In one of the little essays Steinbeck did for the Saturday Review in 1955, "Some thoughts on Juvenile Delinquency," he writes as follows concerning the relationship of the individual to the society in which he lives: "… I believe that man is a double thing—a group animal and at the same time an individual. And it occurs to me that he cannot successfully be the second until he has fulfilled the first." The nice organic relationship which Steinbeck here postulates near the end of his writing career is seldom to be met in his fiction. Much more frequently we are presented with characters who choose one of two extremes—either to reject society's demands and escape into individualism, or to reject individualism and commit themselves to goals and values which can be realized only in terms of society.

In Steinbeck's very first novel, Cup of Gold (1929), in the figure...