The Winter of Our Discontent – John Steinbeck

Taking its title from the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III, this was Steinbeck’s last novel, published in 1961, charting the trials and tribulations of Ethan Allen Hawley. When we first meet Ethan he is down on his luck. His family fortune, he comes from whaling stock, have been dissipated by the recklessness of his grandfather and father and a mysterious fire which sent their boat to the bottom of the ocean. Ethan is just about making ends meet as a shopkeeper in a store owned by an immigrant, Alfio Marullo, who entered the country illegally as it turns out. Ethan is contented in his humdrum existence, finding solace in the rows of cans and groceries on the shelves of his store which he addresses in his morning ritual.

What characterises Ethan is his honesty but soon forces shake him out of his comfort zone. On Good Friday, perhaps like Judas, his resolution is shaken by the temptation of thirty pieces of silver. A sales rep enters the shop and offers him a bribe which he rejects, a fortune teller, the town’s femme fatale, Margie Young-Hunt, relays the news that the cards reveal that he will be wealthy and he is provoked by the remarks of his wife, Mary, and the dissatisfaction of his children to consider improving his lot.

The fascination of the Book is the moral dilemma in which this honest, upright citizen finds himself. Ethan debates whether he should stray from his hitherto impeccable code, at one point, in a fine piece of sophistry, reminding himself that “a crime is something someone else commits.” He also provides a bleak reading of the direction of America in 1960: “a year when secret fears come into the open, when discontent stops being dormant and changes gradually to anger.  The whole world stirred with restlessness and uneasiness as discontent moved to anger and anger tried to find outlet in action, any action so long as it is violent.”  By dispensing with his moral compass, he is merely following the zeitgeist.

Ethan’s plan is to defraud his childhood friend, the local drunk, Danny Taylor, who owns a piece of land that developers are anxious to get their hands on in order to build an airport, and to turn his boss in to the immigration authorities. But Ethan is uneasy at heart and the book draws to a conclusion in a way that leaves the reader to make up their mind as to what precisely happened. To my mind, he draws back from doing away with himself, the key passage, surely, being his thought that he must try to help his daughter “else another light go out.”  But Steinbeck leaves matters deliberately ambiguous and the finale is open to other interpretations.

It is a remarkable and disturbing analysis of someone’s moral decline. In truth, at times it seems a little superficial in its analysis and at times the plot line seems wildly improbable. But the mental anguish that Ethan experiences is one that the reader can associate with. Sometimes desperate situations require desperate measures.

For the literary critic, the book is unusual in that it broadly uses two narrative voices, the opening two chapters of each of the two Parts being in the third person and then the remaining chapters in each section featuring, predominantly but not exclusively, the voice and thoughts of Ethan himself. Stylistically, though, Steinbeck writes in a clear, vigorous manner and the quality and pace of writing carries the reader along, even if they have some qualms about the plotting.

I didn’t consider it to be as good as Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden but was well worth reading.