KURDISTAN REGIONAL GOVERNMENT UNIVERSITY OF SULAIMANI FACULTY OF HUMANITIES SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Materialism in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE COUNCIL OF SCHOOL OF LANGUAGES/FACULTY OF HUMANITIES/UNIVERSITY OF SULAIMANI IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTERS OF ARTS IN ENGLISH LITERATURE

By Yousif Muhammed Hussein

Supervised By Assist. Prof. Dr. Harith Ismail Turki Aldarweesh

2015

1436 (HIJRI)

2714 (KURDISH)

َ‫سطُرُون‬ ْ َ‫ن َوا ْلقَلَ ِم َو َما ي‬ ‫القرآن الكريم‬ 1: ‫األية‬,8 ‫سورة مسألة‬

In the Name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful …The letters (Nun, etc,) are one of the Miracles of the Glorious Qur'an, none but Allah (Alone) knows their meanings. By the pen and by what they (the angles) write (in the records of men)

(The Glorious Quran) Surat AL-Qalam or Nun(The Pen),29 Verse 1

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Acknowledgements

First of all, I record my highest gratitude to the Higher Education Council, Sulaimani University Presidency, The Deanery of School of Languages, and English Department. I would like to thank warmly my dear supervisor Assist Prof Dr. Harith Ismael Turki Al-Darweesh, because not only he was supervising the process of my writing in this thesis, but also was ever stretching a hand of help as an instructor and a rich source of my inspiration and recommendation to fight the obstacles of finishing this thesis and without him, this thesis would not have taken a shape. I would also like to show my unlimited owe to all of those great friends and teachers who were continuously giving me support and encouragement when writing this thesis, their kind help will never be forgotten.I here demonstrate my humble apology to those whom I would forget to mention their names; therefore, what I ask from them now is their forgiveness. I extend my immeasurably thanks to my dear teacher and instructor, dear Dr. Azad, the head of English Department, for his well-wishing and great kind help during my study courses in Master's Degree and also during the time of the writing. I would like also sincerely to express my real thankfulness to my dear teacher, the dean of School of Language, Dr. Kawan Arif for his invaluable and priceless encouragement and facilitation during my whole Master's Degree study. Very compassionate thanks and gratefulness to my teacher and friend, dear Kathy Fuad who has always been one of my encouraging and urging pillars and who could choose for me the subject matter of this thesis in American Literature to be scrutinized and shaped as a Master thesis. My thanks are due to my family members, my parents, sisters and brothers, whose continuous courage and stimulations were my guarding angel that always gave me hope not to surrender to the difficulty of my journey. VI

I would also love to show my countless thanks and appreciation to all of my respectable professors, namely Dr. Kanar Adham and Dr.Saman. I want too to show my thankfulness to the Library staff members of the School of Languages, who, with high respect, could at least familiarized me to some valuable sources for my study. Also my vast thanks to my dearest colleagues Mr. Dana, Miss Kazhal, Srwa Ahmed, my school teachers, where I have been teaching, and all of my friends without difference for their long breath support to me.

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Supervisor's Report I certify that this thesis entitled "Materialism in John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men" was prepared by (Yousif Muhammed Hussein) under my supervision at the University of Sulaimani as a partial requirement for the degree of Master of Arts in English Literature.

Signature: Supervisor: Assistant Professor Dr. Harith Ismael Turki Al-Darwesh Date:

/

/2015

In view of the available recommendations, I forward this thesis for debate by the Examining Committee.

Signature: Name: Azad Hassan Fatah (PhD) Head of the Departmental Committee of Post-graduate Studies in English Department Date: / /2015

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Examining Committee's Report We certify that we have read this thesis as Examining Committee, examined the student in its context, and that in our opinion it is fully adequate, in scope and quality, withstanding as a thesis for the degree for Masters in English Literature. Signature:

Signature:

Name:

Name:

Member:

Member:

Chairman

Member

Signature:

Signature:

Name:

Name:

Member

Member and Supervisor

Date: / /20

Approved by the Council of School of Languages

Signature: Name: Head of School of Languages University of Sulaimani

Date:

/

/2015

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements…………………………………………………….VI Abstract……………………………………………………………..…VIII List of Abbreviations………………………………………………….…X Table of Contents……………………………………………………….XI Chapter One: Introduction 1.1John Steinbeck's Anti-Materialistic Attitudes ………………………..1 1.2

The American Materialism: General Background………………...13

Chapter Two: 2.1 Materialism in The Grapes of Wrath……………………………….…..26 Chapter Three: 3.1 Materialism in Of Mice and Men………..........................................54 Conclusion……………………………………………………………...80 Bibliography Abstract in Arabic Abstract in Kurdish

XI

CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1.1: John Steinbeck's Anti-Materialistic Attitudes

The major works of John Steinbeck deal with the many challenges facing American agricultural workers, as well as the challenges facing Mexican immigrants who arrived in California looking for jobs on farms or orchards. By the 1930s, automation had made such inroads into American farming that migrant workers, ranch hands, and the like, were nearly extinct. John Steinbeck was one among those writers or novelists who traced his abilities of writing about the materialistic and economic problems during the Great Depression in North America. (Benson 191) On the other hand, the economic decline in America during The Great Depression made The United States well-known in the concerns of famine and starvation in the world. Moreover, the invention of harvest combines reduced the help of human labor and hands. At the beginning, it is said that a combine capability exceeded nearly the work of 300 men, so the farms only needed some limited number of hands of men to support the machines. John Steinbeck could not stand patiently doing nothing but to record how the crises of new technology brining into his country led to the depravation of many poor and normal workers from manual works. He wrote affrontingly to show the world how his nation was the pawn of suffrage, and hard-gained-living during the drought year of the Dust Bowl and the monopoly of the capitalists. About criticizing Capitalism or Materialism System by the author, it is noticed that: "John Steinbeck was deeply hurt by the capitalistic and sadistic practices of the banks; therefore he found no other means to attack them but with his pen. . ." (Encyclopedia Americana5 599) 1

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CHAPTER ONE Introduction 1.1: John Steinbeck's Anti-Materialistic Attitudes

The major works of John Steinbeck deal with the many challenges facing American agricultural workers, as well as the challenges facing Mexican immigrants who arrived in California looking for jobs on farms or orchards. By the 1930s, automation had made such inroads into American farming that migrant workers, ranch hands, and the like, were nearly extinct. John Steinbeck was one among those writers or novelists who traced his abilities of writing about the materialistic and economic problems during the Great Depression in North America. (Benson 191) On the other hand, the economic decline in America during The Great Depression made The United States well-known in the concerns of famine and starvation in the world. Moreover, the invention of harvest combines reduced the help of human labor and hands. At the beginning, it is said that a combine capability exceeded nearly the work of 300 men, so the farms only needed some limited number of hands of men to support the machines. John Steinbeck could not stand patiently doing nothing but to record how the crises of new technology bringing into his country led to the depravation of many poor and normal workers from manual works. He wrote affrontingly to show the world how his nation was the pawn of suffrage, and hard-gained-living during the drought year of the Dust Bowl and the monopoly of the capitalists. About criticizing Capitalism or Materialism System by the author, it is noticed that: "John Steinbeck was deeply hurt by the capitalistic and sadistic practices of the banks; therefore he found no other means to attack them but with his pen. . ." (Encyclopedia Americana5 599)

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Steinbeck shows a great concern with the dilemma of the materialistic issues in America. His concern stems from many facts. One of which is that he had a big experience in the lives of the workers and immigrants because he had lived with them as a journalist for some years. And also there is another fact, which is, John Steinbeck's father had owned a land in the Salinas Valley. For instance, his novel The Grapes of Wrath is concerned with the crises of fertility of the agricultural lands and farms, and also with the farmers and the poor, who had to desert their homelands from the Eastern States to the West of the United States. The advent of The Dust Bowl did much damage to the American economy, especially on the lives of the poor and the workers who were living in the Eastern States of the United States. The Dust Bowl phenomenon was the worst man-made environmental problem the country had to go through, because the fertile farming lands lost their top-soil parts and forced much to produce corns. Thus, there began a storm which was mingled with drought, and the sight distance became much less and less, which made the inhabitants desert their home towns. In his works, John Steinbeck, as an eye-witness, wants to reveal more to the reader how the country lived under the pressure of starvation and famine that his country lived during The Great Depression and The Dust Bowl. The novelist tries to crystallize and validate the losses which his nation met and he also is curious to defend the unlucky poor people who had to recoup with their souls which were criminated by materialistic and capitalistic systems. (The Story Behind the Story) The Dust Bowl brought with itself many misfortunes and losses concerning the geographical, agricultural and health affairs because it was the dust storm that confronted the American civilians on the Great Plains that were like the end of the world. The worst storms of the Dust Bowl

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left America with great economic losses that were aggravated by two other problems, droughts and depression that made recovery much more difficult. Steinbeck was not the sole writer to manifest the dilemma, during The Great Depression and the Dust Bowl advent, who has been living in such a hard condition, rather at the same time, Steinbeck as many other writers of his time, like Thornton Wilder and Scott Fitzgerald, had a great interest in the American Dream and that dream was the chief aim of the average migrant worker. Then, Steinbeck's major works deal with the collision of the immigrants' dreams of having and getting lands with the tough and bitter realities. Thus, information about his works with his biography and career is very significant and one has to know the nature of the author's subjectivity related to his life. The aftermath of those calamities which the Great Depression and other minor problems have made led to the melting of the American Dream and the disappearance of the promised paradise. The Great Depression and the economic decline covered the whole scale of the United States. What widened the sense of suffering and degradation is the difference of living among the states, for some states were living better and had better weathers and lands to support them with good production of corns and food. A great writer like John Steinbeck was not far from these catastrophes that his country was meeting and going through and he, as an individual was under the harsh impact of the plague of economic disease, corruption, and the Dust Bowl. John Steinbeck, as one of the activist literary writers, could stretch his hand to record and share the unforgettable calamities facing his people, and also through his writings, he tackled various aspects in the dark days of the Great Depression. Steinbeck resurrected himself in taking side with the

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poor, migrant workers, the lower class, through his works, and thus immortalizing the semi-epic historic affairs about what had happened to his nation. The writer, James Gregory, about the great skills of Steinbeck in capturing those unforgettable scenes of the Dust Bowl, writes: " . . . Steinbeck did something that the journalists, photographs and politicians could not do: he made sure that the Okies could never be forgotten. . ." (James 1)

At the same time, Steinbeck's biographers commonly accept the important role that Steinbeck's wife, Carol played in her husband's early fictions; she would encourage him, criticize him, and help him at typing. Carol was an incomparable partner to Steinbeck, not only in the inspiration of writing the works by her husband, but also in her husband's social life fame among media. Although he remarried another lady who was a strong-willed and an active lady with the name, Conger Gwendolyn. But in 1943, his relationship with his second wife did not last as worm as before, because he had another responsibility to take on which was to be a war correspondent for New York Herald Tribune. (Susan 27) John Steinbeck declared the function and the duty of the writer when he was accepted and given Noble Prize in 1962 in Literature. The writer’s works should have sprung from the real obstacle among societies, debate those obstacles and present solutions behind those barriers. The important role of writers is to give hope and optimism for the individuals and also to unravel man's capability with care, passion and love, and a writer is a representative of his/her nation, as the following: The writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity for greatness of heart and spirit-for gallantry in defeat, for

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courage, compassion, and love. In the endless war weakness and despair, there are the bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication or any membership in literature. (Quoted in Jasinki 11)

John Steinbeck was a realist writer who undoubtedly sensed vividly how to mix fiction with real life, how to bring about historical events with literature. He did not halt in the circus of writing and he was holding his pen keenly and enthusiastically, that is why his fame of being a prolific writer could amaze the scholars and others writers of his time. Among his other great works are Cannery Row, The Red Pony, To a God Unknown, In Dubious Battle; The Moon is Down, The Wayward Bus, East of Eden, Sweet Thursday, The Winter of Our Discontent, The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A Fabrication, The Castle of King Arthur and His Noble Nights, and The Pastures of Heaven. The titles of his works, when read, at least inform the readers what they uncover and unravel, and one can get the impression that Steinbeck was a writer, as a social reformer, was trying

to

make

the

lower

class

individuals

and

the

poor

cautious.(Plimpton and Crowther 1) As far as the novels are concerned, John Steinbeck had earlier in his mind a work to be written when with his wife, paid a visit to the shantytown outside Salinas, which was called Little Oklahoma by the locals. After Steinbeck heard people's stories in that area, he was inspired and this led to the birth of The Grapes of Wrath. Then, there was definitely the main cause of Steinbeck's great work based on his real confrontation with the migrants' and farmers dilemma of their hard and severe lives. Therefore, it is significant to state that John Steinbeck took for every work of his a factual background that he saw with his eyes and

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got molten densely in his blood in order to guide and inspire him to write his works. He was a social, caring, and heeding man besides being a writer that leads readers, critics, and scholars to conclude that Steinbeck was one of the great American novelists fought against the injustice that was brought by the capitalist industrial system. One can say that a realist writer as John Steinbeck is not to be belittled from literary and social bases, because he was taking his writing materials directly from the dilemmas facing his society and knitted them into immortal fictional works. (Benson 8) Steinbeck has continuously focused on the importance of community and organism, which he called "the sum of phalanx", that is to say, he intended to manifest that the small parts are not equal to the whole and vice versa. He has always been aware that the community would have been influenced by the force of labor organizations and movements to change the average society through work and labor. He has taken the best examples of 1930s of California and the strikes of the workers and farmers during that period to have become the raw material of some of his novels. In Dubious Battle, which again tells the story of apple pickers, Steinbeck makes up two characters, Mac and Jim and makes them heroes and leaders of people through strikes, who revolted against inequalities and injustice. The characters of his works aptly mirror what Steinbeck believed and used to do, because he himself took part in what everyone in his country needed and did not shun himself from what was threatening him. Besides, he supported the idea of grouping and striking against inequalities and punishing people by the higher capitalist authorities. The hard moments, in Steinbeck's life, taught him not to forget a decade of famine of the Great Depression, and led the writer to record them in the

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majority of his literary works. The author's attitudes were much more concerned with his people and he wrote his works just to witness through the history of human being. (Hoffman 184-193) The historic apocalyptic events in the American community well paved the way for John Steinbeck to determine his decisions on the subject matters of his literary works, and the core of his ideologies, themes, and gist of the works that he was busy with between thirties and forties was the raw materials of class conflict, class war, class hatred and class against class. According to critic R.W.B. Lewis, Steinbeck could thus have jumped from the literary and artistic field to the concern of sociology and politics only through investigating the dilemma and the plague of the social and economic obstacles. John Steinbeck saw that the materialistic needs for his people are much more important than what others did in their works. (Jeffrey and Schultz 309) Being a leftist, John Steinbeck was under the influence of the ideas of Marx's Dialectical and Historical Materialism, because he was living in a time when his people were starving, and they were degraded by the capitalistic system. So, there was a need for social and political changes through the striking of workers, farmers and the poor against the capitalists .When one comes to religious orientation, one might conclude that the author was an atheist or at least agnostic; that is to say, the author was not under the influence of accurate calculations by a divine being monitoring the actions of human being. The author can be said to look at the world materialistically not spiritually, that is to say, the thoughts and ideas, accumulated and found in the majority of his works, focused on the materialistic needs of the poor, the farmers and migrant civilians during the Great Depression era. He is thought to have anti-materialistic orientations and found as an anti-capitalist writer.

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Steinbeck not only has taken a transcendental and promoted seat in the literature locally or under the sun, but rather he has touched the very soul of his social and economic problems confronting his nation during nineteen thirties. He also could triumphantly unravel all the possibilities of hopelessness and total marginalization against the American people particularly by the menace of the overpowering capitalism and exploitation getting over mass properties and resources. Industrialization in the field of agriculture and facilitating technology became able to decrease the manual work of workers, farmers and ranchmen, on the one hand, and increase the power of the bank men, hard- hearted material people, on the other. Thus Steinbeck, especially in The Grapes of Wrath, succeeds in delineating appropriately the heinous acts of the landlords and the bankers who drove off all the farmers from their land, which has been once the birth of the American dream. The nutshell of the story of The Grapes of Wrath is to tell how agriculture and farming become industry and the absence of the need of handiworks and manual work. (Stephen 83) Furthermore, when Steinbeck was busy with writing one of his novels, Cannery Row, he said: My major focus and theme in that book is put on the idea of mangroup and gathering people against the filthy hand of capitalism and the horrific products of modern civilization, which are fake and they drag man to the brim where one can be far from authenticity.

From Steinbeck's quote above, one can be sure that the author had been working in many aspects of his works against the industrial materialistic system and was encouraging his fellowmen to revolutionize

9

against it. He was making sure that such a plague could be destroyed through grouping and making unions among the lower class working men. In Cannery Row, Steinbeck molds the theme of revolution and nonconformism against the exploiting hands of capitalism, which is seen in the character of Mack, who fights against the plight of landlords and bankers’ monopoly, where they take every property and possession for themselves and deny others their rights. Those people can only be overcome through the striking of the workers and farmers. (Markels 27) Consequently, one can conclude that John Steinbeck, not only as a modern realist novelist, but also has a sharing hand to widen viewpoints and perspectives about his country during the worst economic futile ear in the first quarter of the twentieth century. An author as Steinbeck, through his miscellaneous life stages, has remained a decisive proponent to side with his nation and he, through many layers, has shown loyal attitudes to, at least, show the whole human and the history what a severe and hard conditions his people were going through during the Great Depression and the collapse of the American Dream. Steinbeck became much talented when he faithfully was writing about the economic crises in many of his works and he showed his readiness to critique all that paved the way to further destruction of American people's lives through his writings. For example, Steinbeck demonstrates in both Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath his passion with the poor, migrant farmers, the working people and lower class, while he is portraying the major higher class characters in those two novels, who have on inhuman attitudes towards the suppressed and unemployed poor people.

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One can say that John Steinbeck is an observer and eyewitness of the injustices that were imposed on the laboring class during the decade of the Great Depression America and almost often the author is angered by the capitalists and bank men. His anti-capitalism and anti-materialism view takes the shape of a general critique not only against the bankers and the capitalists, but also he, in both Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath, shows great detest to the local authorities who helped the owners' profits. Steinbeck exhibits in his two works here how the American capitalists and materialists during the economic plague period shut their eyes to their own Machiavellian inhumane misdeeds and methods. Steinbeck creates in the mind of the average reader how the banks during the savage storm became profit-oriented and made the farm cultivation industrialized. The biographer, Brown Josephine reminds us of the unforgettable hard time of the economic disease in America the very well-planned method of the hard-hearted capitalists against the farmers in some eastern when he states: “The banks used as means to expropriate the farmers by the Capitalists with much authority and sadism and that is the core of capitalism system which often industrializes agriculture and takes everything for profit”. (Brown 3) Steinbeck captures the moments that the real mass of banks and materialistic systems in the majority of his works, he never sides with those giant capitalistic figures, and rather he ridicules and criticizes them by the weak actions that cannot stop the destruction which is done to the American property and its unjust consequences. For example, in The Grapes of Wrath, the tractor drivers and landowners, who shovel their lands and fields, tell the farmers that they should perform and execute what they have been told by higher people, who Steinbeck describes as monsters:

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We are sorry. It is not us. It is the monster. The bank is not like a man…The bank is something else than a man. It happens that every man hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it…It is the monster. Men made it, but can't control it. (TGOW 23)

As previously mentioned that Steinbeck demonstrates hugely his anti-materialistic and capitalistic attitudes in the majority of his works. When one reads his work, The Red Pony (1933), one suddenly assumes the author's continuous discomfort with the issues of banks, materialistic and capitalistic systems, especially their devil threat towards the lives of the poor and farmers. Moreover, the lives of family members come under the threat of a bank from Italy. The threat appears when Mr. Carl Tiflin tells Billy Buck: "Listen Billy…I am having a hard time keeping this ranch out of the

bank of Italy without taking on anybody else to feed."

(The Red Pony 13)

Steinbeck draws our attention, in many of his works, towards the irresponsibility that capitalism and materialism, as it appears above, have towards the lives of the poor and lower class individuals. He announces his very anti-materialistic attitude that the higher and middle class people make themselves blind to the world where the working poor men live. While he shows, through many heroic characters of his works, that he has deep, solid, and unchangeable compassion for the souls of mankind. Once again, Steinbeck sides with the lower class people and attacks the materialistic and capitalistic systems. This very attitude is present in his works such as Sweet Thursday, The Wayward Bus, and Cannery Row. Steinbeck assumes that it is everyone's duty to announce war against the materialist system, and for the same purpose, he has many

12

times uncovered his opinions, through the heroic actions and humane attitudes of the characters of his works. That is why Allen Penner summarizes Steinbeck's anti-materialistic attitudes and his deep love for the poor and the oppressed in this way: There is a debt which every man owes his fellow man; and the people who are most prompt in saying it, are, ironically, the poorest in material wealth. Their acceptance of responsibility for those in need is a quality not so frequently found in the upper and middle classes. ((Quoted in Allen 61) Steinbeck also maintains his anti-materialistic attitude and crucially criticizes the reforming steps the American Government had been taking towards the lives of the farmers and working men and their limited working income due to the role of sheriffs and other law enforcement officials in the California strike-breaking activities of the 1930s. Many striking activist organizers and growers were thrown into prisons for lengthy terms because they were thought violating California's criminal syndicalism law. Steinbeck recognizes the need to crucial changes and reforms because he witnessed much starvation and deprivation in the camps of the migrant workers and farmers. (Critical Companion To John Steinbeck 294) Not only does Steinbeck like to unravel that capitalism and materialism deprive workers and lower class people from their legitimate rights or make them angry towards reforming, changing and revolutionizing, but also he tells the readers that capitalism is brought into the community by the post-war industrialism. Steinbeck warns all the people from the devastating threats that capitalism tries to introduce to the world. He is loyal to his attitudes, because for him that system knows neither individuals nor society. He assures that capitalism, with its

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principles and pillars, erodes all the joints of society, families and moral standards. (Michael 190) Finally, through much scrutiny related with the works of John Steinbeck, a reader could deduct and arrive at the clear view of the writer's direct support to the American lower class individuals; comprising from the workers, the migrant and expelled farmers from their home lands and the deprived poor people from their rights. This feature, present in John Steinbeck and his works, specifies him as one of the most prominent writers, who succeeds to scrutinize the real suffrage of the poor and to expose the real evil of materialism in the American society. So, Steinbeck's anti-materialistic attitudes can be said to be something particular to the native basics regarding the economic plague, but his values can also be accepted universally in fighting against the exploitative systems concerning the lives of the workingmen wherever they are in the world. (Gregory 111) 1.2 The American Materialism: A General Background Materialism as a branch of philosophy was attacked by the metaphysics, who believed that materialism is the origin of all the evil, immorality and the gratification of desires. Materialism is seen as opposite of morality. The opponents of materialism based their antagonism to this philosophy on the belief that there is something nonmaterial that existed before the material world and it is the world beyond nature or metaphysics. (Politzer 123) In the Nineteenth Century some like Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), Karl Marx (1818-1883), Friedrich Engels (1820-1895), and some others, focused on the human being's place in the universe. The issues of materialism and idealism were two important points which those

14

philosophers touched to discuss and argue about how human being through one of the issues could get to the notion of truth and reality. The major difference of those philosophers is in the way they interpreted the existence of man. Those philosophers who assume the primacy of the spirit are called idealists and they have nothing to do with nature and the universe, and those who support the primacy of the physical world are called materialists. Both proclaim finding the truth. (Maximoff 10) A distinguished philosopher as Friedrich Hegel was more committed to relating the macrocosm universe and human community to higher being or God, and he focused on the pillars of spirituality concerning human existence so as to construct and adhere to idealism. Besides, Hegel was the first thinker who shed light on the principles of dialectics, that is, he was saying that the total universe with all its proponents would be under the force of change materially in the form of contradiction. Hegel thus asserts the existence of God, not in a pantheism concept, but in a separate entity in way that assures the relationship of God with humanity ontologically and epistemologically, because Hegel takes that for granted as human being is the only creature who has reason and can think. In this concern, Anna Madeline suggests: "It is a universal and ancient preconception that human beings are thinking beings, and that by thinking and thinking alone they distinguish themselves from the beasts. Animals have feelings. Human beings think, and they alone have religion. . . "(Anna 6)

A great figure, who took the idea of idealism, as Hegel and who attributed everything to the "Philosophy of Idealism", he could also create the method of "Dialectical Approach" which later, as a separate branch of science, was used and tackled by Marx and Engels for the foundation of

15

"Dialectical Materialism". Even the early materialistic philosophers in the sixteenth century became two schools; one of them called themselves rationalist school and the second school was called the empiricists or experimentationalists; both trends did not have any doubt about the real existence of the material world, but the difference between the two is that the rationalists proclaimed that our knowledge of the world is taken from our perception while the empiricists argued that the source of our knowledge is our experience.(Ditsky 34) At any rate, it is very important to explore the main principles of the American materialism, which is the core of this study, to see the reasons why Steinbeck took this matter very seriously in his novels. Consequently, the great crises of the economic decline and the Great Depression that confronted America during late twenties and thirties of the twentieth century are divided into two great losses (John 419): 1-The Great Crash of Wall Street that became the cause of millions of homeless people with rarity of material support because of financial losses and also big numbers of unemployed people. 2- The phenomenon of "Dust Bowl" that struck "The Great Plains" during the early 1939 which compelled many families to be migrant workers and farmers to desert their birth places and search for better life in the West, California.

On the other hand, a mention of capitalism and the production of commodities is of due importance, because of the impact these issues had on the American social class systems and how they operated in profiting from the lower classes of the society, separating it thus into many different groups of possessing versus possessed groups of haves versus have-nots. The same force of Marxist materialism as movements, groups and organizations, has triggered the preparation of the American society

16

to fight against capitalists and exploiters of the generation of workers and farmers. In this respect, John Bellamy Foster says: "The truth is that when it comes to the contradictions represented by the economic and environmental failures of the system, it is only socialists that are able effectively to bring these issues together. . ." (John 2) And the same ideology of Marxist Manifesto of Karl Marx had the same outcomes of activity, motivation, and reaction in the United States of America also, especially by the

materialist adherents and

revolutionizing figures, who fought against the injustice that the capitalism and the modern industrialization have brought about to the American social system and economy. The time between 1852 and 1884 was the dawn of demonstrations and the striking in the United States, and politically the time was the landmark which was appointed as the unity of the struggles of the proletariat group against the capitalists, starting from France and England, and gradually to the United States, especially in some states like Oklahoma and Texas. In many states of America, the social movements and organizations of the workers and proletariat classes much helped the idea of revolutionizing and grouping against the monopoly of workers, especially North America. On the 10th March, 1896, the first book about social justice was printed by an Italian scholar, Antonio Labriola, who printed the book in Rome (Labriola, 128) This book about the justice of the social system does not only help the American readers to open their eyes in front of the avalanches of the capitalist intentions, but also helps much more the workers and immigrants' unions that have already been organized previously. Labriola's work had a great effect on the North America, maybe much more than Marx and Engels. Labriola made up an

17

unforgettable history through his ideas, which declared that the majority of the social problems could be solved through justice and equality and via fair distributions of the products to the consumers as well as to the producers who are workers and employees.(Gramsci 137) The Americas, especially North American countries, have been under direct geographical, scientific and various expeditionary European people in many ways. Since its discovery, the American continent has been witnessing different treatments of the European Masters who treated the inhabitants as slaves. From importing African slaves through The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to, America’s inhabitants and aborigines faced rough treatment by the European lords and capitalists. When arriving to the country, the European brought with them all that were needy to the handiwork of agrarian needs like animals and tools, and this paved the way easier to master the basics of taking interest of workers and farmers. The history of the struggles between the owners and the needy people, the capitalist and the poor, superior and inferior, the master and slave, and the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, started. The inhabitant workers and farmers had to suffer so much for a long period on the powerful hands of the aristocratic, bourgeoisie and higher class European, new comers, who announced themselves as much more deserving people of possessing than the indigenous owners who were the righteous inhabitants. (Rosemont 101-102) The great impact of Materialism and its variable branches have hitherto deep layers of interests and cares by the literature and the professions in passage of The American History. Hence, from the dawn of the discovery of that continent up to bringing and introducing it to the outer world of other civilizations, American

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writers have been trying to give a voice to the kind of suffering and catastrophes that enveloped and their lives. They mirrored the reality of the American materialistic and capitalistic system, which exploited its people and enslaved them. Thus, the new system did as much damage and corruption as benefits; especially when one comes to the American Dream. The term American Dream gives the sense that through acquiring the material possessions and getting more properties happiness could be supplied and obtained to every individual in the American society, here we mean every individual in the American society had been promised a paradise; but things turned clear that those dreams became fallacies and delusions by the hands of monopolies of the feudal systems and ambitious capitalists in reality. A great novelist as F. Scott Fitzgerald in his The Great Gatsby (1925) tries to depict the dilemma of the love for material possession through the characters of his novel. The novelist pictures the American as anxious and very keen to attack over the material acquirements, thinking that material achievement would bring happiness. They are unaware of the fact that American Dream has been corrupted by the culture and the loads of the fallacious wealth. In The Great Gatsby, Fitzgerald pictures how the American society is deluded in thinking that materialistic achievements are what the individuals' needs. In the novel, the romantic values of human being are belittled and considered worthless when compared to the materialistic values. Possession and materialistic achievement are the only means to put limit to one's prestige, character and humanity. About the central character, Gatsby, William Fahey points out: "The main character, Gatsby, who perfectly can stand for America itself, is certain that he can reach his dream by wealth and

19

influence. All he can show for himself is his wealth. He always brags about his house, car and material possession as though they can account for his every need . . ."(Fahey 70)

On the other hand, moreover, Arthur Miller tries to depict the nightmares of materialism in his plays, especially Death of a Salesman (1949). The playwright exposed the American system and its inhumane and callous treatment of the employees. Willy Lowman is exploited by the company which he works for and when he gets old he is thrown away like the peels of potatoes. In Death of Salesman, The American Dream is criticized by the playwright. The American Dream has made a heaven in the American individuals' minds, but they are unaware that it is only an allusion and far from reality. About this play relating to the vanity of the American Dream with Willy's helplessness achieving his dream, Pradhan states: Willy's rural-agrarian dream is a sort of safety valve to withdraw from the harsh realities of failure in the pursuit of the success dream . . . (Pradhan 16) In the American history, especially during the Great Depression in the first quarter of the twentieth century, the idea of rebellion rising against the upper classes and the materialist capitalists was instilled in people’s minds by the great writers and intellectual people. Those great American minds, including even John Steinbeck, urged people to revolt against those who monopolized the capitals of the states. Those writers, like Steinbeck, were fuelled emotionally by the real suffering of people, whose only outlet to the world outside is through writings of people like Steinbeck. In this concern, a critic Samuel Levenson has pointed:

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The single emotion which dominates Steinbeck is compassion, a deep and abiding sympathy for the homeless, the hungry, the vagrant, and the sick, in the main, he is concerned with the simple desires of a simple people: of a man for a piece of farm land, of a mother to keep her family fed and united. (Quoted in Walcutt 10)

It can be seen from what is mentioned previously, from what many American literary works display, how effective and influential the introduction of Capitalism, Materialism, and the industrial progress was to the American society, especially what is relevant to the lives of lower class and the poor. That is why a reader may confront with the radical thinking of some American authors in the beginning of twentieth century, to write against capitalism and to adhere the lower class, the itinerant workers, and the poor and even, in their works, making the lower class to raise against the capitalism system, denounce it and encouraging people for social, political and economic changes. Daniel Aaron, an American writer, suggests: For the majority of writers, who were associated in some way or another with the movement, it was the times, not the party that made them radicals. The party attracted them, because it alone seemed to have a correct diagnosis of America's social sickness and a remedy for it. (Aaron 160)

Moreover, Dos Passos(1896-1970),an American radical novelist, in U.S.A. Trilogy (1938), depicts America as a two- edged country of diving between the cruel life of proletariat and the greed of capitalism. In this sense, Sidney Finkelstein (1965) maintains that: Dos Passos puts American Capitalism into the witness box like a brilliant prosecuting attorney, making it confess and document the exploitation, avarice, cruelty, deception, hypocrisy, thievery,

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bribery, murder, "every man for himself" selfishness, waste of talent and lives, that lay behind its accumulation of wealth. He does this as a clear-eyed social historian. But the heat of his furious attack on society generates no warmth toward his characters as human beings. . . (Sidney 1999)

The above quote shows that during The Great Depression, even the writers had strong likes for changes and fighting against the American capitalists and materialist pillars, and that loyal passion for getting rid out of the economic dilemma made them somehow radical and seen as the adherents of Communist party, but it was the time, in a way or another, the hard time, which made the writers be found and taken as the supporters of Communist Party, because the only solution ,for the America's great plague towards social change, was their main motto. When coming to view the era of The Great Depression in America during the first quarter of the twentieth century, a reader can feel the monster-like presence of industrialization and its damage to the American working class and how it decimated the ability of a farmer to make a living of his/her own. The death of farming by the hands of a farmer was announced with the arrival of industry. Thus, it was crushing hard to the lower class and the proletariat generation to live a normal life, because in every aspect, financially and politically, they were affected. Despite the economic and agricultural drought The Dust Bowl in some states in America that very devastatingly lowered the agricultural prices, the collapse of the stock market, and the country was included in The World War I and that made the situation for living worse because the Republican policies never jumped towards social reforms and instead embraced narrow-mindedness of materialism and capitalism. (John and Schmalbach 516)

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The Capitalism and Materialism destructive results were so huge to the American economy in 1920s and 1930s in the United States that the intellectuals and the cautious writers did not have to ignore them; they took the way of documenting the tragic and despondent outcomes of the lives of the poor and the lower class through their writing skills. The hardships that the American society saw during the economical crash period, by the help of literary writings of some American authors, have been an alarm in the history of the United States that usually tolls and it echoes in the memories of the historians. The American writers of the period even criticized the policies of the American government of not doing enough actions towards the problems and the writers too found the American government frozen with other minor issues by 1930s. The American writers, historians, journalists and activists often found the plans of reform by the government more involved political concerns than with the economical dilemma in Roosevelt's office administration. (Galbraith 6) To bring out the American nation from the monster of the Great Depression dilemma, many economic theorists suggested and explained the true analysis of the era and gave miscellaneous road maps and serious debate. Among them were Simon Kuznets, Moses Abramovitz, and Rizhard Easterlin. About the waves of economic retardation and the period of the Great Depression in the late of nineteenth century and the early part of twentieth century in the United States, Abramovitz demonstrates that: Development during nineteenth and twentieth century took the form of a series of surges in the growth of output and in capital and labor resources followed by retarded growth .Each period of retardation in the rate of growth of output…culminated in protracted

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depression or in a period of stagnation in which business cycle recoveries were disappointing, failing to lift the economy to a condition full of employment or doing so transiently. (Quoted in Easterlin 7)

The enigmatic decade during the collapse of economy and the crisis of unemployment on one hand, and the materialistic or capitalistic oppression of the upper class towards the hands of labor and the lower class during The Great Depression era, on the other hand, did need radical reform to effect social and political changes either by government or by any relevant side to stop the damaging effects. In this concern, the still running administration office during that time by Franklin D. Roosevelt proposed a solution for the crisis under the name "The New Deal" to liberate the United States from the plague of starvation and for the sake of reactivation of the nation's economy. We see that however the religious ideologies and their sects kept their faith during the Great Depression, still they turned against all deals and projects which try to found solutions to the dilemma, especially by the government and they also stayed anti-profit of any kind building on the victimization of individual. The religious sects and their streams mingled with politics in the era of The Great Depression, because they found themselves silent and inactive, while they should have been taken a part of responsibility. The disease of The Great Depression was so unhealed that it touched all miscellaneous ideas and establishments, thus made the holders of those ideas propose solutions and road maps for the sake of having the vision a better America. (Michael, 10) The Great Depression was also a downfall in many concerns of the American individuals that was almost opposite to what had already

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imprinted and imagined in almost every American individuals' minds. And that was the meeting with the Promised Land, or in other words with the American Dream. The American historian, James Truslow Adams, in his The epic of America, 1931 interprets the American Dream in this way: . . . that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man and woman for each with opportunity according to his ability and achievement. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which man and woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.(Adams 404)

The duration of The Great Depression laid a crucial impact over the infrastructure of economic, political and social strata in America. Despite all the losses the nation had to pay, the hard time eventually passed nearly 1940 and the economy of the American nation revived by the cooperation of the governmental projects and the great minds of the fields of economy, finance and the like. The American community with all pillars took building experiences and lessons. Hence, the professor of economics in the University of California, Christina D, Romer, concludes: Despite the devastating loss of wealth, chaos in the American financial markets, and a loss of confidence so great that it nearly destroyed Americans' fundamental faith in capitalism, the economy came back. Indeed. . . This fact should give Americans hope. We are starting from a position far stronger than our parents and grandparents were in 1933. (Christina 11) Materialism and Capitalism Systems thus formulated a greater part in the history of the American individual and society. They were and still are considered a scar in the modern history of the United States, because

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of their inhumane principles and values. This is why; Steinbeck and many other targeted them in their literary work.

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CHAPTER TWO Materialism in The Grapes of Wrath The Grapes of Wrath, as some other works of Steinbeck, deals with the economical dilemma which the American lower class, itinerant workers, and farmers had witnessed during the Great Depression era in 1920s and 1930s. It is a novel by which its author gained Pulitzer Prize after its publication in 1939. In addition to the much praise the novel gained after its publication because of its importance in the world of literature, The Grapes of Wrath is a novel one can take it as a social commentary, meant to convey Steinbeck's moral and political philosophy to the reader. When narrating The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck depicts the greatest crisis of the day, which is, making farming industrialized by the hands of capitalistic and materialistic systems, which led to the victimization of the lower class. In the novel, Steinbeck illustrates the general concept of proletariat generation, a model of dehumanization by the higher powers of the seizers of material resources by which the poor can live. About this hard situation for the poor during that time, the writer Goldberg David assumes: "Exploitation, insecurity of holding a job for a long period, poverty, and theft are markers of an unjust system that recalls slavery time."(Goldberg 123) Steinbeck is intimately concerned with the struggles of the workers and spent vast amount of time visiting workers and itinerant workers' camps throughout late 1930s and, especially during 1938 while he was writing The Grapes of Wrath. The author's anti-capitalism passions for the poor and the lower class are urged by the indifference and negative involvement of the local authorities and police to the owners' profit.

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During the time which the novel was written, the poor were touched by the crises while the businessmen, the owners and the authority shut their eyes in front of the injustice only to enrich themselves. The materialistic and capitalistic systems imprison the farmers, lower class and the proletariat people. This was the reason why the author intended to choose a title for the story to be appropriate with the hard situation which they lived. The author has entitled the story The Grapes of Wrath to make an analogy between the angers of the oppressed migrant farmers and the time which is needed for vine to ripen, which both of them take time. The title was taken from hymn entitled "The Battle Hymn of Republic"; it was written by a journalist, Julia Ward Howe in 1861, the night after she paid a visit to a Union army camp on the Potomac River near Washington D.C. The hymn became a kind of anthem for the abolitionist cause and for the soldiers Union during the Civil War in America. It goes something like this: Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are Stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. (Edward 4)

Obviously, the writer in the story alludes indirectly to the title. It means how the hunger of the migrant Okies lastly erupts and explodes in a shape of anger and wrath as the ripening of vines:

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and in the eys of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for vintage.(TGOW 238) The above quote relates the injustice, which the materialists and greedy owners have made, that has made the hungry people gratified with anger and one day that anger ripens and leads to the destruction of the pillars of capitalism system. There is a volcano in the eyes and souls of the poor Okies, those who have been frozen in midst of economic problems, alienation and homelessness. The Grapes of Wrath is a novel narrating the hardships and hard conditions of economic downfall confronting those farmers whose agriculture fields underwent deadly drought in the "The Dust Bowl" era in some American States. In the novel, the author uncovers the tragic starvations and suppressive materialistic punishment by the land-owners and bankers. Those capitalist figures no longer need farming and laboring hands and make the farmers leave their homelands from the Eastern areas, obliging them to work to the Western states in the United States to survive. The story of the novel narrates the life of Joads, a family from Oklahoma, who are farmers in drought-ridden Oklahoma migrating to California in hope of getting works. The story of the novel relates the semi-made exodus to the lands in the west. There are many families deserted their homes and fields because they are expelled from their birth-lands by the materialistic inhuman rules issued by the banks. In the first pages of The Grapes of Wrath, the author indirectly attacks the abuse of power by the capitalist and materialist owners who are very greedy and sadistic to the farmers. Those deceptive owners used great tricky handbills summoning the Oklahoman farmers to go to California, a place where they can find good jobs. Those greedy materialistic people

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pictured California as a paradise for the farmers, just to prevent them from revolting against them. One of those owners encouragingly told the farmers: Maybe you can go on relief. Why don't you go to California? There is work there, and it never gets cold. Why, you can reach out anywhere and pick orange. Why, there's always some kind of crop to work in. Why don't you go there? (TGOW 23)

The above quote by the owner much more leads the farmers to retreat from their doubts of the owners appease their revolting plans, while a paradise is waiting for them in California. This is one of the blood-shedding strategies that materialists and capitalists usually use for their own profitable interests to deceive lower class people. The deceptive handbills make the Joads prepare to leave their land and go to California and this is seen in the beginning of the novel when Tom Joad is released from prison and informed about his family by Muley Graves: “your brother Noah…says they're aiming to go in about two weeks. John got his notice he got to go off."(TGOW 31) The materialist system usually takes a tricky turn to make lower class and laborers sacrifice their lives, and the author of the novel actually wants to transfer this very message. Though the materialist owners and bankers make the farmers leave their home lands and desert their beloved fields in Oklahoma, promising them a better life, no bright future waits for the farmers in California; rather the situations will be worse for them. The farmers’ naivety is seen when Ma Joad tells his son, Tom: Tom I hope things is all right in California…Seems too nice, kinda, I seen the handbills fellas pass out, an' how much work is, an' high wages an' all; an' I seen in the paper how they want folks

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to come an' pick grapes an' oranges an' peaches. That'd be nice work, Tom…"(TGOW 60)

The ruthless materialists exploit the farmers’ naivety to convince them of a better future in California. As Paul Mc Carthy puts it:

The most responsible for that situation were banks and commercial companies which hastened to chase farmers, sending them to live in relief and, above all, encouraging them to go to California where they would be exploited. This vigor with which Steinbeck denounced that situation, with the aim of combating economic injustice and obtaining social equality, earned The Grapes of Wrath the status of a social document, beside that of fiction. It is so qualified because it "set a standard for social consciousness in American Literature." (Mc Carthy 49)

The author had already prepared the raw materials for writing the novel which was the lettuce strike in Salinas in 1936. In that year, the author's anti-materialistic attitude made him complete the raw material and first gave it the title "L'Affaire Lutuceberg", but later on he changed the title into The Grapes of Wrath. (Wyatt 16) As mentioned previously, the historical tragic phenomenon of "The Dust Bowl", led to the destruction of many fields and much starvation of many poor farmers, it also led to sowing the seed of class struggle. Steinbeck attacks the materialistic and capitalistic policies. The epoch in which the author had been busy writing The Grapes of Wrath was much more appropriate to be accepted as adherents of workers' rights and social justice.

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The reader might think about the connection between the author of the novel and the ideas and ideologies of Karl Marx and Frederich Engels. The philosophers, through their criticism of capitalism and attacks on materialism tried to change the lives of workers, the proletariat and lower class by fighting against those

forces. This

is done through

revolutionizing, organizing and striking. Those two social philosophers manifested that, via the suppression of the lower class, the upper class accumulate properties and let the lower class starve in agony. Steinbeck follows in the same steps of the two philosophers. In The Grapes of Wrath the author definitely wants his country citizens to be aware of the injustice brought by the Capitalist System when the innocent poor Okies are starving and are going west seeking works. In the novel, the most touching scene is the death of Grampa. When going on their way to California, Tom then writes a very tragic letter to be left over him:

Tom sat down in the fire light. He squinted his eyes in concentration, and at least wrote slowly and carefully on the end paper in big clear letters:"This here is William James Joad, dyed of a stroke, old old man. His fokes bured him becaws they got no money to pay for funerls. Nobody killed him. Just a stroke and he dyed."(TGOW 96)

The above quote exhibits one of

the most tragic events that

happened in the novel, because then the reader realizes how those migrant Okies lived in their way to the west and how the inhumane owners and materialistic businessmen led to those unfair events. In the story, Steinbeck shows that the unfair actions of the owners, businessmen and materialists lead to the destruction of the migrant Okies’

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residence and also give nothing in return. Since the Okies leave their ancestors' place of living, the greedy owners promised them that they can get works and a good future in the west. This makes the situation worse and more melancholic, because the Okies obtain nothing from the capitalists' promises. The image of going to the west creates a paradise in the minds of the migrant workers, especially of the Joads. They think that they are going to be introduced to the modern life in city where there would be every resource of growing and progress, but none knew that it would be an illusion and that life in a modern materialistic world is traced as hell. As we have seen in Of Mice and Men, Corley's wife dreams of being a Hollywood star in the city where she would be famous and respected. Also in The Grapes of Wrath, Connie and Rose of Sharon dream of going to Oklahoma, where they can get very promising works and studying. Rose of Sharon tells Ma Joad: Well, we talked all about it, me an' Connie. Ma, We wanna live in a town," she went on excitedly."Connie gonna get a job in a store or maybe a fact'ry. An' he is gonna study at home, maybe radio, so he can git to be an expert an' maybe later have his own store…I am gonna have a doctor when the baby's born.(TGOW 110)

Also, in the novel, the author presents the authorities, in the American government, that they have become pawns in the hands of the owners and the businessmen. The owners are intimidated from the gathering of the Okies and they bribe the policemen to stop them from revolting against them, because this will lead to raising consciousness of injustice and that is why the owners do not let the Okies settle down in one camp. The migrant Okies are moved from one camp to another using the trick of

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"lower salaries here and higher salaries there." One Okie told Tom: “I tell ya I don't know.Some say they don't want us to bote;keep us movin' so we can' vote.An' some says we can' get on relief.An' some says if we set in in one place we'd get organized”.(TGOW 165)

And while cutting their salaries down, Tom wants to be one of the revolutionary leaders and proposes a boycott: “Well, s'ppose them people got together an' says, "let' em(peaches) rot" wouldn't be long 'fore the price went up, by God.”(TGOW 167)

This suggestion can be seen as a warning to the government about the lives of the migrant Okies at the camps. Concerning the government's plans for the plight of the Okies, Joseph G. Rayback observes: During his campaign, moreover, Roosevelt listened sympathetically to the labour leaders who related to him the sorry plight of various labour elements, and he promised privately and publicly to do what he could to relieve distress and improve labour conditions. (Joseph 321)

The author here has a plan to ridicule the banks and the banks' slaves. He intends to say that the businessmen, the owners and the capitalists who became the spokesmen of the bank and annihilated the villages and their cornfields pretended to have no control over the banks which were created by men. The author displays direct detest to the owners' irony and sadism because the owners could not be satisfied by what they had when the

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villagers’ children were starving and the field had been destroyed by the stampede. Steinbeck declares that "an owner with fifty thousand acres, he is not like the man, that is the monster."(TGOW 23) It is the story of a family by the name of the Joads, consisting of some members. After going through much bitterness on the way to California, the family members strife hero-like with great compassion and dignity, especially characters like Tom Joad, Al Joad (two sons), Ma Joad, Pa Joad (the parents), Rose of Sharon (Connie Rivers' wife and Tom's sister).The family is accompanied by some other characters as Reverend Jim Casey (the preacher),Muley Graves ( the Joads Neighbour) and Uncle John (Pa Joad's brother). The family gathers and with Al Joad, the driver, they head to California. On the road, they meet thousands of itinerant farmers and workers heading the same direction westward on U.S. Highway 66. Brian E.Railsback, about the nightmarish plague of the migrant farmers in the time of the Great Depression, suggests (Quoted in Bloom 50): The migrant workers move across the land and uprooted from one niche and forced to gain a foothold in another. Their struggle is intensified by capitalism's perversion of natural competition, but this only makes the survivors that much tougher. Because of their inability to see the whole picture, the bankers and the members of the Farmers' Association diminish themselves by their oppressive tactics.

This reveals the insatiable intentions of the Capitalist System during the time when The Grapes of Wrath was being written. The bank or the

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monster must be fed at the expense of the itinerant tenant workers. Even the story informs the readers that the Farmers Association in California, whose members were supervising mass works of the migrant workers, was decreasing the fees it was giving to workers. The Farmers Association was sending out handbills to attract a surplus of labor and then intensifying the competition for jobs, so that the laborers would work for almost nothing. We can see that in the novel, when the Okies arrive at California, the paradise they are imagining become dead and they can barely get works because of the owners' unfairness exploitation of the workers. The workers find that the life in California is infernal. The Californian owners welcome the Okies with detest and hatred. The Okies do not have enough money to feed their children because of their long journey. Therefore, the Californian shop keepers, bankers and owners have nothing to gain from the Okies: The townsmen, little banker hated Okies because there was nothing to gain from them. They had nothing and the laboring people hated because a hungry man must work, and if he must work, if he has to work, the wage payer automatically gives him less for his work, and then no one can get more.(TGOW 158)

Despite their hardship on the way to California to get works as cotton-pickers or peach-pickers, the Joads try to remain united and keep the family compassion. They create a humanitarian shield against the materialistic problems and economic monster which threaten untie their strong connections. That belongs to the mesmerizing philosophy the author makes as a theory concluding the social spider net overcoming the capitalistic and governmental corruptive policies. The author illustrates the group structure among the migrant families which come into being,

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especially the Joads family. In an intercalary chapter in the novel, the author describes:

It might be that one family camped near a spring, and another camped for the spring and for company and a third because two families had pioneered the place and found it good. And when the sun went down perhaps twenty families and twenty cars were there.(TGOW 249)

This shows that the group comes together from necessity and in many ways the author wants to show that he uses his humanitarian emotions against what materialism and capitalism systems do to human being's affairs; how they uproot the very values out of its authentic fountain. The author says about this: “I break myself every time I go out because the argument that one person's effort can't really do anything does not seem to apply when you come on a bunch of starving children and you have little money.” (Steinbeck 161) Two decades before Steinbeck published The Grapes of Wrath, Jack London was conscious of the phenomenon of exploitation of the works by capitalists and materialists’ exploitations in whose eyes there is no value of humanity. When describing the exploitation of the bankers, robbers and capitalists in his work, Burning Daylight, he writes: "It was interesting to rob the robbers than to rob the poor and stupid labourers.” (Burning Daylight 143) London defends the lower class individuals and finds it very legitimate and reasonable to fight for their rights. He lays much importance to the fact of the robbery of the capitalists who greedily thieve from the poor to enrich themselves. That is what exactly happens in Steinbeck's novel.

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Ironically, the government supports those inhumane materialistic bankers, and it neglects the poor totally. According to Henry D.Thoreau's opinion: “I heartily accept the motto"That governments best which governs not at all;" and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically.” (Thoreau 85) The Grapes of Wrath also tackles the reality of the disastrous division of the American society, into two main classes. This two opposing classes were the higher capitalists and the lower farming hands of California, who were expelled from their lands. This very fact is obvious when the author focuses on the fact that the materialistic profitmaking authority was a class who were fewer than the lower class, but they tried to deteriorate thoroughly all the good values of social ties, love, and co-operations by forcing harder on the poor by all means. The author relies on the evidence of the attacking wave of Industrial System which even reached the nooks of manual hands in agriculture and farming; and instead marginalized the farmers, workers, and laboring men: No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he was not a shop-keeper. As time on, the business men had the farms and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them. Now farming became industry . . . (TGOW 316)

John Steinbeck tackles the realistic economic plague which has faced the farmers and lower class laborers. The author lays much weight on the high spirited lower class of the heroic characters in the novel, how they bravely encounter the tyrant blood-thirsty hands of materialistic and capitalistic monsters. A hero as Tom Joad is portrayed as a prototype of a revolutionary model that, despite being hurt and

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punished economically and psychologically, he is ready to make any sacrifice for the sake of his family and society. The reader is spontaneously or unknowingly gets the glimpse of the economical vexation-waiting dilemma which waits for the inhabitants of that area that the opening paragraph describes. The inaugurating passage informs that the story is about some ominous thing which would happen to the farmers of that area. The agricultural lands in Oklahoma roundabouts need good portion of rain to revive the lands, but because of its rarity, the lands are about to die out of thirst. The author indirectly tells us that if it goes like this, the soils' tops are no more fertile and fruitful. What is more, besides facing severe natural problems of their agricultural lands, the farmers stumble upon representatives of the banks whose jobs are inspecting their lands. At the beginning of the novel, the bank experts tell the farmers that they are to be expropriated by the banks for, to be profitable in a Materialist System; the agricultural products should be highly industrialized. The drivers have to do the job as they are told because they said that they must obey the monster:

If a bank or a finance company owned the land, the owner man said, The Bank- or the Company-needs-wants-insists-must- haveas though the bank or the Company were a monster, with thought and feeling, which had ensnared them. These last would take no responsibility because for the banks or the companies they were men and slaves, while the banks were machines and masters all at the same time. Some of the owner men were a little proud to be slave to such cold and powerful masters. (TGOW 21)

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Clearly, the above quotation shows the author's judgment about materialistic and capitalistic measures and those people whom the author calls slaves. The slaves perform the orders of the banks without giving any value to their morals and humanitarian scales. And also those materialistic slave representatives do not have any self-consultation about what they do because if they thought, they would gain less materially from the banks. They knew that. Moreover, the above speech does manifest the author's concern with the poor in general and the migrant farmers being expelled by the capitalists and materialists in the epoch of the downfall of The American Dream. The author has always focused on the social link among the individuals and family members in many of his major works as Cannery Row, In Dubious Battle, The Red Pony and The Grapes of Wrath. Also, the author intends to suggest that the group-man mass or the power of phalanx can be much better than individuals' attempts towards social change and the fight with the materialistic plague of the time. The major characters, as Tom Joad, Ma Joad,Jim Casey and Pa Joad possess communal feelings towards each other. Steinbeck realizes that the interest-making owners do not feel satisfied with the profits they make. They use the Okies as a ladder for their own intentions. They have destroyed their houses, villages, and fields, yet seem unsatisfied. The owners the Okies feel alienated from root to top. They changed the nature of the Okies lives: Thus they changed their social life-changed as in the whole universe only man can change. They were not farm men any more, but migrant men. And the thought, the planning, the long staring silence that had gone out to the fields, went now to the roads, to the distance, to the West. The man whose mind has been bound to acres lived with narrow concrete miles.(TGOW 132)

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The bankers and their agents share the crime of innocent Oklahoman farmers and change the nature of their living. Such a crime is definitely materialistic because in the story no better life waits for the migrant Okies and their own lives in the beginning are their own but the malicious profitmakers intervene and destroy the people and the fields. The Joads are a prototype family who could at least live at their own home. They can live normal life far from the money-oriented world where man is taken as an instrument. Steinbeck likes his readers to know about the importance of family as a substantial social unit. He relies on quality, not quantity. For example when Tom returns from prison, a Joad ensures him that once he becomes one of the thousand Okies on the way, nobody cares about him. The mother refers to the family reunion and group-man, by that she relies on the importance of the social unity and bildungsroman to escape from the unjust external material or interest-oriented world. Through the lives of the Joads who are fighting against the currents of inhumane Capitalist System and the hard living conditions, the author takes a great turn in making the family members the heroes and heroines to survive despite all the costs. Ma Joad and Tom Joad are the best examples who sacrifice themselves to announce victory over their nearly materialistic system. Those two characters are depicted to acknowledge the greatness and the high spirit owned by the proletariat, the farmers and lower class individuals versus the materialistic businessmen. Ma Joad feels the immense power of the poor people through co-operation and intimate love among the poor; she sees that it is the only way to overcome the tyrant Capitalistic System. Ma Joad's education spans only to her feelings to make her family survive the hardships of the day, though she is not aware of the class

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distinction that they are going through. She is the prototype of the best mothers. If she is unable to milk from her breasts, she encourages her daughter to do her best. Ma Joad is called the epitome of Earth Mother. This is the apex of fighting against Materialism and Capitalism, to use one's best effort for the sake of human social co-operation. Ma Joad ability of patience and familial rectitude is incomparable to fight against her family's economic and social blind-knots towards leadership. About being a prototype mother of Ma Joad, Elizabeth Heinz says: . . . the description of Ma is one that resonates with absolute power with devoted followers and leadership that carries beyond her family and into the realm of "goddess. . . "(Heinz 7) In this respect, the author intends in writing The Grapes of Wrath, to build the fact that the American community needed an authentic social, political, and economical change through raising the consciousness of the oppressed poor people against the tyranny of the Capitalist Industrial System. The author also is hopeful enough, despite showing the bitter and grim reality. Thus, one can trace the author's obvious hopes towards social change in the beginning of the book concerning the Joads and their migrant farmers' neighbors. The critic Nellie Y. McKay suggests that “events in the book unfold through the consciousness of the characters in such a way as to permit them to envision themselves to exercise free will and exerting influence on their social world.” (Mckay 62) What McKay suggests soon is felt by the reader in the novel. For example, in the beginning of the novel, an unnamed farmer recognizes his individual impotence in the face of capitalism, materialism, and technological monster. The farmer anticipates the colossal force of deadly

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man-made and protests against it: “We have got a bad thing made by man, and by God that's something we can change.”(TGOW 26) Steinbeck, in The Pearl (1 947), explores the same issue of the capitalists’ unfairness and injustice, and their sadistic intentions and plans to trample the lives of the workers and the poor. In The Pearl, it is obvious that the businessmen, the rich and the materialists are those who can easily trap the humble lower class individuals for the sake of their own material growth. In the story there is the Indian Kino who finds a pear which is very precious and priceless. But the businessmen sit in ambush to deceive him and buy him the pearl with a very low price: It was known in the early morning…that Kino was going to sell his pearl that day… Now there was only one pearl buyer with many hands, and the men who sat in their offices and waited for Kino what price they would offer, how high they would bid, and what method one would one use.(The Pearl 20)

This is to present and unravel how the author has been involved in that economic crises made for the poor, and that the concern is every time plausible by the businessmen and capitalists to enrich themselves to the detriment of the poor. The materialistic aspect and discussion in the majority of the author's works are repetitive because of the heaviness of the subject matter to be critiqued by the author or to support the lower class. The main issue in The Grapes of Wrath is to state how the author supports the lives of the itinerant poor, the famers and the lower class. The author has written the story of the Joads family as the other many numbers of the families who left their farming lands and head the West in search for life. The hero-like Joads would never surrender to that inequity which has

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been brought by The Capitalist System. They come to the conclusion that the best way of conquering The Materialistic System is to be armed with spiritual values, like love, respect and family union. In the novel, Steinbeck puts scaffolding pillars to prove that the Joads are common people and in need of food, shelter, clothing, and medical aid, yet, despite being deprived of these things, they have not ignored what a prototype family needs as love, family unity, self-respect, and a feeling of belonging. The author wants to transfer his message of brevity existed among the Joads and their rock-like definition and philosophy of life. They are great warriors fighting the hands of the capitalistic system. About the Joads and their concerns, Edwin Bowden puts it like this:

The Joads are the common men of the new century. In another sense, however, the novel is not about commonplace man but about a special, often grotesque group of men, the Okies, the dispossessed of The Dust Bowl, the new itinerant farm laborers of California. And one of the successes the novel is the manner in which it conveys simultaneously the impression, almost an epic impression, of a whole people migrating westward and the familiar view of one particular family facing its particular problems. (Edwin 71)

What Edwin says is the problems that the Joads face on their way to California that they are nicknamed Okies and taken as isolated, disgusted and devalued of their humane standards. The Joads are migrant workers in California and underpaid by the land-owners there, because whatever wages the businessmen give them, the Joads have to accept, for their lives are on the brim with death and they would starve out of hunger. The

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author takes the Joads as a sample for thousands of other migrant workers who have come to California from Oklahoma and he says they are isolated from their own existence and are called "others". Despite being looked as strangers by the Californian owners and its people, the Okies start their long journey full of hope and optimism to get better works, while the opposite comes true. On their way to California, the Joads are sometimes disappointed by migrant workers who had come to California and had come back empty-handed, without getting any work. This portion of the story implies that not only had the Materialist owners expelled the farmers from their own land, but also the former created a very dreary situation for them to lose their dreams. On their way to California, a man humorously tells the Joads that they could not get any work because he had come back over there:

The ragged man stared while Pa spoke, and then he laughed, and his laughter turned to a high whynning giggle.The circle of faces turned to him. The giggling got out of control and turned into caughing…and he said:"Me-I'm coming back.I been thereI'm gooin' back to starve. I ruther starve all over at oncet."(TGOW 127)

The ragged man means that life in California has been exploited by the materialists and whatever man tries, it would not work. That man ridicules the life which is left by the greedy owners who have marginalized the isolated Okies. The isolation and devaluation are the aftermaths of the Materialistic system which has come into being. That system is like a monster; whatever new comes to it is taken as strangers and the only thing it cares fr

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is profit-making. The Capitalistic system denies the humanity and the individual worth of the Okies. Even the service-station boy on Route 66, though he takes no direct action, is seen representative of the materialistic values: Well, you and me got sense. Them goddamn Okies got no sense and no feeling. They ain't human. A human being would not live like they do. A human being couldn't stand it to be so dirty and miserable. They ain't a hell of a lot better than gorillas. (TGOW 150)

Thus, against the isolation imposed by the capitalist and materialist attitudes towards the migrant Oklahoman families, they see no recourse beyond banding together more solidly in mutual aid and understanding. But out of this isolation, stabbing nicknames after them and abhorrence that the Materialistic system has brought about, the migrant families compensate it by turning to each other for help, love and understanding of their own plight. The migrant families are forced into recognition of the humanity of their relatives, neighbors, and co-migrant farmers. In this way, the migrant families no longer feel the influence of the isolation the businessmen and owners have had hands in and those families via that love can alleviate the sense of loneliness and its threats. Despite being alienated, exasperated far from their homes, and besides all the negative aftermath the hungry Okies faced, the migrant families tried their best to be united and stay together. The Okies' families are usually harassed by the policemen because the former are seen violent towards the public security. The Okies are seen a source of exasperation and exhaustion.

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The Okies sometimes have to react towards the unjust procedures of the policemen and sheriffs at the camps, for those families need money and food to keep livings. Therefore, they need higher salaries, but the local authorities usually seek faults from the migrants' actions. Steinbeck describes the scene in which Floyd, Tom Joad and John Casy beat the deputy sheriff: He reached a large hand up and took hold of Floyd's left arm. Floyd spun and swung with one movement. His fist splashed into the large face,. . . the deputy staggered and Tom put out his foot for him to trip over. The deputy fell heavily and rolled, reaching for his gun…suddenly from the group of men, the Reverend Casy stepped. He kicked the deputy in the neck and then stood back as the heavy man crumpled into unconsciousness. (TGOW 180)

All these violent actions of the Okies are the result of the psychological tension and fatigue they obtained from the materialists and capitalists who run the unfair concerns at the camp. The migrant Okies can no longer stand those inhumane behavours of the authorities who are pawns and bribed men of the owners. The explosion is the ultimate hopelessness of the migrant families who even cannot get low-paid jobs. The tricky strategy of the materialistic owners is to let the sanction little by little choke so that the migrants would be willing, not only to get low wage works, but also to be eager for working with lower wages to shun starvation. According to the economist Robert E. Lucas, who is specialized in The Great Depression: “Many… advertised jobs were refused because the offered salary seemed miserable. Nevertheless, three months later, one would like to get the same jobs” (Quoted in Klamer 67)

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Ironically, for the capitalists and materialists’ interest or advantage, the lower wages for works become a matter of rivalry among the Okies themselves because they are eager to be employed temporarily by the owners even for discounted prices. This situation can be seen in the story as follows: “When there was work for a man, ten men fought for it-fought it for a low wage. If that fella'll work for thirty cents, I'll work for twentyfive. If he'll take twenty-five, I'll do it for twenty.”(TGOW 193) This proves that the capitalists' and owners' policy to take the workers' rights down and lower the wages have well worked. Even in modern time, the big companies, factories, and work centers use the same policy to make workers' unions less affective and influential towards results of striking. To elaborate more on this point, The Morning Star gives a clear example that has happened in England in the latest years: National Union of Journalists general secretary Jeremy Dear called at the weekend for trade unions to withdraw advertising from The Guardian to show solidarity with striking workers. Workers … have been on strike over low pay…management has been paying double wages to strikebreakers. (Morning Star 4)

A policy such as this procedure by the materialists is something that almost every time happens, resulting from the sensitive struggle between two poles of the same rope; that is the tension between the upper class owners and the lower class, such as the Okies in the story. The upper class Californian owners take this step forward in order to lessen the threat of any strikes expected from the side of the migrant Okies. The owners make the migrant Okies be ready for any price proposed by the former and that is the apex of punishing the Okies in any ways thought of. The various

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tricking policies adopted by the greedy materialists in the Steinbeck's work show how foxy and inhuman these materialists are. Their main concern is to make use of the works whom they pay very low wages, and they can replace them whenever they need. Not only this, but the owners use certain tricks to create a division of the workers among themselves and hitherto to scatter the networks made by the workers fighting against injustice, which they face. A contractor tells some of the Okies, promising them works, creates a feeling of division among the workers: “You fell as don't want to listen to those goddamn reds. Troublemakers they'll get you in trouble. Now I can use all of you in Tulare County.”(TGOW 179) The capitalists and materialists strategies are done with much accuracy in the story, that is, that they plan to weaken that power which strengthens the workers, which is the power of union and whatsoever that leads to thinking, raising consciousness then striking and revolution. When the workers and migrant workers are divided, the businessmen are also able to rule them with less strife. Steinbeck, as previously discussed, sheds light in his other works on the injustice and greed of the capitalists and materialists to the detriment of the lower class. Steinbeck wants the readers also to be aware of his ideas that capitalists and materialists use the strategy of using the poor for their own sake's material benefit and they always want the lower class people to obey them, because in that way, they can oppress the poor easier. In The Moon is Down (1942), Steinbeck shows the oppressive Germans, who have invaded Norway. Steinbeck sketches the Germans, despite being imperialists, also as greedy capitalists, because they punish the homeless Norwegians inhumanely and divide them into two camps, because the Germans are oppressive militia who want all the Norwegians

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to obey them: "The food supply was controlled-issued to the obedient and withheld from the disobedient so that the whole population turned coldly obedient.” (The Moon is Down 174) In "The Grapes of Wrath", the reader usually meets those sadist owners and capitalists who usually take the shape of very inhumane figures. Those owners, businessmen and materialists squeeze the souls of the poor Okies for their own properties, commodities, and material production, because these owners are devoid of any human features. The more money they make, the more morality they lose. Steinbeck wants to send his readers a message that money is something that changes human being into a lifeless machine which is bereaved of honesty and truthfulness: “people I like changed. Thinking there is money, they want it. And even if they don't want anything, they watch me and they aren't natural anymore” (Quoted in De Mott 6) The above quote presents a fact that the poor people and the migrant workers, during The Great Depression, were much more blessed with the characteristics of humanity and having honesty. In The Grapes of Wrath the best examples is that when there are many families deserting their homes and are heading to California, they are very exhausted and the ways is tiresome; yet, many of them do not quit their prestigious human attitudes towards each other. They are ready to help and get more charitable. The Joads help the Wilsons repair their broken car on one hand. And while Grandpa is ill, the Wilsons show their readiness of help to the Joads on the other. Also, when the Joads are being bothered by police, they neglect them and proposed to help Mrs. Wilson Sairy. Despite this, Wilson thinks in the same way the materialists think, which is, no one offers help unless he

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wants something in return. This is why he wants the Joads to be honest to tell him why they were so nice to them: “No…you been nice to us; you been kin', but you can't stay here. You got to go on an' get jobs.”(TGOW 147) This uncovers the ultimate cooperation among the poor migrant Okies who are opposite to the rich owners. However, they taste nearly bitterness of death and starvation, but the poor migrant families never missed their humanitarian principles and in that way they embarrass those authorities who participate in their misery. Henry David Thoreau writes: “The best thing a man can do for his culture when he is rich is to endeavor to carry out those schemes which he entertained when he was poor.” (Thoreau 12) Moreover, the migrant families keep their honor and social ties and seldom receive their economic problems a matter to destroy the humanitarian ethics. The Okies’ solidarity lays deep roots in the grounds of courage, generosity, altruism and reciprocal dependence. They have a sense of sacrifice for the sake of public interest. Steinbeck suffer much the hard times when The American Dream dissolved into bubbles, and this situation came into being by the tyrant materialists who in no means punished their country civilians for the sake of piling more profit and material interest. In The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck introduces those greedy owners and businessmen, not because he is against making money and trading, but rather his philosophy is far from that. He is proposing that that wealth, which is the public treasure, is to be distributed among the American people fairly. Therefore it is quite possible to say that Steinbeck did not hate rich people and he himself had big ranches and much wealth. He says: “We are rich as riches go. We have money enough to keep us for many years. We have this pleasant ranch

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which is everything one could desire…We have comfort and beauty.”(Quoted in De Mott 105) Steinbeck intends to reveal that money is not something that should make people greedy and ambitious, but rather the ways by which people make directions towards deceiving the poor is to be blamed and criticized. The best example that which makes innocent people impoverished is the excessive capitalism. In The Grapes of Wrath, one can easily see that hard-hearted owners are totally at odds with the poor, that greed is opposite to the unlimited passions of the Okies, sadistic actions are against the poor migrants. The novelist shows on more than one occasion the inhumane actions of the materialistic businessmen. For example, owners watch their guards prevent the migrant Okies from taking out rotting potatoes from the river. Anti-capitalism activists usually envisage the system as the representative of sadism, which is done against lower class individuals. The owners in the story almost every time get pleasure from the sufferings of the Okies. Steinbeck relates:

And in little towns pity for the sodden men changed to anger, and anger at the hungry people changed to fear of them…then the hungry men crowded the alley behind the stores to beg for bread, to beg for rotting vegetables, to steal when they could…the sheriffs swore in new deputies and ordered new rifles, and the comfortable people in tight houses felt pity at first, and then distaste, and finally hatred for the migrant workers.(TGOW 298)

The above speech shows the owners’ cooperation with the local authorities in enjoining watching the migrant Okies taken by flood and

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gave no help to them. This also proves the author's criticism of materialism's animosity in abstracting the poor when they need the latter. Interestingly, in writing The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck was acclaimed to be a social writer because behind the fiction of the story, a reader meets an economic situation facing California in 1930s. The novel stretches and takes many scopes of study. This is supported by the wellcomposed details of the different social strata. Besides being a record of the American history during The Great Depression, the novel unravels other the reasons that lead to origins of the crises, like those political irresponsible figures that showed their indifference in the economic problem, as the policemen and sheriffs. Also, Steinbeck insinuates that it would be something possible for any suppression to be followed by an explosion of opposition and revolution. The owners made the Okies hungry on purpose, and, in return, the latter were seeking for opportunities of striking, organization and revolution, for their work wages had to be amended. Steinbeck guarantees the inevitability of the evils' destruction by the power of the revolting society. He says it is something has to be changed. Steinbeck lastly contends that the American nation has been affected by the aftermaths of Materialism and the craving for modernity which has led the civilians to be alienated from their authentic morals. Steinbeck tries to show that the American nation is a victim of extreme materialism and that nation does not go forward under the shadow of this extreme system. Steinbeck says that materialism produces excessive exploitation which turns into unemployment, poverty, social unease and injustice. Also, Steinbeck shows the capitalists' egoism and indifference towards the poor and he insists on the fact that such corruption in the society remains as

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long as its responsible people turns their backs on moral values or make material interests a priority. Finally, in The Grapes of Wrath, Steinbeck confesses the obvious downfall and vanity of the materialists because none of the material prosperous achievement makes a specific community progression since it is built and accumulated on the poor citizens' detriment.

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CHAPTER THREE Materialism in Of Mice and Men Of Mice and Men is a novel or a play-novelette that is written by John Steinbeck in 1937. It is a work of literature that can be read and acted at the same time, because theatrical performance could be done as a play using the novel as a text and it is suitable for stage. John Steinbeck looked at each chapter in Of Mice and Men as an act, and the first paragraphs of each chapter would set the scene and background, allowing dialogue, and other expository prose for the sake of narration, actions and characters. (Michael 27) John Steinbeck worked with the playwright, George Kaufman, who directed Of Mice and Men in 1937, with Wallace Ford as George Milton and Broderick Crawford as Lennie Small, the two main characters in Of Mice and Men. The work, as a play, ran for 207 performances, winning the prestigious New York Critics' Circle Drama Award. However, this great success of the work might not have been thought about by the author.(Timmerman,10) Critic John Timmerman noted in 1986 that in Of Mice and Men “John Steinbeck, as the author, has later kept looking at the work derisively as being "The Mice Book" or "The Little Book.’” Of Mice and Men was warmly welcomed by the American readers. It achieved remarkable success because the work is realistic in itself. Also it has its own charm and special pulling force of reading in a way that the average reader gets the tension in every word and finds it holding breath. He/she knows that something awful would happen so that the eyes of the reader are glued to the page and the world of the novella is deeply etched into readers' consciousness, This very fact belongs to another reason,

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which is that the story mentions the major plague of the itinerant workers who were trapped by the problems of economy and capitalistic dilemma. In this concern, about Of Mice and Men, Joyce Moss and George Wilson declare: Of Mice and Men was guaranteed popularity; it was selected for The Book of the Month Club before it was officially issued. This honor allowed 117,000 copies to be sold before its official publication date of February 25, 1937.This novel is the high recommendation and the most popular novel for the American people, and for the people in different ages in general.(Moss and Joyce 17)

As the majority of his works, Steinbeck's work, Of Mice and Men does give the readers and scholars the same theme of economic and social problems which America has confronted in 1930s, also it sketches and deals with the plight and the dilemma of poor California during that epoch. The author well sets Of Mice and Men against the backdrop of the age of Depression. The main characters, George and Lennie, who are after their dreams of possessing their own lands, become victimized workers of California. George and Lennie are grouped by great and strong compassion and love, despite being thwarted by forces which are far beyond their control. Those two friends are accustomed to each other that their very dream of getting land of their own and keeping animals is something which the average reader usually finds crystal in the story. This strong interest by those two helpless workers manifests their hard lives under the heavy weight of the industrialized system of capitalism. (Tindal 23) It is important to highlight that Steinbeck has derived a title for his work from a verse from the Scottish poet, Robert Burns. Originally, Steinbeck gave his work the title, "Something That Happened", but

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changed it into Of Mice and Men after reading Burns' poem, "To a Mouse". (McElrath, 71) The following is the stanza of Burns' poem, "To A Mouse" from which the title of novel is derived:

The best laid plans of mice and men Gang oft agley And leave us naught but grief and pain For promised joy

The title of Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men and Robert Burns' To a Mouse are very parallel to each other, because the mouse has dreamt of building a safe place for winter, but is now faced with the reality of harsh loneliness and cold; like the dreams of George and Lennie, as they dreamt fantasy of having their own farm and land one day but unaware of their tragic fate. (Hadella 10) As is the case with some other works of Steinbeck like The Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men also deals with the migrant workers' dilemma in America during the economic tumor. John Steinbeck lived in a time which was quite appropriate to tackle the problems of farmers, migrant workers, and lower class people who were punished psychologically and underpaid by the higher class figures in America in the threshold of the first quarter of twentieth century. The biographer and critic, Cletus E. Daniel notes that: Migrant workers from many nations as the Japanese, the Flipino, and the Mexican, as labour forces increased in California by the mid-1920s, especially the Mexicans, as foreign nations. And beside all these outsiders as foreign workers, there were a number of

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Americans of Anglo-Saxon whose ancestors had migrated westward form the eastern or Midwestern regions of the United States; though they originally sought their fortunes in gold and land, many eventually hired on as wage earners for the lucky entrepreneurs who had beaten them to the American Dream.(Daniel 62-64)

The above quote can be understood that workers and migrants during that time in the United States suffered and underwent many economic, materialistic and social crises, because of their poverty. They passed through difficult and deplorable conditions which were the main reason behind their suffering. Thus, John Steinbeck, as a creative and talented observer of this deadly plague in his country and among his fellow people, makes use of his experiences to delineate the suffering vividly, especially in his home town, Salinas, California, and come out with realistic and very despondent stories about laboring class. Anyhow, Of Mice and Men is collected in six chapters and it focuses on the fate of two itinerant workers who wander aimlessly and they are after acquiring works as ranchmen. Their names are George Milton, who is vivid, caring, and clever; and the other is ironically called Lennie Small, who is very big and strong, but he is unaware about his strength and he loves to touch soft materials. These two characters are after the dream of having their own land and keeping animals as rabbit one day. They are materialistically dispossessed individuals who are naturally and realistically denied by forces greater than them. Where they work as ranchmen in a bunkhouse, they often are defied by their boss's son, Curley. Thus, the theme of Materialism and Capitalism is prominent in the novella for that is the nature of the Materialist and Capitalist network to make the people victim and raw material for their prosperity and well-being. (Goldhurst 225)

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These two itinerant characters often wander from job to job, and still looking for a break to rest in their lives. They are deceived by the real hardship of life. The duration of the story of Of Mice and Men lasts for three days, but still its author can tell lots of cruel and hard incidents the migrant workers live in with many strata of different aspects of life: psychological, gender, economic, of the average wandering workers in some parts of the United States. (Stephen 76) In this novel, the two main characters, George and Lennie, are juxtaposed, and they have two different poles of brevity, sense and vividness and both have the same dream of getting their ranch and keeping animals one day. They are juxtaposed by the author to show the great difference and distance of the inevitability of the absence of their dream, and their dream is snatched away by the tragic fate which awaits them. For example when George and Lennie, at the beginning of the story, are asked by Curley's son, George answers instead of Lennie. That shows the difference of the main two character's level of intelligence, consciousness, and awareness:

The boss said, "Where you boys been working?" "Up around Weed, "said George. "You too?" to Lennie. "Yeah, him too, "said George The boss pointed a playful finger at Lennie. "He ain't much of a talker, is he?" "No, he ain't, but he's sure a hell of a good worker. Strong as a bull."(OMAM 12)

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The above quote presents a very gloomy future waiting for the workers' lives at the ranch, because the only option for living is working hard and using their muscles. This is what Capitalist or Materialistic System want from the people, to have strength of production, of benefits and interests. That is why George makes a complement to show his friend's physical ability, despite his lack of intelligence, the matter which convinces the boss. Materialism looks at the human being as a machine, strong, but nonhuman. Man, in the materialistic world, is assessed by his physical ability to produce, and his humanity, feelings and intellect are all overlooked. All the characters in Of Mice and Men are lonely, yet, they console each other that the reality of loneliness and isolation does not include them, because they have each other. George and Lennie are aware of the dreadful fact that they are lonely and isolated from society and families. They know they would be victims. They are marginalized creatures, vagrant class. George believes that, as itinerant workers, they are very lonely and ignored by the society. He says: Guys like us, which work on ranches, are the loneliest guys in the world. They got no family. They don't belong no place. They come to a ranch an' work up a stake an' then they go into town and blow their stake(OMAM 8)

George’s speech displays aptly the cruelty of Materialism as a very destructive system which has led to the loneliness the individuals feel continuously. This also shows the author's criticism of those owners who puts the financial product on humanity. The author reveals the Materialistic inhuman intentions towards the destruction of the solidarity of the society. Consequently, the author tries to revive the social unity

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from the compassion that the migrant workers and ranchmen have in Of Mice and Men. Although the migrant workers are alienated individuals in their society they are mentally, physically, and economically divergent from the mass, they have a longing for social development and its progression. (Bloom 3) The setting of Of Mice and Men is Soledad, which gives the meaning of solitude in Spanish. The characters’ dream of having farm, fortune and independence develops parallel to the economical, racial and gender discriminations. The workers' and ranchmen's friendship is much purer and loyal to each other; their friendship smells Medieval comitatus of Arthurian legend (French 2). Steinbeck wants to demonstrate how catastrophic results, against the structures of economics, society, family ties, have been brought by the post-industrial capitalism and materialism. In this concern, Marilyn Chandler suggests: Post-industrial capitalism as a framework of social and therefore moral life has forced society to reassess the terms in which it thinks about sin, guilt and goodness. The erosion of familiarity ties and therefore of the old tribal ethics of filial piety and fraternal loyalty has made the social contract more ambitious. (Quoted in Howard 133)

Despite the hard lives they live, the characters in the story seem to live loyally to each other. The majority of the characters in this novel are migrant workers, skinners, ranchmen. Each of them has a dream. George and Lennie dream to have their own land and house one day. Crooks, the only black man in the bunkhouse, love to be equal to others and not to be called a nigger. Curley's wife wants to be an actress in Hollywood. All of

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these dreams disappear in vain because of different situations in the story and the isolation which the characters feel in the novella. The hands which run the ranch house represent the industrial materialistic network and they are those who deteriorate every individual's dreams. Moreover, in Of Mice and Men, not only the migrant ranchmen and workers are not given their rights; they are used as tools for materialistic profits. Thus they get more estranged, individualized, and alienated from society. They do not even have the right to say and do anything, because they are considered inferior in the American capitalistic and materialistic society. Candy, the swampier, tells George and Lennie that they have to be silent and not to ask any questions, because they are ranchmen: “I ain't interested in nothing you was sain'. A guy on a ranch don't never listen nor he don't ast no questions."(OMAM 13) The above warning by Candy to George sums up the deprived rights taken from the individuals by the figures of Materialism and Capitalism. Candy tells George since they are workers and ranchmen; they have no choice of making questions and inquiries as long as they want to keep their heads down. It seems that the author says, through the story, directly that the Materialistic System looks at the workers' lives as dumb machines that have no right to raise doubts and questions. Furthermore, Candy, the swamper, sees that they, as workers, are used as machines only for profits and material achievements, and yet he himself could preview his own destiny and fate. He is aware that the workers, when are not useable to the capitalists, are thrown and undervalued. He is also keen to share the dream with George and Lennie to have their own place and he is ready to give them an offer of help as money:

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Maybe if I give you guys my money, you'll let me hoe in the garden even after I ain't no good at it. An' I'll wash dishes an‟ little chicken stuff like that. But I'll be on our own place, an' I'll be let to work on our own place.” He said miserably, “You seen what they done to my dog tonight? They says he wasn't no good to himself nor nobody else. When they can me here I wisht somebody shoot me. But they won't do nothing like that. I won't have no place to go, an' I can't get no more jobs. (OMAM 30) Candy knows that what is destined for him when he is very old and the only way he can get his life securely is ownership. Steinbeck here intends to demonstrate the true value of human being according to Materialism and Capitalism, which is to view them as tools for profit and material progress regardless their prestige and value. The concept of Materialism that Marx and Engels warn from is mirrored in this story of Steinbeck. Steinbeck notes through characters like Candy that the bourgeoisie class can exploit and manipulate the lower class individuals and proletariat, such as disillusioned Candy, to build and renovate society; then they ignore and tread the hands which have built economic progress. (Claire 63) Steinbeck has skillfully pictured, in Of Mice and Men, a realistic setting which is quite suitable to the Great Depression era and the American Dream. The pessimistic environment during the twenties and thirties of the twentieth century during which The United States met a destructive economic collapse and crises, brought about bitter reality to American lower class, migrant with itinerant workers, the poor, the unsophisticated, and the proletariat, and it made natural existence for the like become the source of boredom and utter disappointment. Steinbeck, thus, can be viewed as a naturalistic novelist that only transmits the daily events to paper as really as they are. Steinbeck also has written a historic epic out of fiction, but the historic fiction is not a fictional narration,

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rather it is rooted in the American society. Donald Pizer declares the meaning of Naturalism and nominates Steinbeck as a naturalistic novelist: Naturalism comes after realism. This is why the boundary between the two is somehow blurred, and naturalism is occasionally considered as the sub-genre of realism. And the naturalist novelist usually deals with the common characters of unheroic lower or middle class. (Pizer 65)

It can be said that Materialism, which Marx and Engels had focused on is connected with the realism of the lower classes and proletariat individuals in the American society. By the concept Materialism, which was criticized harshly by Marx and Engels, it is meant the presence of capitalism and the exploitation of the lower class workers and the lower wages that they receive or sometimes even underpaid by people who do not appreciate the workers’ efforts. In the work, the workers become victims and their dreams of possessing their own land are like a mirage. The workers are deceived, disillusioned and they are alienated from the rights they have to get. The workers, one of them as George, have to escape the bitter reality and flee the world which does not exist according to his own expectations. The characters, in general, are casualties of the technology of the newly-opened industry to their working lands, and it is very difficult for the workers to confront the technological era and to fare agricultural supremacy well or leave their works, which are farming, keeping animals as horses, or ranching. For example, George becomes the representative character to the American individuals to say goodbye to all the promises of the ancient civilization, which are replaced by an industrial world which is not helpful to the lives of the workers, because the workers

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know that they are the lower class and poor people; so in the new industrial world, they are cast off by the higher people. (Geismar 33) Steinbeck uses the individuals’ dilemmas to portray a universal picture of the suffering of the individual in the modern capitalistic societies. The simple characters’ dreams are seen unattainable and impossible to carry out, because the world they live in knows no spiritual ideals or values. The dream and the Promised Land which the industrial front has brought worsened and deteriorated the majority of American society thoroughly because of injustice of the economic and social problems. Carpenter notes that: "Of Mice and Men describes the individualistic survival of the old American dream and Steinbeck intends the microcosmic manifestation of the universal desire to possess the land, to be free and independent. . . "(Carpenter 76) Even the characters in Of Mice and Men, assuredly, are seen as representatives of American people who still believed in The American Dream and still are enthusiastic to have their dreams come true to save them from miscellaneous obstacles, but are tugged between the ancient world, to live normally and freely, and unsuitableness of living with the new change of the evolving society which has come. Farmers, underclass, poor people, workers, ranchmen and the like are much far from being acquainted with an evolving society where their rights are unappreciated and belittled, especially in a capitalist and materialistic society as the United States between 1920s and 1930s. (Fontenrose, 66) The characters in Of Mice and Men never rest respectively and they overwork, but still carry different dreams. They in return earn very scanty fairs for their work and spend it in eating very little food, drinking whisky and spending time at Suzy's brothel. Steinbeck makes a sharp critique on

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American Materialism and Capitalism. The characters mirror a historical moment in the American history, where people suffer because they are poor or homeless. Thus, spiritual values have no place in the Modern American society. An example is the materialist Curley, who gives the workers very low wages and who makes the justification of giving the migrant workers their free lodging and food. About this situation, George said: An' I ain't so bright neither, or I wouldn't be buckin' barely for my fifty and found. If I was bright, if I was even a little bit smart, I'd have my little own place,an' I'd be bringin' in my own crops,'stead od doin' all the work and not getting what comes up outa the ground. (OMAM 20)

In addition to the lower wages the workers gain from their works, they have also to endure the deadly isolated place they are placed, as previously shortly discussed. Respectively, the characters are in the labyrinth of living alone and they are running the American community during the disease of unemployment and economic crises. A character as Crooks is the loneliest figure and he is the opposite of Lennie and George. Lennie and George take each other as intimate friends regardless of their somehowe inappropriate sides, which George has always to take care of the retarded Lennie. The two friends want to get rid of solitude and even at the end, the death of Lennie is seen as though a part of George dies. The men at the ranch need each other to keep their dreams alive, particularly Lennie's dream. Lennie makes the other workers work with the dreams they have to attain, his constant speech with George about their dreams of keeping rabbits and a farm makes him believe in a way not only reading Western magazines, but he

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has a friend who lives with the fire of the dream. Even at the end, Lennie still keeps the waning flames of their dreams. Lennie wants George to be his share-holder of his dream about keeping rabbits: "George?" "What you want?" "I can still tend the rabbits, George?" "Sure. You ain't done nothing' wrong." "I didn't mean no harm, George." "Well. Get the hell out and wash your face." (OMAM 32)

The loneliness that is seen among the itinerant ranchmen and workers leads to the estrangement of the lower class from work, society, and from each other. Karl Marx states: “The notion of alienation is related to the conflict between company and worker. It concerns with power issues and powerlessness. The only very breach facing workers is capitalism which is to be criticized.”(Quoted in Sayers 18) Karl Marx's great philosophy in the previous speech, in defending the rights of the workers and proletariat, is a valid witness which is well echoed in the characters of Of Mice and Men. It proves how materialist modernization makes people victims of their own perishing dreams. Workers, as Marx suggests, are used by capitalist Bloc and there will be a continuous struggle between the two. Resulting from the struggle, the ones who have less power are the more they become alienated from society, work, and even from themselves. Richard Schacht, an American philosopher, classifies the notion of alienation that comes into being among the poor because of the policies of Materialist System, as follows:

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1-Loneliness is lack of support of prime relation, social isolation, and non-personal interest. 2-The lack of solidarity is non-sense of belonging, none-power of sharing, an exile of social or cultural participation and nonidentification of vision, sense and public interest. 3-Dissatisfication of social relationship. (Quoted in Sarfraz 45-60)

Many times in the novella, it is shown that the prospect of being independent materially of the workers and the ranchmen, are nullified or denied. Here Steinbeck criticizes the materialistic and industrial systems which monopolize the legitimate rights of workers to only use them as means of production and reification. Crooks ridicules Lennie and George's dream of gaining land and keeping animals of their own: "We're gonna have rabbits and a berry patch." Said Lennie. "You're nuts."Crooks said scornfully."I have seen hundreds of men come by on the road an' on the ranches,with their bindles on their back an' the same damn thing in their heads,hundreds of them.They come,an' they quit an' go on;an' every damn one of 'em's got got a little piece of land in his head…"(OMAM 36)

Crooks denies all that is called the workers' dreams at the bunkhouse and their lights of future, because he has already been there even before others and he knows well that what is imprinted in some workers' minds are just illusions mirage, because of the cruelty that is usually done by the materialist system against the agrarian lower class itinerant workers. Besides being treated badly and having gained nothing from the capitalistic system, the migrant workers are at the mercy of forces which they cannot control and which ruthlessly destroy the very hope they live for.

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Of Mice and Men may be read as a realistic documentation of the suffering of humanity in the world of the material. Critics, scholars, or readers who speak of it must think of Steinbeck's work as an expression of the author's great wrath against those chaotic forces which have participated in annihilating the lives of the migrant workers. At any rate, the migrant workers need each other's companionship repeatedly to mitigate the natural and capitalistic forces put over them and to cover their alienated feelings and loneliness. The characters like George and Lennie are the mostly spotted and highlighted characters, as migrant workers, by the author to reveal the migrants' inevitable need for friendship and easing each other. Peter Lisca points out: “Lennie's need for George is obvious, but that George's need for

Lennie, though less

obvious, is great. George needs Lennie, however, as more than just a rationalization for his own failure.” ( Quated in Steele, 26) From this point, the necessity of friendship of the farmers and working men in Of Mice and Men remains active but the real prospects for its fulfillment decline drastically in the concerns of perceiving the various dreams which the workers have in their minds. Moreover, when George and Candy discover the dead body of Curley's wife, both suddenly realize that their dream of the little farm is unattainable, and even it was doomed from the beginning because the fraternal co-existence could not be found in a world run by callous materialists, who never set value for humanity: George said:"What was it you wanted to see me about?" Candy pointed at Curley's wife. George stared "What is the matter with her?" he said. He stepped closer and he echoed Candy's words"Oh, Jesus Christ!"He was down beside her.(OMAM 46)

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Following the discovery of Curley's wife's dead body, George delivers a speech that dwells on the worst possible aftermath of Lennie's misdeed, and this is not the wrath of Curley or the immolation of Lennie or the loss of the dreaming of a farm, but the perspective of how someone like George becomes alone and homeless in the world of economic futility and materialistic exploitation by the capitalists. George gets raged when he says: "I'll work my month an' I'll take my fifty bucks and I'll stay all night in some lousy cat house. Or I'll set in some poolroom til ever'body goes home..An' then I'll come back an' work another month an' I'll have fifty bucks more."(OMAM 47) But Slim, very nearly like George, is a hard worker and he is very omniscient. More than he is an average worker, he looks more like George in some aspects. Slim tries to listen to the stories and talk of the ranchmen at the bunkhouse; he sits in the bunkhouse as though he is a teacher facing his student. He listens to their stories, thus to make efforts towards medium changes. That is why he would be taken as confident by the workers, especially George. Even in the last chapter, when George shoots Lennie, Slim legitimates George's action and eases him; he tells him sometimes one has to do that. Slim is the only one that alleviates George and tries to bring him back to the community of the workers. According to the Romanian historian, Mircea Eliade: “The functions of real men are to show the new generation the profound meaning of existence and help take responsibility for being a real man, and therefore participate in culture.” (Eliade 8) These men, as George and Slim, have been respected, feared and idealized. Slim tries to kill George's dreams of getting rid of the illusions, to be realistic. George now is a part of his society by the help of Slim and

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it is Slim who makes George's dream vanish by reminding him of reality. Steinbeck tries in the best way to create realistically the most suitable characterization in Of Mice and Men, especially in his three main characters; George, Slim and Lennie. Eliade's words tend to demonstrate the very necessity in the lives of the lower class individuals to confront that hard reality that was on the shoulders of the industrial and materialistic system. It is very important to notice that there is only one female character whose name is not mentioned, rather she is called Curley's wife. She has, as the ranchmen at the bunkhouse, twinkling dreams of becoming an actress one day and be free from the small imprisoned area of claustrophobic Salinas. One can say that Curley's wife is found as another influential character in the story because she is the main raw material for stirring most of the initiating tragic actions in the story, thus she is easily taken as a catalyst. Wherever she appears in the story, she is the portent and ominous sign of bringing about tragic events. She looks for love in real harsh life of patriarchal and material world. She is also the victim of modern life, social practices, and materialism. Steinbeck here drastically attacks the social organization structures which facilitate making victims out of individual's lives. (Kevin 48). One may simply infer the reason why the novel lacks active female presence, which is to highlight the absence of love, mercy and compassion, which are usually associated with women. This reveals the real materialistic world of the novel. These negative aspects of the materialistic system lead to tremendous imprints and traces which destroy the individuals' hope and prospects in life during the Great Depression. Steinbeck also was a successful shareholder, as a realist writer, to transform the bitterness of life during that era and make something very artful out of the desperate

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age; thus Steinbeck has practiced his great skills of writing in Of Mice and Men in the aspects of the art of writing. Thomas Scarseth suggests (Thomas 388-94): In "Of Mice and Men", Steinbeck has shown us something about the pain of living in a complex human world and created something beautiful from it. In true great literature, the pain of life is transmuted into the beauty of Art. The book is worth reading for a glimpse of that beauty-and worth teaching as a way to show others how such a beauty works.

Steinbeck underscores that if the migrant workers and the lower class individuals get apart from each other, their utopian dreams will melt away and, thereupon, the migrant workers have to be the opposition of the social, economic, and political aspects of the capitalistic society. Besides, the characters, who are living at the bunkhouse, are prototypes of those American individuals who expect their dreams to become invalid by the various problems which overshadow their dreams. Steinbeck proves the characters of Of Mice and Men to be forgotten individuals as representatives of the lower class and poor people. The ranch hands and the migrant workers at the bunkhouse usually attempt to find a safer gate and get rid of the harsh lives they face at their working spot. They are stuck in the hands of materialistic and exploitative authoritative people, as Curley. At the bunkhouse; the itinerant workers have got strong friendship, especially the main two characters like slowwitted Lennie Small and smart George Milton. They use each other's strength and smartness to make a way for achieving their dreams and also get survived from the hands of capitalistic system. Their friendship is found unbreakable and sacred because they have not got others. Mark Spilka states:

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George uses Lennie to provoke and settle his own quarrel with hostile world. George sees as a frustrated individual who willingly looks for trouble with the sources of authority of the ranch and who provokes this through a sense of guilt, which he instills in Lennie by strictly forbidding any contact whatsoever with certain people. (Spilka 62-72) George does not want Lennie to mingle with other people, especially with the authority figures, those who have taken and legalized material properties for themselves. Whoever is hated by George is hated by Lennie too. What is more, the very dream of owning a strip of land indicates the Eden-like promised independent world which the migrant workers aspire to have and which is totally marred by the capitalistic system and the authoritarian hands. Though their dreams are scattered into air and gone into vain, the migrant workers fight against their capitalist rivals. The author highlights the fact that some isolated migrant workers in novella, despite being cast off by the material society and they live among greedy ideologies, are looking forward to having bright futures. The author suggests that those prototypical characters are supermen. One of those characters, as mentioned earlier, is enigmatic Slim. He is discerned, among other workers at the bunkhouse, with perspicacity and vividness. He is an exemplar of a superman, as the novelist Louis Owens concludes: Slim is an omnipotent and omniscient sort of Nietzschean superman and the familiar American cowboy hero. He is more befitting of a philosopher or a nobleman than a ranch hand in charge of animals. Even the boss's son, Curley more or less treats him with, acknowledges his innate leadership. (Owens 2)

Steinbeck illustrates that even the ignored, marginalized mass of migrant workers and working hands have great minds and leading individuals. The author also recognizes the inevitable crimes and injustice

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that the capitalist or materialist system does and commits against poor workers. A bright figure as Slim has to be given his rights to have a fair life, because despite being deprived worker, he is too bright, accurate and morally upstanding person. One has to keep repeating the issue of disillusion of the American Dream and the tragic or semi-apocalyptic calamity which faced the American economy pillars during the Great Depression 1929 until the early 1930 in the United States. The industrial system was still new to the American nation. This system depended on tools which no longer needed human hands labor. Thus, industrial flood passed over the lower class individuals and those who depended on farming with their hands. These things, shoulder by shoulder with the decline of the global economic crash and war break-outs, led to many crises. The farmers and proletariat class became immobile towards materialistic forces as Svobida suggests: During the laissez-faire, expansionist 1290s the plains were extensively ploughed and put to wheat, turned into highly mechanized factory that produced unprecedented harvests. Plains operators, however, ignored all environmental limits in this enterprise…In a more stable natural region; this sort of farming could have gone on exploiting the land much longer with impunity. (Svobida 2)

Also, Of Mice and Men is the outcome of this era in America and the characters in this work are too annihilated by these unstoppable torrents. Each of the characters has been imprisoned by his/her own problem, yet, all those problems are consequences of the newlyintroduced systems to the American community. They are doomed and they feel unimportant because of the capitalistic system which remembers them when it needs to make benefits out of their strives. They are ready to leave this world which is far from justice and rectitude and those

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characters are looking for an alternative, even if it costs their souls to get liberation. The best example of this proclamation is Lennie's death, which is corporeal and George's, which is figurative. (Jens 32-33) It is very important to notice that Steinbeck makes a great tragic anecdote out of the simple lives of the migrant workers, as characters, make at the bunkhouse in Of Mice and Men. Though the story seems to be simple, the tragic design which Steinbeck has in mind has many moral lessons related to the oppression of the capitalistic authoritarians against the isolated asocial itinerant workers. Steinbeck plans the work in a way to make the tragic ends meet, as Curley's wife's killing by Lennie and the latter's death by George. The tragic events are arranged by the author to make readers realize how the lower class individuals are tucked in being cast off, segregated and ignored by the capitalists and materialistic proprietors. The world of the novel seems to be governed by the laws of the jungle. The writer insinuates that in this capitalistic world survival is only for the fittest. Interestingly, the migrant workers at the bunkhouse usually attempt to save earnings and their little wage money to enjoy their time and get far away from their enclosed savage world, which is the bunkhouse. They are chasing their dreams of freedom, independence and luxury. When Curley, the boss's son goes to the town, the workers take that opportunity and leave the bunkhouse and head to town for a spree, the only workers who are left behind at the farm are Crooks (the Negro), Candy (the old man), and Lennie (the idiot).This circumstance is taken by Curley's wife to seduce Lennie and thus results in the tragic action of her death. Both of Lennie and Curley's wife need love, with different contexts, but their different illusion of love collides.(Harry 85)

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In Of Mice and Men, one event leads to another and whatever happens is ordered by physical laws. This very fact reveals scientific, naturalistic and realistic phenomena of the material world. Steinbeck creates a non-teleological thinking and inclines to say that everything is determined by the material laws and evolutionary process. The critic Benson suggests: Non-teleological thinking is mechanistic. One event leads to another. And what happens is dictated by physical laws. There is no possibility of free will-all events are determined-and there is no way of knowing whether or not there is divine Providence, an overall divine…Steinbeck presented almost from the beginning of his published work a world that was mechanistic and independent of the desires of man and the presence of God…There is pervasive sense that things just happen. People who act by their dreams are defeated; people who try to change things are unsuccessful. (Benson 41)

Here Benson's mentioning of almost provides an outline for Of Mice and Men. The very title, which is taken from Robert Burns' poem seems mechanistic and fatalistic; the original title of Steinbeck's work, "Something That Happened", even more so. Steinbeck does not intend entirely to say that the lives of the migrant workers in his work are totally predestined however they try towards reform and change, and there is more to be noted about this work than its surface fatalism. This is why the critic uses the word "almost". Steinbeck strongly implies a sense of what ought to be in Of Mice and Men regarding the human being and their affairs. That is to say, though the universe, in Steinbeck's view, seems to be haphazard and it is ruled by scientific non-teleological determinism, one can find meaning by strong implication ethically. The same thing happens to the lives of the migrant workers at the bunkhouse.

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Still the characters in the story are destined by their inability to escape, confined to loneliness and isolation, to start living freely outside the capitalistic and sadistic system. Despite all of these, someone like Crooks tries to find meaning, judgment and standardization or a measure. He has made a life criterion by which he can judge, appraise, regulate and govern his life. According to Crooks, that measurement is not to be determined by one, but is dependent on community. Steinbeck sometimes creates a balance in showing the negative aspects of isolation and its good ones in Of Mice and Men. Since capitalism and exploitative materialism have immersed into such a great corruption and abusiveness of workers and ranchmen in the story. The majority of characters as ranchmen and itinerant workers seldom trust the co-workers, except George and Lennie who have camaraderie. As soon as a bridge of acquaintance is created between two workers, their trust is created and they can be share-holders of dialogue and mentioning their dreams; but because of non-assurance of the hard situations at the bunkhouse, it is rarely achievable. For example in chapter three, Steinbeck reveals Crooks’ scowling face when he sees Lennie coming to his room: “You got no right to come into my room. This here is my room. No one's got right here but me.” (OMAM 53) Though Crooks has chosen loneliness and intends not to allow others to intrude into the bunkhouse, he longs for social participation and in need of someone, a friend, a partner, etc. The author's antagonism toward materialism and capitalism stems from the up-rooted calamities and sacrifices which his nation had to pay, especially lower class individuals. Steinbeck announces the futility of human being's strife in the modern world where industry has seized all the resources of prosperity and well-being. The higher positions of

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materialistic and capitalistic personae have appointed their arrogant behaviors towards the lower class, workers and farmers. This very inhumane feature of materialistic authority has been obviously shown by Steinbeck. That is why class-conflict is a major issue to be discussed, studied and underscored in Of Mice and Men. Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men is a novel colored by themes of capitalism, materialism, and naturalism. Various aspects in the work show this. The most important aspects are the main lower class characters as George, Lennie, Crooks and Slim who fail to achieve their dreams; not even that, but the story ends tragically. Steinbeck makes a crucial social criticism by attacking higher authorities whose hands have been used in torturing lower class individuals. That is to say, Of Mice and Men, besides being a literary masterpiece, is for itself a social critical piece of work. In making two main characters the archetype and presentation of the migrant workers in 1930 in America during the Great Depression epoch and at a time when the American Dream came to an end, Steinbeck has a global message and also has exhibited how the authoritative figures in the society, as materialists and capitalists, have made themselves dumb in the hard economic plague facing the American lower class individuals. Steinbeck implies that because of the social problems, people are prevented to achieve their goals in the American society and to realize the American Dream. Steinbeck uncovers in the story the fact that those few people who have benefited from the American prosperity and fruits have been the main obstacles to the achievements and dreams of the poor people. Likewise, even the most intimate friend workers as Lennie and George become victimized because of the many economical and

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psychological problems. The tragic outcome which ends the story, when George shoots his friend Lennie is the best example of how confused the workers' lives are. George thinks that it is the best solution for Lennie to be killed, in order to run away from his hard life. Gorge thinks he has to perform the action and Slim justifies George killing of his own friend: "Never you mind."Slim said "A guy got to sometimes." (OMAM 52) Finally one can conclude, through thorough study, that the story of Of Mice and Men deals with the main theme of loneliness of the individual characters who have been imprisoned from the notion of life because of the confines of materialistic and capitalistic prejudice barriers. The strong friendship that is found among the ranch hand workers, especially between George and Lennie, at the working place in the story, demonstrates the only console they have for each other to be saved from the cruel outside. In the story, Steinbeck criticizes the responsible individuals who have worked to worsen the lives of the workers, and how whose dreams were shattered by the capitalistic complications. Steinbeck likes to say though the individuals' or characters' dreams vary, the essence is the same, because all the dreams in one way or another purports to get rid of the suppression of common people for the sake of sheer material benefits. The idea of the destruction of the characters' dreams runs continuously in the novel to validate the fact of vanity of lower class prospects. When Steinbeck focuses on the issue of Materialism in his works, here, Of Mice and Men, he just wants to scandalize its inhumane values, because they deny the individual’s rights to live with prospects and expectations. This system usurps men’s dreams and makes them nightmares. The novel shows that in the materialistic world, dreams have no presence, since the only plausible thing in this world is the material.

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Thus, materialism, as shown in the novella, proves its invalidity in man’s life, since it strips man of his humanity and deals with him as profiting and productive creatures, not a human being. Besides, the denial of man’s spiritual needs in this world leads also to serious repercussions, one of which is the loss of meaning in man’s life.

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CONCLUSIONS

This thesis traces the core and main idea of Materialism in two works of the novelist, John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. It shows that Materialism or Capitalism is the main focus of the novelist’s criticism and attack, because it is responsible of evil and producing social calamity. John Steinbeck invents a new way to prove his legitimate and reasonable reflections in attacking the Materialistic or Capitalistic System because they create injustice and inequality in the society in these two works. In the works, Steinbeck creates prototype characters to make them historical eye-witness of the ultimate suffering that the innocent American individuals had to pay during a specific time of economic downfall. In Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie become representatives of the American workers who are confused and dazzled by the severe American profit-making Materialist System and they are lastly led to their tragic fates. While in The Grapes Of Wrath, the characters, who are centralized by the author, are the Joads. In both works, the terms Materialism and Capitalism are well scrutinized either by bringing in a scholars' or critic’s quotes or examples taken from the studies or works in order to represent how the author keenly opposes the strongholds of Materialism as a system chasing only material benefits and making the lower class and poor migrant people entrapped between crushing rocks of social and political injustice. The Capitalist System is the evident foe which usually prepares itself to further suck the individuals and thus molds them poor, ignored

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and marginalized, because it has got only one target which is material income out of them. The author shouts against the dictatorship and suppression in Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath made by the profit-making institutions towards the poor and lower class, which may lastly lead to the poor's striking and revolution for the sake of social reform and bettering the conditions of the workers' lives. This is an aim intended by the author to make readers cautious of this fact about the explosion of the lower class dissatisfaction with the system, especially in The Grapes of Wrath when the migrant workers begin striking against the low fee they make for their living in California. John Steinbeck sets up his characters in these two works to get the mirror of hard reality which is the other side of the American economic downfall during a decade of total depression and ultimate darkness. The characters are as much real as fictional, because they have been created in the imagination of the author but they are types who are found in the history of American community. There can be many aspects in the author's literary works to be scrutinized and tackled, philosophical, political, and historical or the like, but in this thesis a concept has been chosen that is Materialism. The concept can be read as a synonym of Capitalism. The thesis shows sever criticism of the author of Capitalism; because it is the most obvious corner the author has concentrated on or has built his main ideas on. In these two works, John Steinbeck intends to prove the undeniable clues of interest-worshippers in making the social units, the lower class, ladders for their own interests and material prosperity without caring of the values of human soul. As we see characters in Of Mice and Men, how they are pawns to be sacrificed for the sake of higher

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figures. The individual workers as George and Lennie have to bury their dreams, because each of those workers is curbed by economic problems. Also he sheds light on that fact that making the lower class, the poor or the workers may stir the fire of wrath and trigger the explosion of anger towards radical social change. In both novels, the author shows that materialism is the main cause behind the degradation of humanity and its global suffering. Man is treated, according to the materialists, as a replaceable machine that once it is no longer needed, it is thrown away and replaced by another. This system is also seen as responsible for dismantling the social solidarity and unity of mankind, because, as we have seen in the novels, how the owners try to instigate the workers and make them turn against each other. Also, the thesis concludes that materialism is the antonym of humanity, because, to be materialist is be dehumanized. This system pays less attention to man’s suffering and his predicament, because it considers life as a game of profit. In The Grapes of Wrath the Joads are a very good example of how the poor farmers are expelled from their own lands for the sake of much more profits by the banks and higher class figures. The author also molds in these two stories how the working class individuals can be taken as the backbones for reformation and social change, without their helps and hard works, nothing deserves reconciliation. The author believes that agitating the lower class might lead to striking, revolution and demonstration.

83

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Communism.

New

York:

Colombia

University

Press.1992.  Adams, James Truslow.The Epic of America. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd.1933.  Allen, R.Penner.Social Criticism in the Works of John Steinbeck. Texas: North Texas College Press.1961.  Anna, M.Hennessey.Journal of Philosophy Scripture. California: University of Santa Barbara.2000.  Antonio, Gramsci. Selection from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart.1999.  Benson, Jackson T.The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: Critical Essays with a Checklist to Steinbeck Criticism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990.  Benson, Jackson. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. New York: Viking.1984.  Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Guide to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Chelsea House.2006.  Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Guides to Of Mice and Men. New York: Chelsea House.2006.

84

 Brown, C.Josephine.Public Relief 1929-1939.New York: Henry Holt and Co, Inc.1940.  Carpenter,I.Frederic.John

Steinbeck:

American

Dreamer.Oklahoma:The University of Oklahoma Press.1977.  Christina,

D.Romer.Encyclopedia

Brittanica.December,

20,

2003.  Chritina, D.Romer.Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery. Brookings Institution Press.2009.  Claire,

Maniez.A

Study

of

Steinbeck's

Of

Mice

and

Men.Torronto: Anne University Press.2009.  Daniel,E.Cleutus.Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farm workers,1870-1941.Berkley:University

of

California

Press.1982.  De Mott, Robert. Working Days. New York: Viking Press.1989.  De Mott,Robert. Working Days. New York: Viking Press.1989.  Ditsky,M.John.Steinbeck and Critics. New York, Rochester: Woodbridge Camden House.2000.  Easterlin, A.Richard.Population, Labour Force, and Long Swings in Economic Growth: The American Experience. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.1968.

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 Edward,J.Reunion.The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown. New York: Viking Press.1995.  Edwin, Bowden.The Okies and Isolation. New York: Viking Press.2005.  Eliade, Mircea.Le Sacre et le Profane.Paris:Gallimard.1987.  Elizabth,Heinz.Mothers of the Great Depression: Aesthetic Intent of Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. North Carolina: North Carolina University Press.2011.  Encyclopedia Americana 5.Danbury: Grolier Inc., 1988.  FaheyWilliam.F.Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. New York: Thomas Crowell Company.1973.  Fontenrose,Joseph. John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Barnes and Nobles.1963.  French, Warren. Arthurian Influence and Allegory. New York: Twayne Publisher.2006.  G.P.Maximoff.Idealism and Materialism.London:The Free Press.  Gabraith, John Kenith.The Great Crash, 1929.3rd ed.Boston: Houghton Miffling.1972.  Geismar, Maxwell. Writers in Crises: The American Novel 1925-1940.Massauchusetts: The Riverside Press.1942.

86

 George, Plimpton and Frank Crowther.The Art of Fiction. John Steinbeck. New York: American Historic Inns.1969.  -Golderg, J.David.The United States in the 20.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.1994.  Goldhurst,William. The Betrayal of Brotherhood in the Work of John Steinbeck.Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.2000.  Gregory, N.James.American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press.1989.  Hadella,C.Charlotte. Of Mice and Men: A Kinship to Powerlessness. New York: Twayne.1995.  Harry,Thornton.The Novels of John Steinbeck. Chicago: Normandie House.1993.  Hoffman.J.Frederick.Proliterian Writers of thirties. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.1968.  Howard, Levant. The Novels of John Steinbeck: A Critical Study. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.1974.  James,N.Gregory.Dust Bowl Leagues: The Okie Impact On California.California:California State University Press.1989  Jasinki,

S.Mark.John

Steinbeck

as

a

Burlington: Vermont University Press.2008.

Radical

Novelist.

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 Jefffrey, Schultz and Luchen Li.John Steinbeck: A Literary Reference to his Life and Works. New York, Library of Congress.2005.  Jens,Lioen.A Non-chronological Analysis of the Evolution of the Migrant Workers Presentation in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men", "In Dubious Battle" and "The Grapes of Wrath".Ghent:Gent University Press.2009.  John Newman and John M.Mschmalbach.United States History. New York: Amsco School Publication.2010.  John, B. Foster. Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press.2000.  John, J.Newman.United States History. New York: Amsco School Publications Inc.2010.  Joseph, Rayback.A History of American Labour.New York: Gutenberg Press.2000.  Joyce, Moss and Wilson George. Overview: of Mice and Men. Literature and Its Time: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works

and

Historical

Events

that

Influenced

Them.Vol3.Detroit:Gale.1997.  Kevin,

Attell.Novels

for

Students.

California University Press.1997.

California,

Berkley:

88

 Klamer, Arjo.The American Economists.Paris:Seuil.1988.  Labriola, Antonio. Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History. Chicago: Charles H.Kerr and Company.1995.  Markels, Julian. Marxian Imagination: Representing Class in Literature. New York, Monthly Review Press.2003.  McCarthy, Paul. John Steinbeck. New York: Viking Penguin Inc.1989.  McElrath,

R.Joseph.John

Steinbeck:

The

Contemporary

Reviews. Cambridge University Press.1996.  Mckay, Y.Nellie.Social Change, Redefinition of Family and Motherhood in "The Grapes of Wrath". New York: Library of Congress.2005.  Michael, Bernstein. The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929-1939.New York: Cambridge University Press.1987.  Michael, H.Short.A Stylistic Analysis of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press.1970.  Michael, J.Meyer.The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck. London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.1990.

89

 Owens, Louis.Trouble in the Promised Land. Boston: G.K.Hall&Co.1989.  Pizer, Donald. Twentieth Century American Naturalism: An Interpretation.

Carbondale:

Southern

Illinois

University

Press.1982.  Politzer, Goerges.Dialectical Materialism (translated to Kurdish by

Abdulmajeed.

Pezkandi).Sulaimanyah,

Kakay

Fallah

Publishing Center.  Pradhan, N.S.Modern American Drama: A Study in the Myth and Tradition. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann.1978.  Rosemont, Franklin. 1986. The anarchists and the Wild West. Chicago: Charles H.Kerr Publishing Company.2000.  Sarfraz, Hamid. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research, Vol2.Department of Sociology: Quetta.1997  Sayers,S.Marxism and Human Nature.London:Routledge.1098.  Sidney, Finkelstein.Existentialism and Alienation in American Literature. London: Penguin Books.1965.  Spilka, Mark.The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.Lanham: Scarecrow Press.2009.  Steele, John. A Century of Idiots. Barnaby Rudge and Of Mice and Men. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press.1973.

91

 Steinbeck,John.Steinbeck:A

Life

in

Letters.eds.Elaine

Steinbeck, Robert Walstein.New York: Penguin Books.1989.  Stephen, K.George.John Steinbeck's Place within American Literature. New York: Oxford Press.2005.  Stephen, Marten. John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men. Harlow, Essex: Longman York Press.1980.  Susan,

Shillinglaw.Biography

in

Depth:

John

Steinbeck,

American Writer. New York: The Viking Press.1984.  Svobida,Lawrence. Farming in the Dust Bowl. Oklahoma State University.1886.  The Story behind the Story. Microsoft Encarta Online Encyclopedia.2004.20th,January,2013http://britanica.com/EBche cked/topic/564980/John Steinbeck  Thomas,Scarseth."A Teachable Book: Of Mice and Men," in Censored Books. Critical Viewpoints, edited by Nicholas J.Karolides,Lee Burrs and John M.Kean.Maryland, Lanham: Scarecrow Press.1993.  Thoreau,D.Henry.Civil Disobedience. New York: Global Grey.2013  Thoreau,D.Henry.Civil Disobedience. New York: Global Grey.2013.

91

 Timmerman, H.John.The American Dream is Doomed in Of Mice and Men. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.2010.  Tindal, She. America (4th Ed).New York: WW.Norton & Company.1997.  Walcutt,C.Charles.American Literary Naturalism. A Divided Stream.Mineapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.1956.  Wyatt, David.ed.New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Cambridge University Press.1990.

Internet Material Resources

 https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/historicalmaterialism-and-the-inevitable-end-of-capitalism/  http;//www.shmoop.com/Of-Mice-and-Men/

92

 http://www.wikipedia.com/Materialism  http://www.studymode.com/subjects/materialism-in-of-miceand-men  http://www.shmoop.com/grapes-of-wrath/  http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/heirssteinbeck-fiction-writers-taking-poverty-inequality  http://www.Online-Literature.com/JohnSteinbeck  http://www.olny.nl/Research_Recherche/Memoires_Theses/O_ Nyirubugara_John Steinbeck's Anti Capitalism Sentiments  http://www.brill.com/american-road-capitalism  http://www.Bookfi.org/JohnSteinbeckandmaterialism  http://www.abebooks.com/books/pearl-buck-novelsbestselling-fiction/depression-literature.shtml  http://sparknotes.com/OfMiceandMen  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism  http://criticsandbuilders.typepad.com/amlitblog/2011/05/grap es-of-wrath

‫‪93‬‬

‫خالصة البحث‬ ‫هذه األطروحة هي دراسة "المادية" في اثنين من األعمال المختارة من جون‬ ‫شتاينبك‪ .‬ويدرس تطوير المادية والرأسمالية في "من الفئران والرجال" و "عناقيد‬ ‫الغضب"‪ .‬وتعتبر الدراسة أن المادية العامل الرئيسي والسبب وراء تلك الروايات‬ ‫اثنتي‪.‬‬

‫‪94‬‬

‫تقع األطروحة في ثالثة فصول‪ .‬فصل األول هو مقدمة مع اثنين من النقاط‬ ‫الرئيسية‪ .‬النقطة األولى هي مواقف جون شتاينبك مكافحة المادية‪ ،‬واألفكار‬ ‫والفلسفات الرئيسية التي قد تنعكس أيضا في أعمال أخرى للمؤلف‪ .‬هو تمحيص‬ ‫القضية للمؤلف في مكافحة المادية تحت المنظار من واقع حياة مقدم البال‪،‬غ‪ ،‬ل‬ ‫اإلنسانية موقف نقطة ومواجهت مع موجات الحديثة في النظام الصناعي‪ .‬ثم النقطة‬ ‫الثانية من فصل واحد ويأتي الذي هو موجز لتاريخ المادية األمريكية‪ .‬النقطة‬ ‫الثانية يأخذ فكرة المادية كما دراستها ذات الصلة مع الواليات المتحدة األمريكية‬ ‫من جذورها‪ .‬كل من النقاط من فصل األول تعتمد على مصدر القلق الرئيسي‬ ‫للبيان موضوع األطروحة التي هي المادي ‪.‬‬ ‫في الفصل الثاني‪ ،‬يتم تطبيق القضية الرئيسية من المادية في "من الفئران‬ ‫والرجال" ويبدأ مع تاريخ نشر العمل‪ ،‬وخصائص لرواية مماثلة مثل مسرحية‪.‬‬ ‫هذه الدراسات الفصل بالتفصيل اإلجراءات ذاتها‪ ،‬والحوارات‪ ،‬ووضع من الرواية‬ ‫الذي يرتبط مع "المادية" أو الرأسمالية‪ .‬هذا الفصل أيضا يكشف بصورة واقعية‬ ‫موقف البال‪،‬غ ضد النظام المادي التي انضمت مع موارد موثوقة كتبت عن هذا‬ ‫العمل‪.‬‬ ‫ينتقل الفصل األخير إلى "عناقيد الغضب"‪ ،‬وناقش القضية الرئيسية المادي ‪.‬‬ ‫هذا الفصل يشمل كذلك السبب وراء تسمية العمل "عناقيد الغضب" وتاريخ النشر‪.‬‬ ‫ثم تبدأ دراسة الرواية مع منظور المادي‪ .‬يتم تضمين االقتباسات إما من موارد‬ ‫صادقة من قبل النقاد أو من الرواية نفسها‪.‬‬

‫‪95‬‬

‫في هذه األطروحة فقد خلص إلى أن موضوع "المادية" في غالبية أعمال‬ ‫جون شتاينبك‪ ،‬وخصوصا "من الفئران والرجال" و "عناقيد الغضب" أمر أساسي‬ ‫في فلسفة المؤلف ونقد المؤلف من بقايا "المادية" قلب من أعمال ‪.‬‬ ‫وأخيرا هناك قائمة من الكتب والمقاالت وصفحات الويب التي تم التشاور‬ ‫معها بدقة أثناء كتابة هذه األطروحة‪ .‬أيضا شيء مهم جدا البد المضافة وتسليط‬ ‫الضوء على أساسها هو النهج أو المدرسة التي تم كتابة الدراسة‪ .‬أخذ من عنوان‬ ‫العملين من نفس المؤلف وطبيعة التدقيق في العنوان‪ ،‬كان من الضروري اتخاذ‬ ‫المدرسة "المادية والماركسية" نهج باعتبارها العمود الفقري الرئيسي من‬ ‫الدراسة؛ على الرغم من المدارس األخرى من االنتقادات والنهج األدبي في بعض‬ ‫األحيان قد قبلت‪.‬‬

‫‪96‬‬

‫ثوختة‬ ‫ئةم ليَكؤلَينةوة كار لةسةر لةسةر بابةتي ماتريالَيزم لة دووكاري ئةدةبي هةلَبذيَردراوي نوسةري ئةمريكي‬ ‫(جؤن شتاينبيَك) ئةكات‪.‬ليَكؤلَينةوةكة ديراسةي طةشةكردني ماتريلَيزم و كاثيتالَيزم ئةكات لة هةردوو ِرؤماني‬ ‫تورةيي) و (كاروباري مشكان و ثياوان)‪.‬هةروةها ليَكؤلَينةوةكة‬ ‫ِرؤماننوسي ناوبراودا بةناوةكاني (هيَشووي‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ئةوة دةردةخات كة دياردةي ماتريليزم يان كاثيتا َليزم لة ثشتةوةي لةدايك بووني ئةم دوو كارة ئةدةبيةوة ية‪.‬‬ ‫بةشي يةكةم ثيَشةكيةكة كة دوو خالَي سةرةكي لة خؤ دةطريَت‪,‬خا َلي يةكةم ثيَك ديَت لة نيشان داني‬ ‫هةلَويَستةكاني نوسةر دذي ماتريالَيزم‪ ,‬هةروةها بيرؤكة و فةلسةفةكاني كة لة كارةكاني تريشي دا ِرةنطي‬ ‫داوتةوة‪.‬ئةمةش لة بةر ِرؤشنايي ذياني نوسةر ِرونكراوةتةوة كة وةكو هةستيَكي مرؤظ دؤستانة نوسةر دذي‬ ‫شةثؤلة يةك لةدواي يةكةكاني سيستةمي ثيشةسازي وةستاوةتةوة‪.‬ثاشان هةر لةم بةشةدا كة خالَي دووةمة‬ ‫ميَذوويةكي كورتي ماتريالَيزمي ئةمريكي ئةخريَتة ِروو بةشيَوةيةك كة ِرةط و ِريشةكاني ماتريلَيزم شيكار‬ ‫ئةكات لة وياليةتة يةكطرتووةكاني ئةمريكادا‪.‬ئةمة لةكاتيَك دا هةردوو خاَلَةكاني بةشي يةكةم ثةيوةنديةكاني‬ ‫ِراستةوخؤيان دةبيَت لةطة َل بيرؤكةي ئةم ليَكؤلَينةوةيةدا‪.‬‬ ‫بةشي دووةم بيرؤكةي سةرةكي ماترياليزم لة ِرؤماني (كارؤباري مشكان و ثياوان) شيكار دةكريَت و‬ ‫ثراكتيزة ئةكريَت‪.‬ئةم بةشة لة ميَذووي بالَوكردنةوةي ِرؤماني ناوبراوةوة دةست ثيَئةكات و هةروةها ئةو‬ ‫اليةنةي دةردةخات كة ضؤن ئةم كارة وةكو شانؤنامةيةك دةتوانر َيت بخؤ َينر َيتةوة يان نمايش بكر َيت‪.‬هةروةها‬ ‫ئةم بةشة هةموو ئةو ِرووداو و دايةلؤط و شويَنكارانة دةخاتة ِروو كة ثةيوةنديةكي ِراستةوخؤيان لةطة َل‬ ‫ماتريالَيزم يان كاثيتالَيزم (سةرمايةداري) دا هةية‪ .‬لة دواين ديَ ِرةكاني ئةم بةشةدا زياتر هةلَويَست و تيَ ِروانينة‬ ‫جواميَرةكاني نوسةر خراوةتة ِروو لةطة َل بةرئةنجاميَكي تايبةت بة بابةتي ليَكؤلَينةوةكة‪.‬‬ ‫لة بةشي سيَيةم دا‪,‬كة دوايين بةشي ئةم نامةيةية بيرؤكةي ماتريالَيزم دةخريَتة ذيَر ديراسةوة لة ِرؤماني‬ ‫تورةيي)‪.‬ئةم بةشة طةليَك تةوةر لة خؤ دةطريَت ‪,‬وةكو بنةضةي ناوليَناني كارةكة بةو ناوةوة و‬ ‫(هيَشووي‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ميَذووي بالَوكردنةوةي ِرؤمانةكة‪,‬بةالَم كة ديَتة سةر شيكاركردني ِرؤمانةكة‬

‫لة ديدةنيطاي بيرؤكةي‬

‫‪97‬‬

‫ماتريالَيزمةوة‪,‬وةكو ِرةخنة لة سيستةمي سةرمايةداري‪,‬زياتر ئةو ِرووداو و هةلَويَستانة لة خؤ دةطريَت كة‬ ‫واتاي بابةتي ناونيشانةكة هةلَدةطريَت‪.‬‬ ‫دواتر هةر لةم ليَكؤلَينةوةيةدا‪,‬دةرئةنجاميَكي ثوخت و يةكاليكةرةوة خراوةتة ِروو سةبارةت بة بيرؤكةي‬ ‫(ماتريا َليزم) لة زؤربةي كارةكاني (جؤن شتاينب َيك)‪,‬بةتايبةتي هةردوو كاري (كاروباري مشكان و ثياوان) و‬ ‫تورةيي) وةكو تيشكؤيةكي زؤر ِروون لة فةلسةفة و ِرةخنةكاني نوسةر لة سيستةمي سةرمايةداري‪.‬‬ ‫(ه َيشووي ِ‬ ‫ثةرو وتارانة خراوةتة ِروو كة وةكو سةرضاوة بؤ‬ ‫لة كؤتايي ئةم ليَكؤلَينةوةيةدا‪,‬ئةو ليستي سةرضاوة و مالَ ِ‬ ‫لي بينراوة‪ .‬هةروةها ئةبيَت تيشك بخريَتة سةر ئةو ِراستيةي‬ ‫تةواوكردني ئةم نامةية بةكار هاتوون و سوديان َ‬ ‫كة ئةو قوتابخانة ِرةخنةيةي كة ثشتي ث َي بةستراوة وةكو ِريَضكةيةك بؤ نوسيني ئةم ليَكؤلَينةوةية لة نامةكة‬ ‫بريتي بووة لة قوتابخانةي ِرةخنةيي (ماتريا َليزم و ماركسيزم) ‪.‬‬

CONCLUSIONS

This thesis traces the core and main idea of Materialism in two works of the novelist, John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men and The Grapes of Wrath. It shows that Materialism is the main focus of the novelist’s criticism and attack, because it is responsible of evil and producing social calamity. John Steinbeck invents a new way to prove his legitimate and reasonable reflections in attacking the Materialistic and Capitalistic System because they create injustice and inequality in the society in these two works. In the works, Steinbeck creates prototype characters to make them historical eye-witness of the ultimate suffering that the innocent American individuals had to pay during a specific time of economic downfall. In Of Mice and Men, George and Lennie become representatives of the American workers who are confused and dazzled by the severe American profit-making materialist system and they are lastly led to their tragic fates. While in The Grapes Of Wrath, the characters, who are centralized by the author, are the Joads. In both works, the terms Materialism and Capitalism are well scrutinized either by bringing in a scholars' or critic’s quotes or examples taken from the studies or works in order to represent how the author keenly opposes the strongholds of Materialism as a system chasing only material benefits and making the lower class and poor migrant people entrapped between crushing rocks of social and political injustice. The Capitalist System is the evident foe which usually prepares itself to further suck the individuals and thus molds them poor, ignored and marginalized, because it has got only one target which is material income out of them. The author shouts against the dictatorship and 78

ABSTRACT

This thesis studies Materialism in the two selected works of John Steinbeck. It studies the development of Materialism and Capitalism in The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men. The study considers Materialism to be the major factor and reason behind writing those two novels. Hence, the aim of the study is explore this theme in these two novels to show the extent to which the theme is present, and also to show the way the writer deals with this theme in his two novels. Also, the thesis aims at showing the consequences of adopting Materialism as an alternative to the human codes in the society, as presented in these two novels. The thesis falls into three chapters. Chapter one is an introduction with two major headings. The first is the John Steinbeck's antimaterialistic attitudes, the main thoughts and philosophies that also have been mirrored in other works of the author. The author's anti-materialistic perspectives are scrutinized under the binoculars of the author's real life, his humanitarian stand-point and his confrontation with modern waves of industrial system. Then the second one is about a brief history of American Materialism. It sketches Materialism from its roots and from different perspectives. Chapter two examines Materialism in The Grapes of Wrath. This chapter studies in details the very actions, dialogues, setting of the novella which is related to Materialism or Capitalism. This chapter also realistically uncovers the author's attitude against the Materialistic system.

VIII

Chapter three deals with the theme of Materialism in Of Mice and Men. This chapter covers as well the reason behind naming the work Of Mice and Men and the publication date. Then it starts studying the novel from a Materialistic perspective. This chapter ends with the conclusions, which sum up the most important findings of the study, which is followed by the References. In this thesis it is concluded that the theme of Materialism in the majority of John Steinbeck's works, especially The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men is central in the author's philosophy and the author's criticism of Materialism and it remains in the heart of his works.

IX

References  Aaron, Daniel. Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary Communism. New York: Colombia University Press.1992.  Adams, James Truslow.The Epic of America. London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd.1933.  Allen, R.Penner.Social Criticism in the Works of John Steinbeck. Texas: North Texas College Press.1961..  Anna, M.Hennessey.Journal of Philosophy Scripture. California: University of Santa Barbara.2000.  Antonio, Gramsci. Selection from the Prison Notebooks. London: Lawrence & Wishart.1999.  Benson, Jackson T.The Short Novels of John Steinbeck: Critical Essays with a Checklist to Steinbeck Criticism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1990.  Benson, Jackson. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer. New York: Viking.1984.  Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Guide to The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Chelsea House.2006.  Bloom, Harold. Bloom's Guides to Of Mice and Men. New York: Chelsea House.2006.

 Brown, C.Josephine.Public Relief 1929-1939.New York: Henry Holt and Co, Inc.1940.  Carpenter,I.Frederic.John

Steinbeck:

American

Dreamer.Oklahoma:The University of Oklahoma Press.1977.  Christina, D.Romer.Encyclopedia Brittanica.December, 20, 2003.  Chritina, D.Romer.Lessons from the Great Depression for Economic Recovery. Brookings Institution Press.2009.  Claire,

Maniez.A

Study

of

Steinbeck's

Of

Mice

and

Men.Torronto: Anne University Press.2009.  Daniel, E.Cleutus.Bitter Harvest: A History of California Farm workers,

1870-1941.Berkley:

University

of

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Press.1982.  De Mott, Robert. Working Days. New York: Viking Press.1989.  De Mott, Robert. Working Days. New York: Viking Press.1989.  Ditsky, M.John.Steinbeck and Critics. New York, Rochester: Woodbridge Camden House.2000.  Easterlin, A.Richard.Population, Labour Force, and Long Swings in Economic Growth: The American Experience. New York: National Bureau of Economic Research.1968.

 Edward, J.Reunion.The Secret Six: The True Tale of the Men Who Conspired with John Brown. New York: Viking Press.1995.  Edwin, Bowden. The Okies and Isolation. New York: Viking Press.2005.  Eliade, Mircea.Le Sacre et le Profane.Paris:Gallimard.1987.  Elizabth, Heinz. Mothers of the Great Depression: Aesthetic Intent of Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath. North Carolina: North Carolina University Press.2011.  Encyclopedia Americana 5.Danbury: Grolier Inc., 1988.  Fahey, William.F.Scott Fitzgerald and the American Dream. New York: Thomas Crowell Company.1973.  Fontenrose, Joseph. John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation. New York: Barnes and Nobles.1963.  French, Warren. Arthurian Influence and Allegory. New York: Twayne Publisher.2006.  G.P.Maximoff.Idealism and Materialism.London:The Free Press.  Gabraith, John Kenith.The Great Crash, 1929.3rd ed.Boston: Houghton Miffling.1972.  Geismar, Maxwell. Writers in Crises: The American Novel 1925-1940.Massauchusetts: The Riverside Press.1942.

 George, Plimpton and Frank Crowther.The Art of Fiction. John Steinbeck. New York: American Historic Inns.1969.  -Golderg, J.David.The United States in the 20.Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.1994.  Goldhurst, William. The Betrayal of Brotherhood in the Work of John Steinbeck.Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press.2000.  Gregory, N.James.American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California. New York: Oxford University Press.1989.  Hadella, C. Charlotte. Of Mice and Men: A Kinship to Powerlessness. New York: Twayne.1995.  Harry, Thornton. The Novels of John Steinbeck. Chicago: Normandie House.1993.  Hoffman.J.Frederick.Proliterian Writers of thirties. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press.1968.  Howard, Levant. The Novels of John Steinbeck: A Critical Study. Columbia: University of Missouri Press.1974.  James,N.Gregory.Dust Bowl Leagues: The Okie Impact On California.California:California State University Press.1989  Jasinki, S.Mark.John Steinbeck as a Radical Novelist. Burlington: Vermont University Press.2008.

 Jefffrey, Schultz and Luchen Li.John Steinbeck: A Literary Reference to his Life and Works. New York, Library of Congress.2005.  Jens,Lioen.A Non-chronological Analysis of the Evolution of the Migrant Workers Presentation in John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men",

"In

Dubious

Battle"

and

"The

Grapes

of

Wrath".Ghent:Gent University Press.2009.  John Newman and John M.Mschmalbach.United States History. New York: Amsco School Publication.2010.  John, B. Foster. Marx's Ecology: Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly Review Press.2000.  John, J.Newman.United States History. New York: Amsco School Publications Inc.2010.  Joseph, Rayback.A History of American Labour.New York: Gutenberg Press.2000.  Joyce, Moss and Wilson George. Overview: of Mice and Men. Literature and Its Time: Profiles of 300 Notable Literary Works and

Historical

Events

that

Influenced

Them.Vol3.Detroit:Gale.1997.  Kevin,

Attell.Novels

for

Students.

California University Press.1997.

California,

Berkley:

 Klamer, Arjo.The American Economists.Paris:Seuil.1988.  Labriola, Antonio. Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History. Chicago: Charles H.Kerr and Company.1995.  Markels, Julian. Marxian Imagination: Representing Class in Literature. New York, Monthly Review Press.2003.  McCarthy, Paul. John Steinbeck. New York: Viking Penguin Inc.1989.  McElrath,

R.Joseph.John

Steinbeck:

The

Contemporary

Reviews. Cambridge University Press.1996.  Mckay, Y.Nellie.Social Change, Redefinition of Family and Motherhood in "The Grapes of Wrath". New York: Library of Congress.2005.  Michael, Bernstein. The Great Depression: Delayed Recovery and Economic Change in America, 1929-1939.New York: Cambridge University Press.1987.  Michael, H.Short.A Stylistic Analysis of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. Birmingham: University of Birmingham Press.1970.  Michael, J.Meyer.The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck. London: The Scarecrow Press, Inc.1990.

 Owens,

Louis.Trouble

in

the

Promised

Land.

Boston:

G.K.Hall&Co.1989.  Pizer, Donald. Twentieth Century American Naturalism: An Interpretation.

Carbondale:

Southern

Illinois

University

Press.1982.  Politzer, Goerges.Dialectical Materialism (translated to Kurdish by

Abdulmajeed.

Pezkandi).Sulaimanyah,

Kakay

Fallah

Publishing Center.  Pradhan, N.S.Modern American Drama: A Study in the Myth and Tradition. New Delhi: Arnold Heinemann.1978.  Rosemont, Franklin. 1986. The anarchists and the Wild West. Chicago: Charles H.Kerr Publishing Company.2000.  Sarfraz, Hamid. Pakistan Journal of Psychological Research, Vol2.Department of Sociology: Quetta.1997  Sayers, S. Marxism and Human Nature.London:Routledge.1098.  Sidney, Finkelstein.Existentialism and Alienation in American Literature. London: Penguin Books.1965.  Spilka, Mark.The Essential Criticism of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.Lanham: Scarecrow Press.2009.  Steele, John. A Century of Idiots. Barnaby Rudge and Of Mice and Men. Metuchen: Scarecrow Press.1973.

 Steinbeck, John. Steinbeck: A Life in Letters.eds.Elaine Steinbeck, Robert Walstein.New York: Penguin Books.1989.  Stephen, K.George.John Steinbeck's Place within American Literature. New York: Oxford Press.2005.  Stephen, Marten. John Steinbeck: Of Mice and Men. Harlow, Essex: Longman York Press.1980.  Susan, Shillinglaw.Biography in Depth: John Steinbeck, American Writer. New York: The Viking Press.1984.  Svobida, Lawrence. Farming in the Dust Bowl. Oklahoma State University.1886.  The

Story

behind

the

Story.

Microsoft

Encarta

Online

Encyclopedia.2004.20th,January,2013http://britanica.com/EBchec ked/topic/564980/John Steinbeck  Thomas,Scarseth."A Teachable Book: Of Mice and Men," in Censored Books. Critical Viewpoints, edited by Nicholas J.Karolides, Lee Burrs and John M.Kean.Maryland, Lanham: Scarecrow Press.1993.  Thoreau, D. Henry.Civil Disobedience. New York: Global Grey.2013  Thoreau, D. Henry.Civil Disobedience. New York: Global Grey.2013.

 Timmerman, H.John.The American Dream is Doomed in Of Mice and Men. Detroit: Greenhaven Press.2010.  Tindal, She. America (4th Ed).New York: WW.Norton & Company.1997.  Walcutt, C.Charles.American Literary Naturalism. A Divided Stream.Mineapolis: The University of Minnesota Press.1956.  Wyatt, David.ed.New Essays on The Grapes of Wrath. New York: Cambridge University Press.1990.

Internet Material Resources

 https://critiqueofcrisistheory.wordpress.com/historicalmaterialism-and-the-inevitable-end-of-capitalism/

 http;//www.shmoop.com/Of-Mice-and-Men/

 http://www.wikipedia.com/Materialism

 http://www.studymode.com/subjects/materialism-in-of-miceand-men

 http://www.shmoop.com/grapes-of-wrath/

 http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/heirssteinbeck-fiction-writers-taking-poverty-inequality

 http://www.Online-Literature.com/JohnSteinbeck

 http://www.olny.nl/Research_Recherche/Memoires_Theses/O_ Nyirubugara_John Steinbeck's Anti Capitalism Sentiments

 http://www.brill.com/american-road-capitalism

 http://www.Bookfi.org/JohnSteinbeckandmaterialism

 http://www.abebooks.com/books/pearl-buck-novelsbestselling-fiction/depression-literature.shtml

 http://sparknotes.com/OfMiceandMen

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Materialism

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Steinbeck

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectical_materialism

 http://criticsandbuilders.typepad.com/amlitblog/2011/05/grap es-of-wrath

‫خالصة البحث‬ ‫هذه األطروحة هي دراسة "المادية" في اثنين من األعمال المختارة من جون‬ ‫شتاينبك‪ .‬ويدرس تطوير المادية والرأسمالية في "من الفئران والرجال" و "عناقيد‬ ‫الغضب"‪ .‬وتعتبر الدراسة أن المادية العامل الرئيسي والسبب وراء تلك الروايات‬ ‫اثنتي‪.‬‬ ‫تقع األطروحة في ثالثة فصول‪ .‬فصل األول هو مقدمة مع اثنين من النقاط‬ ‫الرئيسية‪ .‬النقطة األولى هي مواقف جون شتاينبك مكافحة المادية‪ ،‬واألفكار‬ ‫والفلسفات الرئيسية التي قد تنعكس أيضا في أعمال أخرى للمؤلف‪ .‬هو تمحيص‬ ‫القضية للمؤلف في مكافحة المادية تحت المنظار من واقع حياة مقدم البالغ‪ ،‬له‬ ‫اإلنسانية موقف نقطة ومواجهته مع موجات الحديثة في النظام الصناعي‪ .‬ثم النقطة‬ ‫الثانية من فصل واحد ويأتي الذي هو موجز لتاريخ المادية األمريكية‪ .‬النقطة‬ ‫الثانية يأخذ فكرة المادية كما دراستها ذات الصلة مع الواليات المتحدة األمريكية‬ ‫من جذورها‪ .‬كل من النقاط من فصل األول تعتمد على مصدر القلق الرئيسي‬ ‫للبيان موضوع األطروحة التي هي الماديه‪.‬‬ ‫في الفصل الثاني‪ ،‬يتم تطبيق القضية الرئيسية من المادية في "من الفئران‬ ‫والرجال" ويبدأ مع تاريخ نشر العمل‪ ،‬وخصائصه لرواية مماثلة مثل مسرحية‪.‬‬ ‫هذه الدراسات الفصل بالتفصيل اإلجراءات ذاتها‪ ،‬والحوارات‪ ،‬ووضع من الرواية‬ ‫الذي يرتبط مع "المادية" أو الرأسمالية‪ .‬هذا الفصل أيضا يكشف بصورة واقعية‬

‫موقف البالغ ضد النظام المادي التي انضمت مع موارد موثوقة كتبت عن هذا‬ ‫العمل‪.‬‬ ‫ينتقل الفصل األخير إلى "عناقيد الغضب"‪ ،‬وناقش القضية الرئيسية الماديه‪.‬‬ ‫هذا الفصل يشمل كذلك السبب وراء تسمية العمل "عناقيد الغضب" وتاريخ النشر‪.‬‬ ‫ثم تبدأ دراسة الرواية مع منظور المادي‪ .‬يتم تضمين االقتباسات إما من موارد‬ ‫صادقة من قبل النقاد أو من الرواية نفسها‪.‬‬ ‫في هذه األطروحة فقد خلص إلى أن موضوع "المادية" في غالبية أعمال‬ ‫جون شتاينبك‪ ،‬وخصوصا "من الفئران والرجال" و "عناقيد الغضب" أمر أساسي‬ ‫في فلسفة المؤلف ونقد المؤلف من بقايا "المادية" قلب من أعماله‪.‬‬ ‫وأخيرا هناك قائمة من الكتب والمقاالت وصفحات الويب التي تم التشاور‬ ‫معها بدقة أثناء كتابة هذه األطروحة‪ .‬أيضا شيء مهم جدا البد المضافة وتسليط‬ ‫الضوء على أساسها هو النهج أو المدرسة التي تم كتابة الدراسة‪ .‬أخذ من عنوان‬ ‫العملين من نفس المؤلف وطبيعة التدقيق في العنوان‪ ،‬كان من الضروري اتخاذ‬ ‫المدرسة "المادية والماركسية" نهج باعتبارها العمود الفقري الرئيسي من‬ ‫الدراسة؛ على الرغم من المدارس األخرى من االنتقادات والنهج األدبي في بعض‬ ‫األحيان قد قبلت‪.‬‬

‫ثوختة‬ ‫ئةم ل َيكؤلَينةوة كار لةسةر لةسةر بابةتي ماتريالَيزم لة دووكاري ئةدةبي هةلَبذ َيردراوي نوسةري ئةمريكي‬ ‫(جؤن شتاينبيَك) ئةكات‪.‬ليَكؤلَينةوةكة ديراسةي طةشةكردني ماتريلَيزم و كاثيتالَيزم ئةكات لة هةردوو ِرؤماني‬ ‫تورةيي) و (كاروباري مشكان و ثياوان)‪.‬هةروةها ليَكؤلَينةوةكة‬ ‫ِرؤماننوسي ناوبراودا بةناوةكاني (هيَشووي‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫ئةوة دةردةخات كة دياردةي ماتريليزم يان كاثيتا َليزم لة ثشتةوةي لةدايك بووني ئةم دوو كارة ئةدةبيةوة ية‪.‬‬ ‫بةشي يةكةم ث َيشةكيةكة كة دوو خالَي سةرةكي لة خؤ دةطر َيت‪,‬خا َلي يةكةم ث َيك د َيت لة نيشان داني‬ ‫هةلَو َيستةكاني نوسةر دذي ماتريالَيزم‪ ,‬هةروةها بيرؤكة و فةلسةفةكاني كة لة كارةكاني تريشي دا ِرةنطي‬ ‫داوتةوة‪.‬ئةمةش لة بةر ِرؤشنايي ذياني نوسةر ِرونكراوةتةوة كة وةكو هةست َيكي مرؤظ دؤستانة نوسةر دذي‬ ‫شةثؤلة يةك لةدواي يةكةكاني سيستةمي ثيشةسازي وةستاوةتةوة‪.‬ثاشان هةر لةم بةشةدا كة خالَي دووةمة‬ ‫ميَذوويةكي كورتي ماتريالَيزمي ئةمريكي ئةخريَتة ِروو بةشيَوةيةك كة ِرةط و ِريشةكاني ماتريلَيزم شيكار‬ ‫ئةكات لة وياليةتة يةكطرتووةكاني ئةمريكادا‪.‬ئةمة لةكاتيَك دا هةردوو خاَلَةكاني بةشي يةكةم ثةيوةنديةكاني‬ ‫ِراستةوخؤيان دةبيَت لةطة َل بيرؤكةي ئةم ليَكؤلَينةوةيةدا‪.‬‬ ‫بةشي دووةم بيرؤكةي سةرةكي ماترياليزم لة ِرؤماني (كارؤباري مشكان و ثياوان) شيكار دةكر َيت و‬ ‫ثراكتيزة ئةكريَت‪.‬ئةم بةشة لة ميَذووي بالَوكردنةوةي ِرؤماني ناوبراوةوة دةست ثيَئةكات و هةروةها ئةو‬ ‫اليةنةي دةردةخات كة ضؤن ئةم كارة وةكو شانؤنامةيةك دةتوانريَت بخؤيَنريَتةوة يان نمايش بكريَت‪.‬هةروةها‬ ‫ئةم بةشة هةموو ئةو ِرووداو و دايةلؤط و شو َينكارانة دةخاتة ِروو كة ثةيوةنديةكي ِراستةوخؤيان لةطة َل‬ ‫ماتريالَيزم يان كاثيتالَيزم (سةرمايةداري) دا هةية‪ .‬لة دواين ديَ ِرةكاني ئةم بةشةدا زياتر هةلَويَست و تيَ ِروانينة‬ ‫جواميَرةكاني نوسةر خراوةتة ِروو لةطة َل بةرئةنجاميَكي تايبةت بة بابةتي ليَكؤلَينةوةكة‪.‬‬ ‫لة بةشي سيَيةم دا‪,‬كة دوايين بةشي ئةم نامةيةية بيرؤكةي ماتريالَيزم دةخريَتة ذيَر ديراسةوة لة ِرؤماني‬ ‫تورةيي)‪.‬ئةم بةشة طةل َيك تةوةر لة خؤ دةطر َيت ‪,‬وةكو بنةضةي ناول َيناني كارةكة بةو ناوةوة و‬ ‫(ه َيشووي‬ ‫ِ‬ ‫م َيذووي بالَوكردنةوةي ِرؤمانةكة‪,‬بةالَم كة د َيتة سةر شيكاركردني ِرؤمانةكة‬

‫لة ديدةنيطاي بيرؤكةي‬

‫ماتريالَيزمةوة‪,‬وةكو ِرةخنة لة سيستةمي سةرمايةداري‪,‬زياتر ئةو ِرووداو و هةلَويَستانة لة خؤ دةطريَت كة‬ ‫واتاي بابةتي ناونيشانةكة هةلَدةطريَت‪.‬‬

‫دواتر هةر لةم ليَكؤلَينةوةيةدا‪,‬دةرئةنجاميَكي ثوخت و يةكاليكةرةوة خراوةتة ِروو سةبارةت بة بيرؤكةي‬ ‫(ماتريا َليزم) لة زؤربةي كارةكاني (جؤن شتاينبيَك)‪,‬بةتايبةتي هةردوو كاري (كاروباري مشكان و ثياوان) و‬ ‫تورةيي) وةكو تيشكؤيةكي زؤر ِروون لة فةلسةفة و ِرةخنةكاني نوسةر لة سيستةمي سةرمايةداري‪.‬‬ ‫(هيَشووي ِ‬ ‫ثةرو وتارانة خراوةتة ِروو كة وةكو سةرضاوة بؤ‬ ‫لة كؤتايي ئةم ل َيكؤلَينةوةيةدا‪,‬ئةو ليستي سةرضاوة و مالَ ِ‬ ‫لي بينراوة‪ .‬هةروةها ئةب َيت تيشك بخر َيتة سةر ئةو ِراستيةي‬ ‫تةواوكردني ئةم نامةية بةكار هاتوون و سوديان َ‬ ‫كة ئةو قوتابخانة ِرةخنةيةي كة ثشتي ث َي بةستراوة وةكو ِريَضكةيةك بؤ نوسيني ئةم ليَكؤلَينةوةية لة نامةكة‬ ‫بريتي بووة لة قوتابخانةي ِرةخنةيي (ماتريا َليزم و ماركسيزم) ‪.‬‬