On John Steinbeck's Phalanx Theory In In Dubious Battle

John Steinbeck was a great writer in the twentieth-century American literature. In recent thirty years, the trend of re-reading Steinbeck's writings triggers the heated echo and contention in the academic circle. In particular, Steinbeck Revival in the U.S. substantially stimulates Steinbeck studies to be more prosperous. The theories foreign scholars resort to can be summarized as: Feminism, Archetypal Criticism and New Historicism. But domestic attention has been paid only to Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. It is obvious that the domestic Steinbeck study is immature, and few put their eye on Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle.Steinbeck's prestige as a Nobel Prize winner has been mainly associated with his"worker trilogy"published in the 1930s. Actually the first of the trilogy, In Dubious Battle marks a turning point in the novelist's literary career: it was the first time that Steinbeck had faced the social realities, political issues, and economic problems to expose the dark side of capitalism and actively seeked the methods of delivering the society. This book takes a California orchard as background, describes a strike that is held by a crowd of striking apple-pickers in Torgas Valley, but the farm owners use various methods to interrupt the movement, including violence. The workers'leaders, Mac and Jim, consult a plan for carrying on the strike after they have discerned the farm owners'tricks and intrigues. However, some workers were dying because of starvation and the leader Jim was shot and dead for his communist dream. Finally, the story stops as Mac displays Jim's body to the angry workers to arouse them to continue the struggle. The strike comes to a dubious point. The story is presented through the whole book in the style of conversations, but the bud of Steinbeck's phalanx theory comes into being.Based on the already-existed studies on Steinbeck, the thesis is to explore Steinbeck's phalanx theory in his In Dubious Battle from the book's relation to Steinbeck's ideology, attempting to discuss the features of his phalanx theory from the relationship between individual and group, analyzing the role of the intellectual and leadership in his phalanx theory, illustrating the limitation of his phalanx theory and the causes of the limitation. Chapter one mainly focuses on the phalanx's power to individuals, and the representation of this kind of power in the book after discussing the social context in which Steinbeck's theory was formed. Chapter two analyzes the contradiction between phalanx and individual, and points out it results from Steinbeck's contradictory political attitudes. Although Steinbeck's phalanx theory stresses the mutual relation and mutual dependence between individuals and the group, the overwhelming power of the group has led to the aphasia of self. And when the group fails to realize the aim for the individuals, the individuals may quit the group. Chapter three discusses the limitation of the phalanx theory with relation to Steinbeck's own bewilderment with the role of the intellectual, suggesting that although Steinbeck's phalanx theory pays attention to the clash of economical profits between the proletariat group and the capitalist group, it ignores the cultural leadership the proletarian should obtain, which becomes the direct reason for the failure of strike in this book. In the conclusion part, the main idea of the thesis is summarized and the significance of studying Steinbeck's phalanx theory in In Dubious Battle from the perspective of the relation between writer's ideology and the writing is enhanced.