Following the Steps of the Hero: An Approach to Jim Nolan's Initiation Journey in John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle

John Steinbeck's use of Mythical Patterns has been much discussed, along with his interest in Jungian psychology. At the beginning of 1932 he met Joseph Campbell, "who was becoming one of the foremost authorities in mythology" (Benson 223), and even earlier talked with Evelyn Ott, a former student of Jung's who became a psychiatrist in Monterey (Rodger xxviii). Ed Ricketts had befriended Ott a few years before while pursuing his own interest in Jungian thought. Both proved to have a powerful influence on Steinbeck's writing, as his second novel To a God Unknown (1932), clearly attests. Robert DeMott notes that "[f]or a while, Campbell and Steinbeck enthusiastically shared their parallel investigations into anthropology, ethnography, psychology, primitivism, mythology, comparative religions and Arthurian romance" (DeMott, Introduction to To A God Unknown xxviii). "[A]ccording to Carol [Steinbeck]," Benson observes, "her husband picked up a good bit of useful material from [Campbell]. Yet although Campbell was the mythologist, he feels he may have learned more from Steinbeck about the relevance of myth than vice versa" (Benson 223). The influence was probably mutual, and so was their fascination with symbols and myths, for as Campbell points out in The Hero With a Thousand Faces, myths "carry keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of the discovery of the self" (Campbell 8).

The effervescent dialogues in Ed Ricketts's lab that frequently explored the depths of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytical theories, yielded long term results, shaping both Steinbeck's and Campbell's ways of perceiving the world and of expressing its truths. Writing to Campbell in 1946, Ed Ricketts described his friend's transformation over the years: "Seems like you're blossoming out as a writer at a great rate," Ricketts wrote. "I have to readjust my mind to think of you that way. As a thinker and a teacher, but not until now as a writer" (Rodger 247). Like Steinbeck, Campbell was aware of the importance of "that sense of integration with a whole picture" (ibid.), of the impossibility of real knowledge and understanding of "one" outside the context of "many," of the individual psyche detached from the Jungian "collective unconscious," of the tide pool apart from the stars. Hence he became an "integrator of myths and literature" (ibid.), one of the most eloquent expressions of his power of "integration" being the acclaimed The Hero With a Thousand Faces, published in 1949. As for Steinbeck, the process of writing To A God Unknown, and the discussions with the Lab Group led, in spite of the "humility and terror" and "[f]ear that the workings of [his] pen cannot capture the grinding of [his] brain" (A Life In Letters 64), to another novel steeped in Jungian ideas, In Dubious Battle.

Even though published thirteen years earlier than The Hero With a Thousand Faces, Steinbeck's 1936 novel bears a striking resemblance to Campbell's book, its focus being a hero's initiation journey and the elaborate processes inherent in "self-discovery and self-development" (Campbell 23). Robert DeMott notes in his introduction to Steinbeck's To A God Unknown that "[t]he hero's spiritual quest toward self-realization was to become one of Campbell's supreme subjects, . . . [and] undoubtedly enlarged Steinbeck's view of Joseph Wayne's mythic dimension and the several stages of his progress, from his call to action through his transformation" (xxviii). But Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle is generally not read from the same perspective, probably because the use of mythical/archetypal images is not as obvious as in To a God Unknown. Abby Werlock addresses the "mythic image" of the Madonna Steinbeck uses in In Dubious Battle, and which Campbell felt "may have come out of their discussions" (Benson 223), and agrees with Warren French that Jim is "very much a Percival figure . . . on a quest . . ." (Werlock 53). James David McTee talks about mysticism and initiation in In Dubious Battle, applying to Steinbeck's novel the precepts expressed by Evelyn Underhill in Mysticism...