The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would to better to inspects their own communities and search their own hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today.

My pattern so far this year has been to read two classic novels per month, but this month I ended up with three on my TBR pile. One of my Popsugar Challenge categories was to read a book that has a season in the title, and it turned out that The Winter of Our Discontent was the only book I already owned that fit the bill. As Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors, this was by no means bad news. I did a little research online before I got started and I learned that this was Steinbeck's last novel, published in the same year that he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962. Several reviewers have noted that this book was a return to form for Steinbeck, an author who many considered at that point to have his best works behind him. It is often ranked up with The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men as one of his strongest novels.

The plot concerns Ethan Hawley, a husband and father living in a quiet New England seaside town with his family. He is descended from a line of prominent sea captains, but has fallen in social rank in his community since his father lost the entire Hawley fortune on a series of poor investment decisions a generation ago. He now works as a clerk in a grocery store owned by an Italian immigrant, a fall from grace that continually troubles him. While Ethan lives an honorable life, provides for his wife and two teenage children, and tries to make the best of his situation, his family and friends continually needle him to try and restore glory to the Hawley name through various risky means. His friend urges him to skim profits from the store he works at, his banker tries to persuade him to spend all of his savings on shady investment opportunities, and his children continually complain about being poor and ask when the family will be rich again.

Ethan brushes off these suggestions and annoyances for a long time, but a man can only take so much poking and prodding before he breaks. In a moment of internal crisis, he decides to abandon his high moral standards and behave as unscrupulously as everyone else around him. He embarks on a scheme to become rich again, and the decisions he makes set into motion a series of events that rock his whole community and cause him to reconsider his feelings towards himself and towards human behavior in general. 

I really enjoyed this novel, and my favorite aspect of it was how quiet it is. Reading the plot summary might lead one to think that the story becomes suspenseful and dramatic, but it actually maintains a calm tone throughout. Ethan is an extremely relatable character. He is goofy, loves his wife and children, and maintains a good sense of humor almost all the time, despite the many barbs thrown his way by his disappointed family. He lives honestly, but he wonders if his tendency to be "good" really comes from a firmly held belief system, or if he is simply too lazy to scheme and cheat like other, more successful people do. Another possibility he considers is that maybe he merely enjoys other people thinking that he's an honest man, so he behaves in a way that will uphold that reputation. He's not entirely sure of who he is, and this characterization makes him believable and draws readers into the story.

Another strength of this novel was its focus on moral standards and what constitutes right and wrong. When Ethan decides to try abandoning his morals to increase his wealth, he is confident in his ability to return right back to the straight and narrow path after he secures enough money to live comfortably. He sees that beneath the veneer of respectability his town maintains, there is a world of theft and corruption that he isn't getting a piece of. Would it really be so bad to dip a toe into those waters and make some money for himself? What's the harm in participating in the system that has brought happiness and success to so many others? Grappling with these ideas becomes the biggest conflict in the novel, as it turns out that Ethan is better at scheming than he expected, and the consequences of his actions bring him as much guilt as they do cash. Instead of financial worries, he now has to find a way to live with his moral worries, which are ultimately harder to deal with.

The Winter of Our Discontent is a novel that raises a lot of questions about the state of society as a whole and the personal morality of individuals. Ethan's efforts are incredibly effective, but what is the ultimate cost of his behavior? It is worth it to help nurture an increasingly unjust society if it makes you rich? Is it okay to participate in it for just a little while if you go back to living honorably afterward? Is it even possible to go back to being honorable at all once you've done wrong? If society is already corrupt, are you a fool if you don't grab hold of any opportunity you can? Steinbeck uses Ethan masterfully to explore these difficult concepts and comment on how Americans accumulate wealth, an area as rife with abuse in 1962 as it is today. This is certainly one of Steinbeck's finest works, and one that I know I will be turning over in my mind for a long time to come. 


Challenge Tally
Classics Club (#40 on my list):  9/12
Popsugar Challenge: (a book with one of the four seasons in the title) 24/40
TBR 2017 (previously owned): 22/60