I'm taking a tour of Steinbeck's work these days. Several months ago I finished Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle, and I'm currently reading Cannery Row. Earlier this week I finished his short novel The Moon Is Down.
The former three are books about poor people in America in the early 20th Century. The Moon Is Down, published in 1942, takes place on a fictional English island. It begins with an invasion of the island by the military of an unnamed English-speaking nation.
Steinbeck's writing style, his ability to use every-man's English to draw the reader into his stories, his uncomplicated but perfectly drawn images, and almost everything else that made his writing last beyond his lifetime, it's all found in this book. However, because it is short, the character development is not quite as profound as in his longer novels. If you like Steinbeck's writing style, but you don't want to read socialist-leaning fiction, this is a good one.
This book explores what happens when a powerful nation invades a weaker nation in order to exploit that nation's natural resources. At the beginning of the story, the invaders enter the island and take it after subduing the island's inadequate military. Aside from a few deaths in the skirmish the invaders plan on keeping the peace and even assume they'll have friendly relationships with the islanders, and they even allow the government of the island to keep working...although they make it clear if the island's leaders don't do their bidding, they'll quickly remove them from power.
The military allows schools and shops to remain open. They increase the coal mining--coal being the natural resource they wanted--and try to allow things to operate as usual. But there's a slow decline in their sense of control, a decline in economic growth, and after many months, the islanders want to be free from their occupiers. The occupiers see themselves as the enforcers of law and order, but the islanders see them as the invaders they are. The story ends just as things start to get really ugly. At the end, the island's mayor and the local medical doctor have an amazing interaction that I won't recount here, but which is poignant similar in spirit to the way the Grapes of Wrath is poignant, with profound lessons taught in words and in actions.
What I found most interesting was the insight. World War II was raging in Europe, and America was entering the fray. But this story was written prior to the infamous wars fought only to defeat economic ideologies and to exploit natural resources. This was before we overthrew Guatemala's democratically elected government, just to name an example, to protect our consumption of tropical fruit (our actions led to the mass murders of hundreds of thousands of Guatemalan natives and poor people). It was before we went around occupying nations and murdering citizens because they weren't capitalists (we were protecting "American interests abroad"). It was before we really got down and dirty in the Middle East.
What happens at the end of the book is this: The natives of the island begin conducting terrorist activities. They are out-weaponed, so they find sneaky ways to blow up military resources, railroad lines, etc...In today's lingo, they become terrorists. In the peoples' minds, some of their friends have been executed, their children are hungry, they're being exploited by foreigners. They're angry as hell and they're not going to take it any more. Furthermore, the English mainland is sneaking dynamite over to them to help them fight this powerful military regime (in today's terms, England is a State sponsor of terror). The island's Mayor knows what is happening, although he avoids having any direct knowledge about who, why, how, and when. That way, he can plausibly deny knowing anything. The military invaders become increasingly angry with the Mayor, though they know he knows little or nothing about the terrorist activities.
I was struck by the fact that this was written before America sent our military around the world, militarily attacking sovereign nations for ideological reasons and producing millions of desperate angry citizens in the process, who become terrorists.
In the book, the people blowing up the occupying military are heroes--the terrorists are heroes. No matter what their freedoms were before this army showed up, the people saw their occupiers, I think rightly, for what they were.
Perhaps that's why this book is one of Steinbeck's lesser known novels these days. It rings too true to American activities over the past several hundred years, and we're not very good at self-reflection.