECTIVITY APPROVEDu BY ACKNOWLEDGEMENT I wish to express thanks and appreciation to Dr. Victor Elconin for his kind and helpful direction, to Dr. Roy Male for his helpful suggestions which initiated this study, and to the other members of the reading committee for their time and consideration. I also wish to thank my wife, Norma, for her inspiration, support, and confidence, and for the many contributions she made toward the completion of this work. I l l TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I . LOVE AND WORK IN AMERICA ..................... 1 II. JOHN STEINBECK; MAN OF LOVE AND W O R K ........ 49 III. STEINBECK'S EARLY FICTION ................... 83 IV. STEINBECK'S ENGAGED FICTION ................ 133 V. STEINBECK'S DECLINE ......................... 201 VI. A F T E R W O R D ................................... 252 NOTES ................................................ 255 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................ 268 XV Jerry W. Wilson JOHN STEINBECK: LOVE, WORK, AND THE POLITICS OF COLLECTIVITY Chapter I Love and Work in America Love and work have been the subjects of scores of books in the past century. Much that has been said has been theo­ retical and speculative, but nevertheless valuable, because it has probed and challenged human potential and has been forward-looking and progressive. Many of the discussions of love and work have been so abstract as to isolate these cru­ cial facets of human existence from each other and from other phenomena with which they always and inevitably interact. Love and work are presumed to exist neutrally in a hermet­ ically sterile vacuum, and the reader must submit to this artificial world in order to find validity in such discussions. Another kind of treatment has even been so narrowly limited as to assume that historically observable manifestations of love and work impulses provide the raw material from which we can ascertain what is "natural" to the human condition. The error of this approach should be immediately obvious : Never in the history of civilization has mankind been free of what 2 Herbert Marcuse calls the governing "reality principle," those sets of assumptions which exist in every historical setting, but which, being in a constant state of flux, have little to do with "nature." Sigmund Freud was on the verge of confusing historical reality with nature when he talked about the human "instincts." It may be true that we are impelled partly by the promptings of built-in or inherited drives, but how can one sort out what is "instinctual" and what is the product of acculturation? Never-the-less, Freud's contribution to our understanding of love should not be under-rated; Freud's genius is apparent in his understanding of the evolution of civilization and of the roles of aggression, repression, and guilt, as well as love in that process. Freud posited man's basic conflict as the antagonism between the demands of instinct and the restrictions of civilization. Early in his career, Freud assumed that aggression was part of the instinct of self-preservation. But in Beyond The Pleasure Principle, (1920) Freud hypothesized the independent "death instinct" as the source of aggression. Thus man's struggle to survive, which necessitated civilization, also puts him into conflict, not only with other men, but with himself as well. "Originally," Freud says, "the ego includes everything; later it separates off an external world from itself."^ This act of separation leads to a three-fold threat of suffering for man. Because part of the aggression. 3 including the independent death instinct, can be turned inward, man is threatened, from within. But he is also threatened by the external world and by his relations with other men. In a society, the last threat, the threat of alienation from other men, is most painful; but ironically, the best defense against this threat is similar to the threat itself— isolation. Isolation is obviously the enemy of socialization, and the challenge to man in his search for community has been to find alternatives to isolation. The principal alternative, which Freud recognized as the basis of civilization, is repression. Repression paves the way to civilization. And the movement along the path is from the "pleasure principle" to the "reality principle." Individual needs must yield to community needs. Immediate satisfaction may have to be delayed. To achieve security, some freedom must be surren­ dered. And in place of play, members of the community must work. An interesting part of Freud's thought is his specula­ tion about how civilization (and its pre-requisite repres­ sion) evolved. Ontogenetically, Freud observed, repression occurs during early childhood when submission to the partic­ ular reality principle of the child's family is enforced by the parents, especially the father. Later the reality prin­ ciple of the larger society is further enforced by the various educational institutions encountered by the child. 4 Freud hypothesized this same pattern on the phylogenetic level. In the "primal horde," the primal father monopolized power and pleasure and forced renunciation on the part of his sons. Thus, according to Freud, civilization and its component order and repression of aggressiveness were first brought about by superior aggressiveness, hardly a healthy basis for what we like to think of in positive terms as civilization. But that is not the worst; the suppression of pleasure by the father was not the only result of domination; it also "created the mental preconditions for the continued functioning of 2 domination." Having learned to accept domination, man was finally in a position to establish civilization as we know it. Having learned to accept suppression from without, man was prepared to implement self-controls and prohibitions in the interest of preserving the order that had been achieved through the authority of the primal father. In the modern sense of the term, "civilization begins only in the brother clan, when the taboos, now self-imposed by the ruling brothers, implement repression in the common interest of preserving the group as a whole.But how did this development come about? Accord­ ing to Freud, the decisive psychological event was the devel­ opment of guilt. "Progress beyond the primal horde— i.e. civilization— presupposes guilt feelings; it introjects into the individuals, and thus sustains, the principal prohibitions, constraints, and delays in gratification on which civilization 4 depends." 5 While recognizing guilt as essential to civilization, Freud also recognized it as the most important problem in the development of civilization. This inherent and seemingly unsolvable paradox is recognizable in Freud's hypothesized primal man. In order to counter the unsettling internal effects of guilt, as well as to maintain the necessary repres­ sions demanded by the brother clan, the individual (the ego) had no methods other than those directed at external threats, so these same aggressive feelings are introjected, and the result is what we today call alienation. The human psyche is unable to meet all the demands made upon it simultaneously, for some of these demands are diametrically opposed. To explv in this conflict, Freud described the psyche in terms of a disintegrated and warring three-part entity; First a part of the "id" developed into the "ego" as a result of the con­ flict over the needs of the individual and the demands of his society.