The Hero’s Journey Toward Class Consciousness In Emile Zola’s “germinal”, John Steinbeck’s “in Dubious Battle” And Peter Abrahams’ “mine Boy”

Résumé: Germinal by the French Emile Zola, In Dubious Battle by the American John Steinbeck and Mine Boy by the South African Peter Abrahams are novels that are mainly concerned with strikes. This article reads these three novels from the perspective of Joseph Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces in order to show that for Zola and Steinbeck, true consciousness is the workers’ awareness that the best way to obtain their demand within the capitalist law avoiding any form of violence while Abrahams’ understanding of true consciousness corroborates with the Marxist call for a union of workers regardless of their race to overthrow capitalism waded with apartheid and to establish a nonracist socialism.

Publié dans la revue: مجلة الآداب والعلوم الإنسانية