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Title: In Dubious Battle (20th Century Classics) by John Steinbeck, Warren French ISBN: 0-14-018641-7 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: October, 1992 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.23 (35 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A wonderful book
Comment: A long time forgotten when a man had only one concern: to find work at any wage so he could feed his family. No other time in American history exemplifies this best than the Great Depression when transplanted Okies worked up and down the West Coast. In In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck, a group of migrant workers courageously decided to strike against the powerful and wealthy landowners. Wonderfully written, In Dubious Battle engrosses the reader easily eliciting reaction ranging from outrage to shock.
First of all, I was outraged at the owners attempts to break the strike. The owners seemed to have control over just about every thing in the city. For example, the owners hired people called vigilantes to start trouble and then the coops blamed the strikers for the trouble and tried to arrest them. Next, the owners had the newspapers write that the people who got shot were shot by the strikers. A wonder example of how the process used by the owners worked was when a farmer naned Anderson, who let the strikers stay on his farm. The vigilantes burned down his farm, and the papers placed the blame in the strikers. Clearly, the vigilantes and the papers worked for the owners. The puplic did not really know that the strikers were the good guys. The public thought that the strikers were organized crime. For that reason the owners outrage me the most, for decieving the public. However, I was also shocked at how the police and newspapers were seemingly controlled by the owners. The police are supposed to uphold the law at all times. But when one of the strikers was shot and killed by the vigilantes, the cops tried to blame the rest of the strikers, even though the cops knew that the vigilantes did the killing. The papers were also aware of the truth, yet they also blamed the strikers and print editorials written to make the strikers look like organized crime. One of their editorials actually endorsed violence against the strikers:"We believe the time had come to take action...This paper doesnto ad has never believed inviolence; but it does believe that when the law is not sufficient enough to cope eith these kinds of malcontents and miderers, an aroused citezenry must take a hand..."
Besides being impressed with how the story got my attention, I was also impressed the the main character, Jim. He was knew to the whole strike idea and was literally learning as he went along. During the story, Jim is under the guidance of a man named Mac, who is in charge. What impresses me the most is Jim's ability to be the only person who is thinking rationally in times of disorder among the rest of the strikers. THis is illustrated best when the strikers turn into a frenzied mob after someone got beat up. Jim, who is at the moment injured, uses his head to not join the mob to attack the owners, who have used the police to barricade the roads. I often thinkthat rationality is the only advantage the strikers have.
To sum uo, In Dubious Battle by John Steinbeck is a wonderful book to read, as are all John Steinbeck novels. A person would read about the hadship endured by the migrant workers in a history book by they would only understand whoat happened by reading one of Steinbeck's novels concerning this subject.
Rating: 5
Summary: Realistic account of orchard strike
Comment: "In Dubious Battle" is basically the first of Steinbeck's socially-engaged novels, in which he portrays a strike staged by itinerant fruit-pickers against price-cutting orchard owners. This is hardly a pamphlet for the labor movement or the Communist Party, though, as Steinbeck is less interested in pontificating than showing the frustations of the workers and the toll that their resistence actually takes on them and the local community. It also shows the organizational difficulties involved in getting a diverse group of dissatisfied workers to work for a common cause. The characterization is vivid and brilliant. Aside from its obvious literary value, this novel also has historical value, for like Sinclair's "The Jungle" (although with greater realism and much less pathos) it provides a powerful description of the plight of working people in America earlier in the 20th century. "In Dubious Battle" gives readers a good idea of the type of courage it took, and still does take, to fight for positive change and social justice.
Rating: 5
Summary: One of the Best I ever Read
Comment: This is a story of the attempt of the Communist Party to infiltrate the labor movement. Using the rage of migrant farm workers against the unfair labor practices of the California agricultural community, and anything else possible, up to and including the dead bodies of their friends, labor organizers convince growing numbers of workers to organize. The title of the book, "In Dubious Battle" discusses the dubious choices made by the leaders of the labor movement of that time, inserting socialist ideals and abdicating conscience for the "cause" in many cases. It traces the slow evolution of its main character as the plight of workers versus values such as the rights of farmers, and morality, to name two, bring him to make choices.
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Title: Tortilla Flat by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140042407 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1995 List Price(USD): $8.00 |
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Title: The Long Valley (Twentieth Century Classics Series) by John Steinbeck, John H. Timmerman ISBN: 0140187456 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1995 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: To a God Unknown (Twentieth Century Classics Series) by John Steinbeck, Robert Demott ISBN: 0140187510 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: August, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: The Winter of Our Discontent (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187537 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: Sweet Thursday (Twentieth-Century Classics) by John Steinbeck ISBN: 0140187502 Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: April, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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