Absolute Power In John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle

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In the novel “In Dubious Battle”, It was a more so culmination of events such as the lowering of wages, unsafe equipment and unsanitary living conditions which finally motivated the workers to use their power to strike, hich immediately took place after World War One.
In this time the Great Depression was turning its head in, in what turned out to be the worst economic downfall in U.S history. The stock markets were falling and unemployment rates were skyrocketing through the roof. At first the working class allowed the growers to have absolute power because they provided them jobs. As the workers became a bigger part of the organization they beginning to see how unfairly they were being treated. er. The growers hired vigilantes to harass and kill the striking workers that refused to …show more content…

The owners no longer had absolute power over the strikers. The unification of the strikers increased their power, which commanded recognition from the growers. The growers were the power elite who thought that the strikers' interest was only monetary. Instead it had become spiritual. The strikers misused their power as the growers did. In John Steinbecks novel In Dubious Battle, there was enormous power struggle between the owners and the very weak workers. The owners were much more prestigious and feared, but when the workers were pushed to their limits they did indeed use the power that was available to them in the means of the strike. The pickers could not give into the demands of the owners because this would have defeated their purpose of the strike. On the other hand the Growers Association could not give into the pickers because they believed that this would have cost them to much money and made them out to be viewed as weak. This stubbornness of both sides caused a long and deadly strike that could have been