The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

He did it with a light enough touch that, even when dealing with very serious issues, the reader got it without being bludgeoned by it.Īs much as I hate to say it, Steinbeck seems to have gotten that old man disease of thinking the world has rotted and gone to hell all around him and no one is good anymore and no one ever will be again-the time of good men and good women and honesty and etiquette and moral strength has passed and will never again reappear. But in his prime, he did it through the characters and without the long sermons. Now Steinbeck can definitely deliver a swift moral blow just read The Grapes of Wrath. So stylistically, we have those two problems-the first fairly minor and the second severe enough to interfere with the enjoyment of the story.īut there’s also the tone: high-handed, moralistic and cynical. This was the first time I ever felt impatient with Steinbeck. Instead of allowing the characters’ words and actions to tell the story as he did so well in his earlier works, Steinbeck engages in long soliloquies (appropriate given the title?) that I found myself rushing through. (As I was reading this, I would sometimes remind myself that the same person wrote East of Eden. I’ve loved Steinbeck so much, I almost feel ashamed using such descriptors, but there it is.

Perhaps it was too far beyond my understanding, who knows? It felt random, almost unintentional and sloppy. That would be an intriguing stylistic choice if there seemed to be some motivation, some larger meaning driving it, but I could find none. I could never figure out why parts of the book are told from the third person point of view and parts are in first person. Steinbeck is off his game, that much is clear. I don’t regret reading it, but I’m not terribly glad about it, either. Opportunities come along for Ethan to correct this, all of them asking him to compromise his morals in order to regain his lost position in the world. They are outwardly kind and loving to Ethan, but he knows they are unhappy and they know he knows. His wife, though a very pleasant, devoted woman, is disappointed in this turn of events, and his children seethe and resent their lower place on the social ladder. He once owned the grocery store and many other things, but hard financial times means he is now the clerk at the store, and an Italian man owns it. Did anyone know that?)Ī quick rundown: Ethan Hawley is a Long Islander who comes from a long line of once great men, whalers and men of commerce and banking and business. (I also discovered his younger son - the only surviving one - is a published writer. I had to look at his picture in the back to make sure it was the John Steinbeck. I had never heard of it before I discovered it when rifling through the bargain bins at Half Price Books. This was Steinbeck’s last complete novel, published in 1961.

The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck