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In Dubious Battle, man’s submissiveness to the group contrasts with how Thoreau wants man to be free. In Thoreau’s Walking, walking is a process where you free yourself from society and discover the inner meanings of oneself. Thoreau believes that “horses and steers have to be broken” and that men “have some wild oats still left to sow before they become submissive members of society” (169). In this case, Thoreau does not want one to follow a figure like a sheep follows the herd, but to discover what is best for oneself. The advantage of man being free from society allows for an individual to take advantage of the fact that “all good things are wild and free” (168) and become free in the true sense of the word versus the restricted freedom offered in a “culture merely civil” (149). This contrasts the situation in In Dubious Battle where instead of the members of the strike having their free will in the group, they instead are dominated by Mac to the point where he essentially controls all of them. The failure to include the worker’s thoughts in the group’s will is what causes the workers to “run like a mad dog, and bite anything that moves” (53). As a result, instead of each worker having their own self, they are combined into a single identity, much like that of a “kind of a collective Colossus” (115). They are so close to identifying in fact, that they will attack anything or anyone that opposes them that they are becoming more “sick [and] poisoned by… their anger” (142). The merging of an individual into an aggressive group shows that the forced merging of ideas into a singular thing is not a good thing but rather needs some median to balance the wild state of man and order in society.
In both texts, the state of man is naturally wild and each text explores this through the ideas of freedom. In In Dubious Battle, the strikers have an uncivilized self but it’s neither defined as a harmful or beneficial thing but rather how man’s natural behavior is. Many advancements in the plot are done in an animatic way to appeal to the strikers’ animalistic side. Just as the cutting of the cow’s throat was necessary to feed the workers, it can be similar to when Jim’s face is destroyed by a bullet to be used as “food” to keep the strikers alive and always working for something. Relating to Thoreau, as man seems to become more and more wild in In Dubious Battle, his relationship with a civil culture increases suggesting that the men in In Dubious Battle can never truly achieve “absolute freedom” (149). As a result, while it seems to be better for the strikers to come together to achieve a goal at a more efficient pace, it creates a more destructive path and a goal that appears to be near is an impossibility far away.
Not only is the raw nature of man explored throughout the concept of freedom but it’s also explored by the idea of transcendentalism. While Thoreau wants man to maintain his uncivilized self with nature and not to become fully engaged with society, he is aware that there will always always be those who wean “from [nature’s] breast to society” (170) even though Nature has “such affection for her children” (170). In this scenario, this is the perfect representation of Jim as he follows the exact opposition to Thoreau’s idea of transcendentalism. Instead of Jim starting in society and progressing towards nature, he is engrossed in nature’s beauty and shifts to becoming involved with the strikers. Even so, Jim’s character has seemingly achieved a type of transcendentalism as signified by a “face… transfigured” (268). Yet as the novel ends, this transformation only lasts for an instant as the plot picks up as if nothing has happened. This event seems to suggest that one can’t transcend starting from nature and progressing to society. However, while it brings up the idea that transcendence isn’t possible for Thoreau, Thoreau only goes on walks that are on a “sort of border life” (173) which are only made “occasional[y] and transient[ly]” (173). Thoreau has the knowledge to recognize when to leave nature alone in contrast to the situation in In Dubious Battle where there seems to be an urgent desire to complete something as quickly as possible. As a result, Thoreau can balance himself between society and nature and can transcend.
While Thoreau’s essay relates to Jim in certain ways, it also relates to the character Doc in In Dubious Battle. In both texts, Doc and Thoreau are similar in the fact that they are individuals in a community. In Doc’s case, he appears to be the only one who cannot empathize with the group as he fails to have any deep human connections with anyone around him. Doc does not try to create a new world like Mac attempts to do, but only observes the men. In doing so, he is free from the desires of the strikers, but it does not compare to what Thoreau’s idea of freedom should be. Thoreau encourages man to be wild and to be “part and parcel of nature” (1) which Doc does not participate in. Doc’s uninterest in the workers goes against the main ideas in each text that people cannot survive without nature or social interaction in the case of In Dubious Battle. As a result, without Doc’s interest in anything including society and nature along with the fact that he is “working all alone, towards nothing’ (200), it shows he has no choice but to disappear from the novel as he can’t fit into his surroundings.
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