The Winter of Our Discontent

by John Steinbeck

Book Overview

Ethan Allen Hawley has lost the acquisitive spirit of his wealthy and enterprising forebears, a long line of proud New England sea captains and Pilgrims. Scarred by failure, Ethan works as a grocery... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143039482
• ISBN13: 9780143039488
• Release Date: August 2008
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Length: 336 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.1" x 7.7"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

This novel brought me back to Steinbeck

After reading Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and The Pearl in high school, I was not an admirer of Steinbeck, but when I picked up The Winter of Our Discontent as an adult, I was awed by the author I had once shunned. Steinbeck's keen sense of character and a mastery of the language carries this novel from first page to last. The story revolves around Ethan Hawley, a descendent of proud New England stock whose life seems betrayed by circumstances as he struggles to provide for his family. His wife Mary urges him to be more ambitious, and his restless teenage children exhibit signs of being morally corrupt. When Ethan decides that his ethics no longer matter in this demanding world, he enters his own compounding crisis. In perfectly rendered language, Steinbeck explores the themes of two Americas - the old Puritanical and morally staid one, and the one where every man fights for himself. The corruption in New Baytown is rampant. Issues about privilege and entitlement, family values, skewed priorities, flagging morality, and work ethics simmer underneath. Steinbeck's depiction of Ethan and Mary's marriage is witty, biting, and affectionate, demonstrating both his humor and his talent for dissecting domestic issues as well as the grander, social ones. A fine novel by a recently underappreciated author, The Winter of Our Discontent is worth every minute spent with it.

A Fantastic Book

To any of you who are considering reading this book, the following points may be helpful:* Of all the Steinbeck novels I've read, I consider this one to be his wittiest, funniest and most intelligent. The dialogue is great and the main character (Ethan Allen Hawley) may be my favorite Steinbeck character of all-time.* This book focuses on thought rather than plot. We are taken on detailed journeys through Ethan Hawley's mind (in fact, some of the chapters of this book are written in the first-person rather than the third-person, such that Hawley speaks to us directly). What we are shown are the motives and means through which a conscientious human being trades a life of good deeds for a life of deception and acquisitiveness, and the result is jarring.* As indicated above, however, this book is NOT plot-driven. Therefore, some readers may not like it as much as, say, "The Grapes of Wrath" or "In Dubious Battle". Do yourselves a favor and read the first page or two of the book before buying it. If you are drawn into the dialogue on these pages, you'll probably love the book - it represents the general tone of the novel throughout, though toward the end the book gets much darker as Ethan's abandonment of his morals and the consequences thereof are driven home to the reader.This truly great novel will stick with the reader long after the last page has been turned. Read it - I don't think you'll be disappointed.

A moral distinction

This book is amazing in a very specific and unusual way. It chronicles the slow slide, not to the depths of immorality that come to mind when we use that term, but merely to one step down on the morality ladder. There is not a mountain of difference between the man on page one and the man who stands on the beach on the final page, contemplating suicide. He has committed no crime, has resisted cheating on his wife, and has tried to save the life of his drug-addicted friend... the tiny difference lies not in the things he hasn't done wrong, but in the things he didn't do quite right. This difference is all the difference in the world. Steinbeck's power is in his portrayal of the nuances that make up personal experience. Where Grapes of Wrath was a powerful epic, the depths of poverty the characters endured enabled us to keep the experience at a distance, since few of us will ever know such poverty. The Winter of Our Discontent allows us no such respite. Each of us experiences temptation on a daily basis, and the risk of moral poverty that we all face and either resist or become accustomed to, is at the heart of this book. The final page is, oddly enough, a mystery, though this fact can easily escape you. All the members of my family read this independently, and only when we discussed it several years later did we find that we each had interpreted the end in different ways. Does he commit suicide or not? We were firmly split, and the wording Steinbeck uses is ambiguous. The answer is in the story that emerges from you as you read the book. Perhaps the most subtly powerful book you will ever read, if you are willing to allow it to affect you.