The Hero’s Journey toward Class Consciousness in Emile Zola’s “Germinal”, John Steinbeck’s “In Dubious Battle” and Peter Abrahams’ “Mine Boy”

Abstract

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.