Combating Injustice

In Combating Injustice, Jon Falsarella Dawson approaches American literary naturalism as a means of social criticism, exploring the powerful economic arguments and commentaries on labor struggles presented in novels by Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck. Drawing on extensive archival research, Dawson considers many of the original periodical sources that fueled books from McTeague (1899) to The Grapes of Wrath (1939), as Norris, London, and Steinbeck shaped contemporary materials into illustrations of the socio-economic forces that govern the undertakings of the working class. As Dawson shows, by depicting the operations of powerful individuals and institutions, works of naturalist fiction expose injustices with the aim of creating a more equitable society. Works such as The Octopus (1901), The Iron Heel (1908), and In Dubious Battle (1936) illuminate the rise of commodity culture, labor disputes with both industrial and agricultural workers, widespread poverty, extreme inequality, and the concentration of resources, including land ownership. Norris, London, and Steinbeck highlight the dangers of these developments by charting their impact on central characters whose fates result from the predatory tactics of corporate monopolies, wealthy individuals, and large financial establishments. Dawson's lucid analysis shows how naturalist writers, drawing on contemporary events and labor relations, accentuate the need for reform and stress the potential for change by human action. He locates the impetus for such radical ideas in the immediate sources for the major fiction of Norris, London, and Steinbeck, with particular attention to events in California, with the state offering a microcosm for conditions throughout the nation and providing dramatic illustrations of major economic issues. Combating Injustice: The Naturalism of Frank Norris, Jack London, and John Steinbeck presents richly contextualized readings of three major writers whose works uncovered the operations of the socio-economic system and offered audiences a greater awareness of the plight of labor, in the hope that readers might find the inspiration to become agents of change--