Customer Reviews

The Winter of Our Discontent

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Steinbeck wrote this novel in the days when American Grocery stores were 94% independent single-owned stores. The hero isn't much of a hero, just a man struggling with the pressures of economic success in contrast to his moral beliefs.

With over 90% of the grocery stores today being multi-store operations, we see in this book the beginnings of the Madison Avenue economy we live in today, and what has been lost in the process.

At least Hawley struggled against the tide, where today it has become almost chic to lack morals, fool consumers, be the trickster guru, or market a ton of air in attractive colors and graphics.

Steinbeck shows us it should be a struggle, and indeed it will be a difficult one in a cultural setting where rationalizations ("It's only a crime against money - afterall!") eat away at the social requirements of honesty, decency, and respect for your fellow men and women.

At the end, a symbolic clue leads the reader back to a previous chapter and obscure dialogue. Left to ponder what this really means.

"The Winter of our Discontent" was published in 1961, just before Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in 1962. The story is set in the late 1950s in New Baytown, a small (fictitious) New York -New England town which, Steinbeck tells us, had flourished during the whaling days of the mid-19th century. The main protagonist of the book is Ethan Allen Hawley. Ethan ("eth" to his friends is descended from early pirates and whaling captains. His family had lost its capital through speculative business ventures during WW II and Ethan, with has backround and his Harvard education, is reduced to working as a clerk in a small grocery store he once owned. Marullo, an Italian immigrant, owns the store and calls Ethan "kid".

For a short novel, the book includes a wealth of characters, many of which I found well described. There is Ethan's wife Mary who is impatient with the family's impoverished lots and eager for Ethan's economic success as well as the couple's two children, Allen, who is writing an essay called "Why I Love America" and the sexually precocious daughter Ellen. We meet the town banker, Mr. Baker, a bank clerk and a friend of Ethan's, Margie Young-Hunt, twice married and the town seductress, and Danny Taylor, Ethan's childhood friend who has thrown away a career of promise and become a drunk.

The book describes the deteriorations of Ethan's life as he gradually loses his integrity and succumbs to temptations to lift his life, and the lives of his family members, from its materially humble state to a state consistent with Ethan's felt family heritage and education and with the desire of his family for material comfort. The story is sad and told in a style mixing irony and ambiguity that requires the reader to reflect and dig into what is happening. The story ends on a highly ambiguous note with Ethan's future left in doubt.

The book describes well the lessening of American standards and values. The book seems to attribute the loss to an increasing passion for commercial and economic success among all people in the United States. Juxtaposed with the economic struggle are pictures of, in steinbeck's view, what America was and what it could struggle to be. I think the images are found in religion (much of the story is, importantly, set around Good Friday and Easter and these holidays figure preminently in the book), and in America's political and cultural heritage. In the old town of
New Baytown, America's history figures prominently with speeches from American statesment such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln tucked (suggestively) in the family attic. The book is set against a backround of New England whaling and reminds the reader inevitably of a culture that produced Melville and a work of the caliber of Moby Dick.

The most convincing scenes of the book for me were those where Ethan ruminates his life in his own mind and compulsively walks the streets of New Baytown at night. I was reminded of Robert Frost, a poet of New England and his poem "Acquainted with the Night" which begins:

"I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light."

Steinbeck captures much of the spirit of this wonderful poem.

The plot of the book seems contrived at is climax and depends too much on coincidence. The characters, and their inward reflections on themselves, the descriptions, the setting, and the theme of the book, mingled between a love for our country and a sense of despair, make the book memorable.

We're not given a real protagonist. The author cares more -- much more -- about the sacred cows of his language and metaphor than about character. Ethan Allen Hawley is a Harvard graduate and a scion of old money who goes to work as a clerk in a grocery store because his father has squandered said old money. This is in 1948, and we meet him 12 years on, still in the same grocery store, still doing menial labor, in 1960. A college graduate was still a rather rare commodity in 1948, certainly a Harvard grad. Why on earth would such a man be willing to sweep floors and stock shelves for 12 years? We are never told. Why does he suddenly awaken and become ambitious in 1960? (this is the Easter metaphor -- the old Ethan dies and a new one arises) We are never told. Why does his ambition coincide with moral depravity? We are never told.

He is not only a Harvard grad, he is impossibly witty, glib, and, all of a sudden, street smart. No such person would have sat still so long, any such person could have made money in 1948-1960 without cutting corners morally to a significant degree, and no such person would be surprised that cutting corners morally in pursuit of wealth would make him feel so bad that he might not be able to live with himself.

Steinbeck wanted to make a statement about the sad state of morals in 1960 America, but immorality was not unique to that time, or our time, or the late '30s (Grapes of Wrath), or the Roman Empire or the Russian Steppes or anyplace or anytime else. Immorality is the oldest story in the book, so if you want to talk about it through characters, there is no reason for doing so other than simply as an excuse to write good characters, but Steinbeck fails to do that. Margie and Joey, friends of Ethan, are also like him: ambitious and impossibly perspicacious and witty, yet somehow stuck in dead-end lives year in and year out in a dead little town. It's a silly, tiresome book, micro-smart but macro dumb dumb dumb.

This book, along with Steinbeck's EAST OF EDEN, are the two best things he ever wrote. It took me a while to get into WINTER, but once I did, I couldn't stop reading. I was absolutely overwhelmed at the ending, just as I usually am with this writer's great finishes. If you've never read anything by this author, this is a good place to start. Would also recommend THE BARK OF THE DOGOWOD for another really great read.

"The Winter Of Our Discontent" is not Steinbeck's best, but it's really a good read and you can't go wrong spending a few hours reading the works of this master of American Lit!

A powerful novel, with a plot that most can relate to. Ethan Hawley, the main character struggles to provide for his family. Comes from a family of successful business men, until The Great Depression hits his family hard and he must start from the bottom, working as a produce market clerk. He feels that he must own up to his name that has been made by his predecessors. He is confronted by opportunities that question his integrity and common sense.
What I like about this novel is that present day situations arise which grabs my attention and makes me think. Ethan, married with two children, thinks of his family first, because all he wants is to give them what he feels they deserve. He would sacrifice his own happiness to make his family happy.
I also can relate to how he sometimes feels disappointed by how his life is panning out, but doesn't forget all the things he should be grateful for. I strongly recommend this novel to all who love to read. Whether you can relate to it or not, it will make you think, and help you appreciate some things that are taken for granted.

Steinbeck had this book in a different fashion than I found the many others I read of his. I have always found him to be a literary god at creating character clashes (in each and every other of his I read). I loved how he had the characters interact. Althuogh this book was different. It was changed in that one character clashed with himself as much as everyone else… I was expecting maybe a lower personal ranking to his other books, but I found it just as good, and literally beautifully written. The book not only is fun to read (and im not that much of a reader) but I found its moral lesson very agreeable and useful to societies commonly immoral business habits.

i suggest it to be read... though sometimes hard for some of us non readers to keep up with such deep thought, it is none the less a great read and understandable...

This novel was one of Steinbeck's last, and delves heavily into themes of disillusionment with one's country and one's lot in life. While The Grapes of Wrath was arguably a more heartbreaking book, in that novel, at least the characters still cared and still maintained ideals. In this book, the character of Ethan Allen Hawley has lost hope for the future and lapsed into a great abyss of depression and despair. In this way, Steinbeck seemed much more Hemingway-esque than he had in his earlier, and in my opinion greater, works of fiction.

While I did not enjoy this book as much as earlier works like The Grapes of Wrath, there is still much to appreciate in this tale about an American patriarch who has lost his way. Ethan lives in New Baytown, a fictional New England town, with his dissatisfied, materialistic wife, daughter and son. Both children are writing an essay regarding why they love America, though only the son is able to finish it--and he does so by plagiarizing speeches by Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln. Ethan's family was once well-to-do but lost their fortune with speculative investments after WWII, relegating Ethan to working as a grocery clerk at the store he once owned. His boss is an illegal Italian immigrant who encourages Ethan to be less generous with the customers.

New Baytown itself is a major character in the novel. The entire town operates within a realm of corruption. Yet things have operated that way so long that no one remembers it is corrupt anymore. All of the major and minor characters are seriously flawed--Margie Young-Hunt, the town seductress and witch; Mr. Baker, the greedy banker; Joey Morphy, the bank clerk who describes the perfect way to rob a bank. Gradually Ethan realizes that the only way to be happy is to get money. The only way to get money is to bend his own moral standards. And once he bends his moral standards, he is more miserable than ever.

This short novel is delightfully written, with superb dialogue and clever references to religion and American history. It is basically an indictment of America's materialistic lifestyle as it entered the 1960's. I enjoyed it very much on that level, but did not feel it withstood comparison to Steinbeck's earlier, more emotional novels. This story was more allegory than novel, which is fine--but which one should keep in mind while reading this little gem.

When reading Steinbeck it is easy to understand his prominence as one of the great contemporary American writers. He takes a human or societal flaw and dissects it page by page and the reader cannot but help thinking how real and how commonplace Steinbeck's characters and situations are. In "Winter" the author centers on the greed and lust for material riches that was prevalent in America of the late1950s and early 1960s. Ethan Hawley, the protagonist, is a Harvard-educated man of once-prominent social standing who through the misfortunes of his whaling captain father is currently the clerk in a grocery store his father once owned. The present owner, an Italian immigrant, is the target of hostility for the simple reason that he is foreign.

Ethan Hawley is a man pushed by the desires of his wife Mary and his two children, Ellen and Allen. This middle-class family yearns for a more upscale life than Ethan can provide. A television, new curtains and furniture are some of the material possessions they long for. Because Ethan cannot provide them he makes a decision that incorporates the worst elements of greed and avarice. He embarks on a well thought-out plot to illegally obtain the money necessary to give his family the luxuries they desire. And so in lies the crux of this story...what happens to a man that forsakes his morals for the happiness of his family?

There are many supporting characters that flavor the book. Most notably Ethan's childhood friend Danny, now the town drunk, and his wife's best friend Margie who apparently is the town's most popular call girl. There is also the banker, a teller, and Mr. Marullo, the immigrant grocery store owner, whose tragedy becomes Ethan's triumph.

When accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature for this novel, Steinbeck stated that a writer is charged with exposing our many grievous faults and failures, with dredging up to the light our dark and dangerous dreams for the purpose of improvement. Readers will certainly see a generation's most obvious faults and failures and have Ethan Hawley's dark and dangerous dreams exposed. Interestingly enough, the materialistic greed exposed in this novel is still very real nearly fifty years later.

This is a beautifully written book ~~ and my second Steinbeck book. A friend complained to me recently that she finds Steinbeck a depressing writer ~~ I disagree. He writes realistically of the views that society has on one another and of the world. Steinbeck writes convincingly of people and this book is no exception.

The book focuses on Ethan, a descendant from the Pilgrims and of the whaling captains, reduced to semi-poverty by working for an Italian immigrant in the grocery store he used to own. His wife, Mary, complains of not having money to spend as well as his two children. Beset by memories of how it used to be, Ethan begins to look for a way to solve his problems. This book focuses on that attempt. Ethan is a lovable character ~~ he defuses every serious conversations or whining with humor, oftentimes at the expense of his good self-will and pride.

It is a journey into one man's soul and it's soul-wrenching as well. It makes you stop and think ~~ and you don't dare to criticize anyone because you're guilty of the same feelings of despair and defeat. Ethan struggles to find a way to deal with those expectations and dreams of his loved ones and still keep his pride. But it comes to a conclusion that he can't have both.

This may be a smaller book but one still grabs at your soul and your mind. It's a perfect addition to any serious reader's library.

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