In one of the little essays Steinbeck did for the Saturday Review in 1955, "Some thoughts on Juvenile Delinquency," he writes as follows concerning the relationship of the individual to the society in which he lives: "… I believe that man is a double thing—a group animal and at the same time an individual. And it occurs to me that he cannot successfully be the second until he has fulfilled the first." The nice organic relationship which Steinbeck here postulates near the end of his writing career is seldom to be met in his fiction. Much more frequently we are presented with characters who choose one of two extremes—either to reject society's demands and escape into individualism, or to reject individualism and commit themselves to goals and values which can be realized only in terms of society.

In Steinbeck's very first novel, Cup of Gold (1929), in the figure of Merlin, is found not only an extreme example of escapism, but one of its most eloquent philosophers. As a young man, a greatly talented bard, he had taken up a hermit's life in a stone tower on a lonely mountain top. There he has grown old with his harp and his books of history and mythology, a legendary figure in his own lifetime. It is suggested that the cause of this self-imposed isolation may have been his losing a bardic contest through political influence. The consequent disillusionment is reflected in his remarks to the young Henry Morgan, who has come to consult him before going off into the world to make his fortune: "'I think I understand,' he said softly. 'You are a little boy. You want the moon to drink from as a golden cup; and so, it is very likely that you will become a great man—if only you remain a little child. All the world's great have been little boys who wanted the moon; running and climbing, they sometimes caught a firefly. But if one grows to a man's mind, that mind must see that it cannot have the moon and would not want it if it could—and so it catches no fireflies.'" Merlin goes a step further, and adds as a compensation for this loss of worldly ambition the attainment of community with mankind ("He has the whole world with him … a bridge of contact with his own people…."), whereas the worldly successful and therefore immature man "is doubly alone; he only can realize his true failure, can realize his meanness and fears and evasions."

The fascination which this general intellectual posture had for the early Steinbeck is evident from another character in the same novel. James Flower is from an aristocratic, well-educated English family who in despair at his harebrained impracticality buy him a plantation in the Barbadoes, where he cannot embarrass them. "And so he had grown wistfully old, on the island. His library was the finest in the Indies, and, as far as information went, he was the most learned man anywhere about. But his learning formed no design of the whole…."… In Steinbeck's first novel, then, we have two variations on the theme of escape; and although neither is the main character, Henry Morgan's life ultimately suggests that they were both wiser.

In Steinbeck's next book, The Pastures of Heaven, three years later, we find James Flower's same impracticality and indiscriminate bookishness in the character of Junius Maltby, who is treated at greater length and with more obvious sympathy. Again he is a man of "cultured family and good education." Also, his way into an escape from a worldly existence is an enforced one, a threat to his health, but is clearly congenial to him. Through his abstraction and impracticality the little farm which comes to him by marriage becomes unproductive; his wife's two children by former marriage die of influenza because they are undernourished while Maltby helplessly reads aloud Treasure Island and Travels With a Donkey. Finally his wife dies in childbirth, leaving him a son whom he names Robert Louis. Maltby makes an attempt at practicality by hiring an old German to work the farm, but within a week the two men become boon companions and spend their days sitting around together "discussing things which interested and puzzled them…." The three of them manage to survive, barefoot, ragged, ill-fed, but happy in their discussions of the battle of Trafalgar, the frieze on the Parthenon, the Spartan virtues, Carthaginian warfare, and other erudite topics. (pp. 75-7)

Surprisingly, the boy Robbie thrives in this environment and becomes a natural leader at school, fascinating fellow pupils and teachers alike with his poise and exotic knowledge. The school board, however, is more interested in Robbie's ragged clothes…. [The] story ends with Maltby and his son on their way to San Francisco and a return to a clerkship in order to provide the material benefits of society…. (p. 77)

Clearly, then, in his first two books of fiction Steinbeck demonstrates a serious interest and sympathy for what in today's slang might be called the "drop-out." A case might be made for discussing here his next novel. To a God Unknown, published just a year after The Pastures of Heaven, for in that novel too we have a character who in a secluded valley pursues a way of life unsanctioned by his society, in this case a dedication to mysticism and fertility rituals. In that novel, too, we find a hermit who, again in modern parlance, "does his own thing" with no Society For the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals nearby. But these similarities are peripheral, and not central to the theme of escape versus commitment. A more direct relationship can be established with the novel that followed in two years—Tortilla Flat.

This novel introduces two important changes in Steinbeck's treatment of the "drop-out" (which is a better term than "escapee"). First, whereas the earlier characters of this type had deliberately rejected the clear advantages available to them, in the form of family and education, these Mexican-American paisanos find themselves initially in a poor position to compete in modern society. Second, and more important, the "dropout" is no longer a shy, retiring, solitary, but an active, gregarious member of a whole community of "drop-outs." They have in common with their prototypes in earlier novels, however, a disinclination toward industrious labor and a disrespect for material property, for through the loss of possessions comes sorrow—"It is much better never to have had them." They also share a love of the contemplative life. True, sometimes pure contemplation arrives at the practical result of procuring a jug of wine or a chicken in a highly imaginative manner, but the process is enjoyed as much as the result, and sometimes consoles them for material lack or loss. (p. 78)

In his fiction up to 1935, then, stretching over six years of the Great Depression, beginning with minor characters and culminating in Tortilla Flat with a whole community of "dropouts," Steinbeck demonstrates a serious and sympathetic interest in the theme of escape from society. And only in one short story published in 1934 does he recognize even the existence of contemporary social issues. Instead, he set his fiction in the seventeenth, late nineteenth, and early twentieth centuries, thus in a sense performing as author the same escape as his characters.

All of this changes in 1936 with the publication of In Dubious Battle, which remains the best strike novel in the English language. Here Steinbeck demonstrates not only his detailed, quite professional knowledge of communist labor organization tactics in the field, but also presents us with central characters who are totally committed to bringing about substantial changes in American society. Prior to the strike novel, only "The Raid" had suggested this involvement by Steinbeck and had projected such commitment in the characters. In light of the importance which Judeo-Christian symbols and reference have in The Grapes of Wrath, it is interesting that this first treatment of proletarian subject matter should also find such references necessary. There is the master-apostle relationship of the two organizers, the portrait of their anonymous precursor who inspires them by his example, their own sense of sacrifice for mankind, and certain allusions in the dialogue. (pp. 80-1)

This commitment and self-sacrifice is even more extreme in Jim Nolan of In Dubious Battle, and in them he finds his personal fulfillment…. This commitment is accompanied by an even wider Christian reference. Whereas the neophyte in the short story had been merely willing to be used as "an example of injustice," Jim Nolan of the strike novel is so anxious as to have a martyr complex. Over and over he tells Mac, his mentor, "I want to get into it" and "I want you to use me." Only after he has gotten into it and has been wounded is he happy and sure of how strongly he is committed…. When he is killed, Jim does not have a chance to say "You don't know what you're doing"; he and Mac are ambushed and his face is blown off by a shotgun at close range, so that Mac finds him in a still kneeling posture and exclaims simply, "Oh, Christ!" Beginning with the book's title, epigraph, and numerous details taken from Paradise Lost, to the crowing of cocks and several allusions to the Holy Family (two of them pointed out by the characters themselves), clearly the committed hero is presented as an imitation of Christ.

Steinbeck's next published novel, Of Mice and Men (1937) offers a serious temptation and several pitfalls to anyone dealing with these two themes of escape and commitment. It could be used to illustrate the escape theme by pointing out the persistent dream of George and Lennie to get a place of their own; and even the mercy killing of Lennie by George could be seen as providing Lennie with permanent escape from a world with which he cannot cope, into the dream of the little house and a couple of acres, and rabbits. Or, by concentrating on George, and reading Lennie as a symbol of proletarian man, great in strength but helpless without leadership, the theme of commitment could be seen in George's sacrifices and devotion to Lennie. Or, by bringing out both of these patterns, the novelette could be made to illustrate the nice balancing of these two themes. But the escape theme in Of Mice and Men is essentially different from the "drop-out" kind of rebellion against society which concerns us here, and is clearly an illusion besides. The commitment is also questionable in its nature and intention. On one level, Lennie is necessary to George as an excuse for his own failure. Admitting Of Mice and Men to the present discussion would open the door for numerous other pieces, such as almost all the chapters of The Pastures of Heaven and some stories of The Long Valley, such as "Flight," most obviously.

But in 1939, with The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck clearly returns to his theme of social commitment, utilizing, even more extensively than before, pertinent Judeo-Christian analogues and references. It is more than personal friendship that causes Jim Casy to give himself up to the deputies in place of Tom Joad and Floyd. It is an action consequent upon his turning from an individualistic, sin and hell-fire, Bible-belt evangelism to a revelation of the Holy Spirit, which he comes to identify with "all men and all women," the "human sperit—the whole shebang. Maybe all men got one big soul ever'body's a part of." And it occurs to him then that his commitment is not to Jesus but to the people…. (pp. 81-3)

The movement from escape to commitment is even clearer in Tom Joad. He enters the novel determined to avoid all involvement: "I'm laying my dogs down one at a time" and "I climb fences when I got fences to climb." But through the experiences of the migration and through Casy's words and deeds he becomes converted and committed to a vision of social justice beyond hope of his personal experience. Even more than Jim of In Dubious Battle, he knows that although he may be killed, "I'll be ever'where—wherever you look."… Beyond this mystic identification, no commitment can go. It is a commitment which gains strength and approval not only by means of its sacrificial Christ figures, but by a wealth of Judeo-Christian references extending from Exodus, Deuteronomy, Canticles and Prophets through John the Baptist, Gospels, and Revelation. The Grapes of Wrath is the high point in Steinbeck's theme of commitment. Two years later, in The Forgotten Village, a documentary film about Mexican village life, he still stresses commitment by having the young boy, Juan Diego, disobey his parents in bringing his little sister for an inoculation. At the end of the film he leaves home altogether, not to escape, but to go to the city and be trained to better serve and enlighten his people. (pp. 83-4)

In December of 1944, shortly after returning from a tour of duty as European war correspondent, Steinbeck published Cannery Row. With this novel Steinbeck turns once more to the theme of escape as treated in the last novel before his brief proletarian excursion—escape on the level of an entire community of "drop-outs." However, whereas the author of Tortilla Flat had accepted its inhabitants with an amused, slightly tongue-in-cheek air, the author of Cannery Row several times steps stage-front to proselytize his readers…. (p. 84)

The transfer of Christian reference from the committed characters of his proletarian fiction to these "drop-outs" is significant. In another passage, he calls Mack and the boys "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men." The ground for these judgments had been indicated three years earlier in Sea of Cortez [cowritten with Edward F. Ricketts]: "… of the good we think always of wisdom, tolerance, kindliness, generosity, humility; and the qualities of cruelty, greed, self-interest, graspingness, and rapacity are universally considered undesirable. And yet in our structure of society, the so-called and considered good qualities are invariably concomitants of failure, while the bad ones are the cornerstone of success." It was probably disagreement with this premise that caused one well-known reviewer to say that Cannery Row is "a sentimental glorification of weakness of mind and degeneration of character." And so in a sense it is, if one accepts a Kiwanis, Rotary Club, Chamber of Commerce definition of noble character. Perhaps Steinbeck's original suspicions of such a definition were intensified by his experiences in the last years of the Depression and the war which was necessary to end it.

Whatever the reasons, this mood was strong enough to carry over into a variation on the theme in The Pearl, originally published in the same year. Strictly speaking, perhaps, this novelette, like Of Mice and Men and The Moon Is Down, enters only peripherally in this discussion. The pearl diver Kino does seek to physically escape an economically and socially repressive society, but only so that he may return to that same society at a higher level. He can be seen, in his struggle to escape, as what the author of Cannery Row called a "tiger with ulcers." And he arrives within reach of his goal with much worse than "a blown prostate and bifocals." He arrives with his house burned down, his wife physically beaten, his only son killed, and the lives of three men on his soul. And then Kino and his wife make their true "escape." They return to their village, throw the Pearl of Great Price back into the sea, and return to the edge of unconsciousness, an unthinking existence governed by the rhythms of sun and tide.

In its interesting variation on the theme of escape, The Pearl looks forward to Steinbeck's next novel, published two years later (1947). With this novel Steinbeck finally comes to a resolution of his two themes. Society as pictured in Steinbeck's previous novels is essentially an institutional entity from whose evils a character might decide to escape, or to whose improvement he might dedicate himself. In either case, the monolithic magnitude of the antagonist, society, lent dignity and possible tragedy to his course of action. In The Wayward Bus, however, we get very little notion of society as institution; we see it instead as an aggregation of human characters, from the hypocritical businessman, Elliot Pritchard, to Camille Oaks, the honest stripper. Juan Chicoy's decision to escape, therefore, is made in terms of disentanglement from certain people—his neurotic wife and his querulous bus passengers. This, of course, leaves him with no simple distinct notion of direction such as motivated the "drop-outs" and committed characters of Steinbeck's previous fiction. Thus, immediately after abandoning his allegorical bus and its passengers, Juan Chicoy (whose initials are J. C.) becomes merely confused by his escape. "It didn't seem as good or as pleasant or as free" as he had imagined it would…. So he returns to the bus, as Kino in The Pearl returns to his village; but not with a sense of escape or commitment, rather with a sense of involvement without either acceptance or resignation.

Although Steinbeck published five novels after The Wayward Bus, the two themes which concern us here play little part in them. Sweet Thursday would seem, superficially, a return to the spirit of Cannery Row and its glorification of escape, but that escape is so compromised with bourgeois values and genteel spice and color as to become quite respectable. The wonderful whorehouse of Cannery Row becomes a school for brides. Doc gets married and accepts a fat research grant at Cal Tech. More interesting is The Short Reign of Pippin IV. Pippin is a middle-class Frenchman whose escape is to study the stars rather than society. Then he is discovered to be heir to the throne of a re-established monarchy. In one short speech he presents a seven-point plan of such obvious good sense and modest reasonableness as to antagonize everybody and get himself threatened with the guillotine. He escapes and returns to his simple home and his telescope (somewhat as Kino returns to his pearl-diving) a contented citizen in a society of corrupt characters. Steinbeck's last novel, The Winter of Our Discontent, also touches only peripherally on our topic. The main character, Ethan Hawley, blaming his lack of success in society on his own virtue (as Steinbeck had discussed this relationship in the quotation from Sea of Cortez), embarks with deliberate irony upon a course of deviousness which quickly brings him fortune and esteem. In a state of moral shock at his own ability, and that of his children, to adjust so easily to a corrupt society, he attempts a kind of escape through suicide, but allows a contrived excuse to dissuade him. The other two novels of this period, Burning Bright and East of Eden, do not seem to enter into our topic in any significant way.

What we have, then, in Steinbeck's last novels is neither the individual or communal escapes of his early work and the immediate post-war novels, nor the inspired, Christ-like, sacrificial commitment of his proletarian fiction. Instead, we have a further development of the adjustment made by Juan Chicoy in The Wayward Bus. Society continues to be corrupt, although the blame is not so easy to fix; but there is no need for escape or commitment to reform. Steinbeck finally seems to completely accept the observation he had made on marine ecology, in Sea of Cortez: "There would seem to be only one commandment for living things: Survive!" This is qualified in East of Eden only by a faith in every man's ability to choose between good and evil. This is an old man's wisdom. We continue to read Steinbeck for the folly of his youth. (pp. 85-8)