How we cite our quotes: (Page)
Quote #1
"You'll get a vote on every decision, but once the vote's in, you'll have to obey. When we have money we try to give field workers twenty dollars a month to eat on. I don't remember a time when we ever had the money. Now listen to the work: In the field, you'll have to work alongside the men, and you'll have to do the Party work after that, sometimes sixteen, eighteen hours a day." (8)
Harry Nilson explains the rules of the game to Jim as he examines Jim's application to join the Communist Party. Jim is attracted to the Party because it will give him immediate access to a community of like-minded people; he'll no longer have to feel alone and hopeless in his struggles against an oppressive system.
But from the way Nilson describes it here, it's clear that the Party is no utopia. While the men technically get a say in everything, it's pretty clear that's all that will be in it for Jim. Despite the grueling work and lack of personal gain, Jim feels ready to leave everything behind to work together with the Party men.
Quote #2
A change was in the air. The apathy was gone from the men. Sleepers were awakened and told, and added themselves to the group. A current of excitement filled the jungle, but a kind of joyful excitement. Fires were built up. Four big cans of water were put on to boil; and then cloth began to appear. [...] The men seemed suddenly happy. They laughed together as they broke dead cottonwood branches for the fire. (46)
Mac creates a feeling of fraternity in the orchard when he orders the men to find supplies to help with the birth of Lisa's baby. He's teaching the men the value of working together and the necessity for action. Steinbeck seems taken with the idea that apathy—that sleepwalking feeling that Jim has at the opening of the book—can be destroyed by communal effort and participation in something bigger than the individual self.
Quote #3
Men always like to work together. There's a hunger in men to work together. Do you know that ten men can lift nearly twelve times as big a load as one man can? It only takes a little spark to get them going." (49)
Mac delivers his message fifty different times throughout the narrative: men have to work together to get things done. Okay, we haven't actually counted, but he definitely says it over and over to Jim while they're working the strike. It's something we can see in action as the mood of the "mob" at the camp ebbs and flows, and as Mac tries to influence the men's energy by creating a communal activity or crisis. The unfortunate part? Sometimes that spark starts a raging fire—as both Jim and Mac know firsthand (remember when the mob tries to lynch them for a slight insult?).