In Dubious Battle

In Dubious Battle is a novel by John Steinbeck, written in 1936. It details the struggle for survival of white agricultural migrant workers in Depression era California. The central figure of the story is an activist for "the Party" (the American Communist Party, although it is never specifically named in the novel) who is organizing a major strike by the workers, seeking thus to attract followers to his cause.

Prior to publication, Steinbeck wrote in a letter:

The talk...is what is usually called vulgar. I have worked along with working stiffs and I have rarely heard a sentence that had not some bit of profanity in it. And in books I am sick of the noble working man talking very like a junior college professor. [The novel] is not controversial enough to draw the support of either the labor or the capital side although either may draw controversial conclusions from it, I suppose.

The title is a reference to a passage from Milton's Paradise Lost:

Innumerable force of Spirits armed,

That durst dislike his reign, and, me preferring,

His utmost power with adverse power opposed

In dubious battle on the plains of Heaven,

And shook His throne.