In Dubious Battle Suffering Quotes

Though Jim speaks without drama about his family struggles, his directness helps us to see the magnitude of his life's misery. The physical violence suffered by Jim's father shows the littleness of any human; individual lives don't really matter in the harsh world Steinbeck describes. The fact that Jim feels deadened and resigned about his father's gruesome death speaks volumes about the lack of value placed on human suffering.

Jim explains the change that came over his mother when his older sister disappeared. The loss of the young girl also marked the beginning of his father's decline into violent behavior. Jim knows that his mother's will to live left her at that moment, and this change in his mother explains the type of death she suffers later. There's no reasonable cause—just a kind of deadness that eventually takes over her whole life.

Joy's physical suffering seems to have little impact on his spirit—or on his common sense, either. While his hurts have disfigured his small body, he hasn't changed his approach to helping the cause (never mind that he hasn't been so successful up to this point). Mac would like Joy to chill out so that he won't constantly have to be bailed out, but in the end, Joy's penchant for violence means that he's willing to make the ultimate sacrifice without much fuss.

Al mentions an important consequence of violence: rebellion. While the Growers hope to beat the strikers and their sympathizers into submission—and it often works—the opposite effect happens pretty often. As Mac later says, the worse the institutionalized violence, the higher the volume of applications for the Party. People don't like to suffer physical violence, but they'll certainly face it if it means freedom from the promise of continued oppression.

Mac reinforces the lesson learned by Al's response to the attack on himself and his lunch wagon: you can't really beat everyone into submission. While inflicting physical damage works pretty well as an intimidation tactic on some, it riles up the rest. Mac relies on people like Joy and Jim—those willing to sacrifice everything in the face of their own suffering—to stick it to the man.

Mac grows dispirited about the strike because the men seem low. Jim speaks from experience: sometimes misery makes you more determined. Part of that determination comes from the feeling that you have nothing to lose. Part of it comes from the hope that personal suffering will translate into lasting change, something that will affect more than just one person.

We know from the beginning that Jim is a deeply troubled young man. But in case you missed it, here is a memo from his subconscious. Jim falls into a deep but troubled sleep after he bullies London into taking action. London observes that even in sleep, Jim is working through some very deep-seated aggressions. We know that Jim's desire for violent action comes from a dark place inside of him, a place where he stores the painful memories of his hopeless and frightening early life.

We hear very little about the plight of individual workers in this work—we're focused so strongly on "the cause"—but here, we get a strong dose of misery from one of the women dealing with the conditions in the camp. While Mac and Jim put a pretty good face on their own discomfort, there's no denying the level of misery that the workers must be suffering in these primitive conditions. The heartbreaking thing? Their regularly scheduled lives were not much better. The conditions at the camps in the orchards were hardly wonderful, and the normal routine included a never-ending system of exploitation, from low wages in the fields to exorbitant prices at the company store.

Al tells Mac earlier—and only somewhat jokingly—that his father loved his dogs more than he loved him. We now learn that the beautiful pups have been killed in the fire that also claimed Anderson's crop of apples. Though Anderson had resigned himself to poverty, it's clear that the death of his four-legged friends has struck him to the core. Jim doesn't get it. He feels that Anderson should be willing to give up his life—as Jim himself is willing to do—to work for real change in U.S. labor conditions, and he scorns him for caring about property. But as we can see here, Anderson's grief is less for his property and more for the good companions who have so senselessly lost their lives.

Anderson's misfortunes tear at Mac's resolve to promote the cause, but it does show us that he still has a heart. Not only does Anderson's suffering get him to question his work, his ultimate response (remembering the suffering of millions) shows that he is somehow concerned with the greater good of humanity. But as London and others observe, Mac's ability to see the big picture is almost unbelievable.