The Winter Of Our Discontent (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) Review
After writing East of Eden, JohnSteinbecks productivity in writing fiction tailed off. He seemingly had said what he wanted to say in his fiction.The novel about modern france was one of his weakest but he rebounds with his best post Eden novel, The Winter Of Our Discontent. Ethan Hawley is the clerk at a New England grocery store .The building once belonged to Hawleys family but the fortune has been lost andEthan s now a Harvard graduate working as a store manager. The scenario is rather implausible if you think about it a Harvard grad managing a small city grocery.However Steinbeck quickly gets you into Ethans mind and he does it in such a compelling you believe it. The story is about how motivated by a fortune predicted by a good friend of his wife leads Ethan to listen and pay attention to the world around him and conclude that ethics and morality do not mix well with business. Ethan does nothing illegal or criminal but he does things that are ethically and morally dubious. The last scene is deliberately ambivalent does Ethan kill himself or not In looking at moral poverty and how the consequences of being self aware of ones moral deterioratioc coupled by a desire for personal integrity for at one point it was Ethans most prized possession Steinbeck creates another 5 star classic if not as good as some of his other novels. I call it the weakest of his 5 star novels because of the implausibility I mentioned earlier but consider it a classic despite that flaw
The Winter Of Our Discontent (Turtleback School & Library Binding Edition) (Penguin Great Books of the 20th Century) Overview
FOR USE IN SCHOOLS AND LIBRARIES ONLY. A New Englander learns the bitter lesson that it is not possible to be a little dishonest.
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Customer Reviews
A Must Read - J. M. Robinson -
Having read much of Steinbeck in my youth, I lately read one book I missed. Wow. This is a masterpiece in my view. Put it on your list, for sure. You will probably reread the final couple of chapters. You can also write your own ending.
from Milan, Italy - valexmt -
Out of print in Italy luckly available somewhere else, I and my 18 years old boy appreciated very much. A must for who wants to understand the US citizens.
The Summer of Our Moral Holiday - Bryan Byrd - Earth
John Steinbeck's last work of fiction, 'The Winter of Our Discontent', examines the 'moral flabbiness' of post-war America, particularly that of the late 1950's. Its stated question, posed by the main character Ethan Allen Hawley in a first person monologue, is whether an ethical man can set aside his principles, do what is required to advance himself in the world, and then, objective reached, reclaim those principles without suffering moral damage. That Hawley does eventually convince himself to attempt such a 'moral holiday', to prove for himself that it's possible, and the results he obtains is the crux of the book - but from its melodramatic set-up to its engineered ending, it seems as though Steinbeck were shouting out his subject's terrible relevance on every page.
I nearly put this book down before I finished the first chapter. It begins with several pages of dialog that sounds artificial and too special, followed by a character sketch of Hawley as he interacts with the same townspeople he'll have to deal with during his 'holiday'. This blatant foundation seems amateurish, and I can't help but think of the last Steinbeck book I read, 'To a God Unknown', which, while it had its faults, had an intrinsic vitality to its spare prose and a calm, evocative pace that is lacking in this much later work.
In the book's third chapter, Steinbeck changes his point of view, and Hawley begins to address the reader in the first person. At this point, I did get somewhat drawn into the story, and once his machinations come clearer, there is a bit of tension to their resolution. Unfortunately, the necessity of having the story impart a lesson trumps a realistic, though probably ambiguous, ending, and instead concludes with Hawley frantically out of character.
'Winter of Our Discontent' isn't as terrible as I've probably made it out to sound, but it is disappointing in relation to other Steinbeck novels that I've read. In this Penguin Classics Edition, Susan Shillinglaw writes a perceptive, and positive, introduction that contextualizes 'Winter' with Steinbeck's life, and also catalogs some of the references to the outside world that gives this novel an extra layer of texture and nuance; however this still fails to overcome its melodramatic air. In that sense, 'Winter' is reminiscent of 'East of Eden', and readers who enjoyed that Steinbeck work may also find 'The Winter of Our Discontent' to their liking.
Book fell apart on first reading - SJG -
I order many, many books from Amazon and this was the first time I was disappointed. I knew the book would not be in perfect shape, but I didn't expect it to fall apart from the first time I opened it. Each time I opened it to read, more pages fell out. Very disappointing. The book did come quickly and was packaged very well.
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