Class struggle in in dubious battle (1936) by John Steinbeck and Devil on the cross (1982) by Ngugi wa Thiong'o

II Conclusion

Note to the reader

Whenever In Dubious Battle and Devil on the Cross are used in the body of my text, I will just insert IDB followed by a page number for In Dubious Battle and DOC for Devil on the Cross.

Editions used in the course of this study are the following:

John Steinbeck, In Dubious Battle, Peguin Books USA Inc.1936

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, Devil on the Cross, London, Heinemann, 1982

Therefore, all subsequent references to those novels will be inserted directly with a page number.

III Introduction

In the USA, the fate of the working class has always been the concern of a good number of writers during the Depression era. That period gave them a good opportunity to tackle so many issues related to the failure of the American dream. In fact, they started getting rid of their dreams and confronted the idea they still had of America with the reality that was pressing on them. Writers such as Henry James for instance were particularly severe and their criticisms were most negative. Their aims are in that respect, oriented towards denouncing through their writings social ills in their country and beyond. America needed such writers in the sense that they displayed all that was wrong economically and socially.

The US history gave the world a generation of talented writers who succeeded that of the Lost Generation. Writers including John Dos Passos, James T. Farrel, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Gertrude Stein defined a sense of moral loss or aimlessness apparent in literary figures during the 1920s. Later on, with the development of the social novel, John Steinbeck chose to tackle the low class workers, the peasants in particular. In Dubious Battle published in 1939 examines the interdependence of antagonistic social classes living in the same geographical sphere. The novel is set in a small rural part of California known as Torgas Valley during the Depression Years when Roosevelt was President of the USA.

John Steinbeck was born in the scenic and fertile Salinas valley of California on February 27, 1902. His father was the county treasurer and his mother was a school teacher. At the age of 14, Steinbeck's strong wish was to become a great writer and of course in 1919 he enrolled at Stanford University. It so happened that the aspiring writer took only classes that he was interested in, mostly from the English department and as a result never earned a degree. As soon as he dropped out of the university in 1925, he travelled to New York to earn a living as a journalist and freelance writer. After being sacked from his job, the author experienced many jobs (an apprentice painter, caretaker, surveyor and fruit picker) before he released his first work of fiction, a historical novel called Cup of Gold in1929.

John Steinbeck wrote about underprivileged populations--groups of people who had tough times surviving and would sometimes resort to any means necessary. During his lifetime Steinbeck wrote, there was a huge push to unionize in order to protect the rights of people, especially those who may be underprivileged.  Unionization was a large part of the novels In Dubious Battle and The Grapes of Wrath.  Many Americans considered unions to be communist, and Steinbeck was often dubbed a "commie" or a "red".  Steinbeck spent much of his life traveling up and down the California coast in search of work, and as a result he understood the difficulties the lower class faced.  This understanding is reflected in many of his novels, including Of Mice and Men, and by advocating for the under-privileged Steinbeck was touted as controversial in a context of Great Depression.

The Depression Years are seen as one of the most outstanding periods in the social US history due mainly to the fact that the economic downfall which is a by-product of the Depression Years that resulted in many social dissensions. Then, the unprecedented shift of the migrant workers towards the rural areas appeared at first as the main factor of destabilisation. Due to the Industrial Revolution, there were no longer any large industries to support the overflowing amount of workers. Thus, the farms were the only places that needed a large work force. Therefore many of the workers had to move to the rural lands to be in a position to support their needs and survive.

It is not surprising that John Steinbeck`s reaction to environmental challenges could be seen as a way to respond to the cause of the oppressed masses. This fact is clearly expressed in most of his novels such as In Dubious Battle in 1936, Of Mice and Men written in 1937 and The Grapes of Wrath in 1939. The Grapes of Wrath which is central in Steinbeck's publications, it is an account of the many struggles faced by a migrant working family in Oklahoma that was evicted and forced to leave their home and relocate to California during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. Despite his critical, cynical, and sometimes impetuous outlook on American government, he was the only American Nobel Prize Winner in Literature from California of his time. However, most peculiarly John Steinbeck was also considered the most popular American author in the Soviet Union during the Communist era.

One outstanding feature of John Steinbeck stems from the fact that he cultivates a quite optimistic conception of man. He believes in man's goodness and places him on a high pedestal. His respect and love for human beings are not verbal; he actually lived such experiences as his life with the apple- pickers in their lot and aspirations. Steinbeck is entirely acquainted with poverty and he wants his writings to be an expression that leads to salvation for the masses. Being basically optimistic, he does not share the pessimism of the writers who find man resourceless, weak and doomed to failure forever. On the contrary he believes in man's capacity to solve all impediments and in most of his novels, he draws the workers' attention that only combined minds and joint efforts can collapse the system of establishment.

In Dubious Battle examines the various groups vying for power and place for California; the large landowners, the Communist Party (which moved into the State in early 1930's to organize farm workers), and of course the workers themselves who mostly want a decent condition of existence. In this complex socio-economic environment where each group is trying to have the stranglehold on the social and economic control, it is clear that the working class which has no means of production will be the downtrodden and the exploited group, John Steinbeck's sympathies are clearly with the latter and of course he sees the other two groups -communist organizers and powerful landed interests in California ( the Associated Farmers) as equally responsible for manipulating the workers for their own ends.

Criticizing communism and capitalism, John Steinbeck in his great strike novel In Dubious Battle does not just simply praise communism or capitalism for that matter. He is simply telling the positive and the negative aspects of both. Steinbeck criticizes communism by showing how it dehumanizes an individual by making the person view people as simply objects to be exploited for the Party. He praises communism by displaying the intense dedication that Jim, Mac, and others have to the cause and by demonstrating the extreme oppression that the few rich landowners impress upon the working men. By proceeding in this fashion throughout the novel Steinbeck does give a truly accurate depiction of communism.

Through his writing there is no doubt that Steinbeck takes side with the downtrodden workers whose conditions of existence get worse and worse every passing day. However, it must be noted that Steinbeck is not the only writer who cares about the lot of the workers. In other continents, in Africa for instance, writers raise their voices to denounce exploitation. Like John Steinbeck, due to the ruthless exploitation and domination of the masses by the few, Ngugi undertakes to denounce the neo-colonialism in African countries and then advocates changes for the benefit of the people who are in a state of hopelessness and frustration. Those denunciations of African committed writers give birth to the publication of committed novels such as My Son's History by Gordimer, A Walk in the Night by Laguma, A Man of the People by Chinua Achebe. These novels mark a turning point in the history of African literature but at the same time in the Eastern Africa mainly in Kenya a bulk of work is marvellously achieved by Ngugi wa Thiong'o.

There is need, before going any further to look at an ideological portrayal of Ngugi. This will help understand better his literary work. First of all Ngugi reveals his Marxism through the way he analyses social facts, his rejection of capitalism, his siding with the popular masses in their struggle against the international Bourgeoisie and in serving as watchdog as for the dispossessed.

Ngugi wa Thiong'o, currently Distinguished Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Irvine, was born in Kenya, in 1938 into a large peasant family. The Kenya of his birth and youth was a British settler colony (1895-1963). As an adolescent, he lived through the Mau-Mau War of Independence (1952-1962), the central historical episode in the making of modern Kenya and a major theme in his early works. He is also Honorary Member of American Academy of Letters. A many-sided intellectual, he is novelist, essayist, playwright, journalist, editor, academic and social activist. After Amnesty International named him a Prisoner of Conscience, an international campaign secured his release a year later, December 1978. However, the Moi Dictatorship barred him from jobs at colleges and university in the country. He resumed his writing and his activities in the theater and in so doing, continued to be an uncomfortable voice for the Moi dictatorship. While Ngugi was in Britain for the launch and promotion of Devil on the Cross, he learned about the Moi regime's plot to eliminate him on his return, or as coded, give a red carpet welcome on arrival at Jomo Kenyatta Airport. This forced him into exile, first in Britain (1982 -1989), and then the U.S. after (1989-2002), during which time, the Moi dictatorship hounded him trying, unsuccessfully, to get him expelled from London and from other countries he visited.

Motivated only by the great desire to denounce the exploitation of the upper class against the lower one or the exploitation of the capitalists against the workers `class, Ngugi uses the only weapons he has, his pen in order to analyse and even criticize vehemently the attitude of the new African leaders namely labelled «watchdogs». Ngugi deals with the impact of political independence on African nations, especially on the people of Kenya. His view is that this independence has been usurped by the elite who took over power from the colonial officials but did not attempt to change the socio-economic and political structures of the colonial era. According to him, this class has only used its position to enrich itself at the expense of the masses. Ngugi argues that the retaining of the capitalist economy by those who took over the leadership when his country became independent has left it open to exploitation by both western nations and the local elite. He shows that this economic system supports theft and sectionalism which is responsible for social disintegration. He illustrates the way cultural values are corrupted and put to the service of those in power and how politics becomes a means to material gain under neo-colonial conditions. He believes that this helps perpetrate an economic system that is based on the exploitation of the country's natural and human resources. However, he strongly suggests that this exploitative environment can be changed through a joint effort of all the oppressed groups in the community. In many ways, Ngugi's goal is reminiscent of Marxist ideology, as the novel is ultimately meant to educate Kenyan on the corruption of their society and the power of non-compliance within such a repressive system. The central event in the novel is the «Devil's Feast,» a sort of conference in which Kenya's elite boasts of their cutthroat achievements. In allegorical form, the «Devil's Feast» attests to the exploitation of peasants and workers by foreign business interests and a greedy indigenous bourgeoisie.

Devil on the Cross tells the tragic story of Wariinga, a young woman who emigrated from her small rural town to the city of Nairobi only to be exploited by her boss and later a corrupt businessman. Ngugi uses Wariinga's story, common to many young women in Kenya, to critique the political workings of contemporary Kenya as faced with the so-called «Satan of capitalism.» The novel follows a group of characters who meet on a bus, each with their own tragic story, as they attend the «Devil's Feast» in a thinly disguised satirical account of capitalist business practices and Western cultural and political dominance in post-colonial Kenya.

The publication of Devil on the Cross in 1982 is enough to illustrate that a new African writer committed to the liberation and the masses' cause was born. Devil on the Cross is in the line of those novels shedding light on economic problems and sexual harassment. It was written when Ngugi was a detainee for having co-authorized a play entitled I Marry When I Want which is about the theme of economic religious and sexual exploitation. These two books represent Ngugi's commitment to the cause of the poor social classes and they were first written in a national language in Gikuyu for the masses.

Both writers Steinbeck and Ngugi emerge in a context when a life of bondage and wretchedness is quite the same lot for the poor kept under the constant yoke by the rich. The common ground of these authors lays in the fact that they both share Marxist ideology. Marxism is basically founded on means of production and according to Karl Marx; it is because of means of production that social classes exist. This is the very reason why Steinbeck as a white writer and Ngugi as a black writer focus their attention on social stratification rather than racial identification. They want the reading audience to not only witness the truth about the power of the establishment but to also incite the reader to understand the fact that joining efforts is the only way to bring a new social era and economic uplift in their societies.

Both of them stand as mouthpieces for the doomed class as they harshly bring discredit to the ruthless class which confers on the disadvantaged workers a life of misery and despair. Therefore the authors try to liberate them from the shackles of obscurantism and hopelessness. Their ultimate aims reside in the eradication of all social evils which thwart the individual aspiration, one of which is the possession of wealth and decent home.

Through In Dubious Battle and Devil on the Cross, Steinbeck and Ngugi show that the class struggle between the haves and the have-nots is basically related to economic problems and social consideration. With the prospect of wealth accumulation and with little care for moral considerations, owners could use then all available means, the treacherous ones in particular to take as much advantages possible from the doomed class as clearly illustrated in Devil on the Cross.

In In Dubious Battle the monopoly of agriculture and the advent of the greedy land-owners take place at the expense of the large number of workers, for the labour people find themselves deprived of any means of production and compelled to rely on the big farmers to earn a livelihood by selling their forces. But instead of the deserved fair wages that could help improve their conditions of living, they are often granted starvation wages hardly enough for their survival and fulfilment.

The authors' handling of the opposition between labour and capital is not limited to the sociological level; rather it is viewed under a broader religious angle as we can notice it through the titles of the novels under study.

In Dubious Battle takes its title from Milton's Paradise Lost, Book I (1658), in which Satan vows to engage the forces of Heaven «in dubious battle· even if it means eternal loss and defeat. That reference sets a tone for Steinbeck's novel, and suggests a way to view the main characters: as Satan like figures, not because they are inherently or necessarily evil, but because they are determined to preserve in their battle against capitalism even when odds for success are overwhelmingly against them.

In Devil on the Cross, the Devil symbolizes those who want to accomplish devilish deeds. They are the people who want to sustain the colonial discourse by earning a living with the workers' sweat. In a nutshell, the allusion to the Devil is necessarily linked to the top ranking-class whose main strategies are to squeeze the masses out of everything. The allusion to the word Cross which is recurrent in Ngugi`s work although an atheist, keeps paradoxically a Christian connotation. Then, the devil which is the embodiment of the watchdogs should be crucified once for all to put a curb on that situation of permanent exploitation.

It is clear that class struggle in In Dubious Battle and in Devil on the Cross which is the subject of our work occupies a prominent position in the novels as it portrays violent turmoil and clashes between the poor majority and the minority which owns all means of production. Then, the novels put stress on the social and economic inequalities from which stem two antagonistic camps: the owners and the masses.

The power is concentrated into the hands of the minority whose strongest desire and lust is to maintain and sustain its supremacy over the oppressed and exploited majority whose aspirations are to be fulfilled politically, economically and socially. In this respect, it is obviously clear that there exist strong diverging interests of the two camps: the need to gain profits by all means on the one hand and the need to survive and to be fulfilled on the other hand. Therefore, it is important to highlight that such antagonistic and opposite interests could only result in strong clashes, and stress will be laid on the fact that the labour force conscious of its strength and the will of the owners to preserve their interests, try reverse the situation through an efficient leadership and take advantage of life.

Our present work will be divided into three chapters. The first chapter dealing with social contexts in both novels contains two main sections. The first section will focus on critical social backgrounds and the reasons for commitment of Steinbeck and Ngugi; the second one will address the protection of the downtrodden in a world of exploitation.

The second chapter will be devoted to class divisions and it will include two sections. The first one will lay emphasis on the confrontation between the working and the dominant classes while the second one will describe the victimization of the working class.

The last chapter of our work will be centred on the masses' resistance to oppression. It will be divided as well into two sections. The first one will point out the emergence of a new leadership and the second section will emphasize the outcome of the struggle as illustrated in both novels.