The Winter of Our Discontent

Rating:
Summary: a book of quiet power
Review: Without doubt, one of the finest in the Steinbeck pantheon. A wry, delicately written novel of intense moral conviction made all the more effective by not making a moral pronouncement. A haiku poem in novel form. Recognition at last by the Nobel committee of the greatness of Steinbeck as a writer.

Rating:
Summary: Simply a perfect novel
Review: I've read this book again and again, and each time I realize why this is my favorite novel. The dialogue, descriptions, and prose are so wonderfully constructed that the reader is left to ponder how John Steinbeck ever thought to write such a magical story. It's a tale of man's soul, of morals, of the mind, and of family. If you can find a flaw in this book, I'd love to hear about it. It's perfect.

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Summary: A novel where the interpretation is your freedom.
Review: For many years, I have had books thrown in my face and told what they mean and what exactly takes place. But I, as a 1990's teenager, like to have the power to think for myself. John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent is a perfect example of what to read. In it there is a profound story, but also the freedom to perceive it anyway you like. Ethan Hawley leaves his morals at home almost every morning for a month, and you get to decide what he thinks, knows, and how he feels. If you love to think and have the power to end a book how you see fit, I extremely recommend Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent. (JGD)

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Summary: Explores the positive and negative dimentions of adulthood.
Review: I've read this book probably 20 times over the previous 20 years. I have never been disappointed in what Steinbeck has to say to me at each reading. Initially I think I liked this book because the local librarian discouraged me from reading this book (do to it's "amoral nature". I wasn't discouraged and read on. If you are growing in you path through adulthood. You'll enjoy this book

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Summary: Very subtle Steinbeck. Simply tasty.
Review: This is a story of a man struggling with morality. It is more real than any Steinbeck besides The Grapes of Wrath. If you like Steinbeck, you will love this book

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Summary: The realization of a life that has spun out of control
Review: Simply the best book I have ever read. Steinbeck illustrates how easily a very moral man can stray from the path of morality and how this straying can affect everything around him. Steinbeck also beautifully and grippingly writes of how the realization of this can crush a man's spirit.

Rating:
Summary: Overshadowed classic
Review: The Grapes Of Wrath is number 10 on the Modern Library's 100 best novels of all time, but The Winter of Our Discontent is not even on the list. And I would think more people would read The Winter of Our Discontent because it is much easier to read without the vernacular used in The Grapes of Wrath.

This novel is not for anyone looking for sex, violence, or any other sort of sensationalism. This is a novel that is great because of it's style and ideas. There is some humor in it, but one key to this book is that it's easy to identify with the character Ethan Allen Hawley. He's a virtuous man, and he is troubled because his family wants money and affluence. He's a smart man who could be rich, but it would cost him his integrity.

I recommend this book to anyone who enjoyed The Great Gatsby.

Aaron

Rating:
Summary: Greatly Underrated
Review: The Nobel Prize committee mentioned THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT in awarding the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature to Steinbeck--and in so doing touched off a critical backlash against both the novel and Steinbeck's entire body of work. The novel had not been popular with American critics or American readers, and the author was savagely attacked as "past it," his current works dismissed as irrelevant and his earlier works as overrated. Steinbeck was so humilated that he did not publish another novel in his lifetime.

Part of critical reaction was due to the novel's structure, which jumps from third person to first person narrative and from character to character in an extremely jarring manner--and which in terms of plot seems prepared to run off in a dozen different directions but never actually does. But it may be more accurate to say that the bedrock of critical animosity was the nature of the story itself: an unflattering tale of America at its most hypocritical and corrupt. Given the tenor of the times, it was not a portrait that American critics or the reading public cared to embrace.

Ethan Hawley is a descendent of a notable New England shipping family--but the advent of petroleum products destroyed the whaling industry and the family fortune declined. As the novel opens, Ethan is a clerk in the very grocery store he once owned. His wife Betty loves him, but is embarrassed for him; his two children, hungry for the luxuries of the small town upper class, are less discreet in their sentiments. At least Ethan has the satisfaction of knowing that he is a man of integrity ... but one day, for no significant reason at all, his eyes are suddenly opened to the truth. He can have it all. But there is a price to pay: his conscience.

Steinbeck's works frequently deal with the struggle between personal integrity and worldly success, but THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT is quite unlike his other works, for instead of painting the battle in broad strokes Steinbeck explores a gray area that gradually darkens to black--and suddenly ends the novel on a slightly ambiguous note, leaving the reader to wonder if Ethan will fight his way out of the darkness or merely strive to protect his family from knowledge of it.

Perhaps more so than other Steinbeck novel, THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT requires a careful reading. Yes, the structure is jarring, and yes the plot seems to run hither and yon, but at the same time these elements actually mirror the disconnected nature of the characters in a way that becomes increasingly disconcerting as the book progresses. And while there is no doubt that the book is deeply flawed, there is no denying the author's power, a power that seems to arise as much from his failings as from his virtues. As always, Steinbeck takes great risks in his work, and part of the pleasure in reading one of his novels is in seeing how well the gamble pays off.

I would not place THE WINTER OF OUR DISCONTENT in the first rank of Steinbeck novels--but it certainly did not deserve the scorn heaped upon it in the early 1960s and which continues, to a certain extent, to dog it to this very day. Memorable, provocative, powerful, and recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Rating:
Summary: A great read
Review: Although the title portends a setting of bleak winter, the main plot activities take place in the heat of summer. The winter of discontent resides metaphorically, in the soul of the protagonist. Steinbeck is in great form here, and his character development is superb, most especially with the two women in the novel, who are finely drawn, studied, mysterious, fascinating. The last couple of pages, while inevitable I suppose, were sort of a let-down, and the children in the novel beg a deeper exploration. But these are smallish concerns. This novel is a fine one, open & easily accessible if one is looking for a quick read, yet also filled with philosophy, symbolism, & enough "opaqueness" to withstand deep inquiries & graduate-level studies.

Rating:
Summary: Steinbeck's Final Masterwork
Review: Published in 1961, a mere year before Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature, *The Winter of Our Discontent* is the culmination and thematic summation of a Great American Author, the resultant craft of a man who, over the course of his career, concerned himself with the American Ideal and the American Reality, despaired at stagnancy and loss of character, and ever fought the rising forces of material obsession and moral capitulation; it is a masterwork, albeit a slow-going and rather depressing one at that. Steinbeck would never again produce a novel of this scope and social-penetration, nor need he try: along with *Grapes*, *Eden*, and a few other contestable entries, the man had made his mark upon the literary zeitgeist: with *Winter*, he had fulfilled his promise ten-fold, delivering a powerful fable of loss, despair and (potential) redemption.

Ethan Hawley is a deeply troubled man. A Harvard graduate and veteran, he has settled for the path of (dis)contented mediocrity. Forced to work as a clerk in the store his father owned - and lost, due to shady speculations during World War II - Ethan continually ruminates inwardly on the past, the present, and the rather-dim looking future; he is haunted by the daunting specters of his wild, whale-hunting ancestors, an imposing legacy he feels inadequate to challenge; he endures beneath the crushing weight of perceived - and socially imposed - *failure*. The ghosts of the ancestral dynasty are ever on his mind, while the concerns of his immediate family threaten his strongly-inlaid yet increasingly fragile moral bedrock - for his wife and children resent the poverty of the Hawley misfortune, the wife constantly giving subtle hints as to her personal shame, unable to "hold her head up high;" and the children, pining for the creature-comforts the productive 50's began to bestow (a television, new car, etc.), which the lack of solvency denies them, begin to slide into pubescent angst and experiment with the relative-morality ethic seemingly prevalent everywhere beyond the Hawley domain.

In a sense (as several of the negative reviews on this page have pointed out), one feels Steinbeck has crafted a too-perfect foil in Ethan: he is almost *too* good, *too* straight-laced, and thus a rather `easy' contrast to the various corrupting forces the author perceived in the United States - and wished to combat, via the artistic craft. And yet, and yet... there is more than enough psychological meat in the text to justify the technique. Ethan's character is complex, and complexly drawn - the reader is given the clues, well early on, that the seed of temptation actively writhes to undermine the protagonist's staunch moral code; the presentation of such is done in a way both obvious and yet subtle, for we know what will happen but wonder (and hope) that events might force these carefully-laid plans awry. Nearly the entire novel can be thus seen as a slow, achingly certain capitulation of the primeval American standard - that is, honesty and self-reliance, coupled with integrity - and the key, then, is in making the main character likable and sympathetic in his torment. And Steinbeck succeeds marvelously, not only in Ethan but in those around him, who alternatively tempt, encourage, repress: Mary Hawley, the loving yet anxious wife; his son Allen, already succumbing to the irresistible forces of corruption; bank-manager Baker, epitome of fat-cat syndrome; Danny, the childhood friend-turned-alcoholic wastrel; and Margie, the most vivacious and vividly-drawn, the fallen-woman & town comfort, grown desperate as the years march on... Steinbeck has the way, as with all masters of word-smithy, to fashion a character within the space of a few lines, and make them seem *real*: someone you've seen before, or perhaps known intimately.

Again, I stress that *Winter* is not an easy read: the phrasing is deliberate and dirge-like, alternatively evocative and experimental (~while avoiding the excess of stream-of-consciousness); the atmosphere of New Bayton - and Ethan's inward ponderings - is gloomily suppressive, a miasma of failure, discontent, addiction and existential angst. Even as the time-table of the novel enters into spring, then summer, the cold shadow of *Winter's* desolate, desperate themes linger on. No, not an easy read - but, in passages, a beautiful one, and well worth the effort undergone. It is Steinbeck's final masterwork, a thousand-year gaze penetrating the cozy illusions of the fifties and accurately predicting the turmoil of the upcoming Aquarius decade.

Five Stars.