The Winter of Our Discontent [Paperback]

John Steinbeck (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Penguin Classics; 10th edition (1996)
• ASIN: B000OJ27I0
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (102 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #8,510,262 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

204 of 216 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This novel brought me back to Steinbeck, November 11, 2004

By 

Debbie Lee Wesselmann (the Lehigh Valley, PA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Winter of Our Discontent (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

After reading Of Mice and Men, The Red Pony, and The Pearl in high school, I was not an admirer of Steinbeck, but when I picked up The Winter of Our Discontent as an adult, I was awed by the author I had once shunned. Steinbeck's keen sense of character and a mastery of the language carries this novel from first page to last. The story revolves around Ethan Hawley, a descendent of proud New England stock whose life seems betrayed by circumstances as he struggles to provide for his family. His wife Mary urges him to be more ambitious, and his restless teenage children exhibit signs of being morally corrupt. When Ethan decides that his ethics no longer matter in this demanding world, he enters his own compounding crisis.

In perfectly rendered language, Steinbeck explores the themes of two Americas - the old Puritanical and morally staid one, and the one where every man fights for himself. The corruption in New Baytown is rampant. Issues about privilege and entitlement, family values, skewed priorities, flagging morality, and work ethics simmer underneath. Steinbeck's depiction of Ethan and Mary's marriage is witty, biting, and affectionate, demonstrating both his humor and his talent for dissecting domestic issues as well as the grander, social ones.

A fine novel by a recently underappreciated author, The Winter of Our Discontent is worth every minute spent with it.

61 of 63 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fantastic Book, June 29, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Winter of Our Discontent (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

To any of you who are considering reading this book, the following points may be helpful:

* Of all the Steinbeck novels I've read, I consider this one to be his wittiest, funniest and most intelligent. The dialogue is great and the main character (Ethan Allen Hawley) may be my favorite Steinbeck character of all-time.

* This book focuses on thought rather than plot. We are taken on detailed journeys through Ethan Hawley's mind (in fact, some of the chapters of this book are written in the first-person rather than the third-person, such that Hawley speaks to us directly). What we are shown are the motives and means through which a conscientious human being trades a life of good deeds for a life of deception and acquisitiveness, and the result is jarring.

* As indicated above, however, this book is NOT plot-driven. Therefore, some readers may not like it as much as, say, "The Grapes of Wrath" or "In Dubious Battle". Do yourselves a favor and read the first page or two of the book before buying it. If you are drawn into the dialogue on these pages, you'll probably love the book - it represents the general tone of the novel throughout, though toward the end the book gets much darker as Ethan's abandonment of his morals and the consequences thereof are driven home to the reader.

This truly great novel will stick with the reader long after the last page has been turned. Read it - I don't think you'll be disappointed.

152 of 166 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Loss and American Regeneration, May 18, 2002

By 

Robin Friedman (Washington, D.C. United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Winter of Our Discontent (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Mass Market Paperback)

"The Winter of our Discontent" was published in 1961, just before Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize in 1962. The story is set in the late 1950s in New Baytown, a small (fictitious) New York -New England town which, Steinbeck tells us, had flourished during the whaling days of the mid-19th century. The main protagonist of the book is Ethan Allen Hawley. Ethan ("eth" to his friends is descended from early pirates and whaling captains. His family had lost its capital through speculative business ventures during WW II and Ethan, with has backround and his Harvard education, is reduced to working as a clerk in a small grocery store he once owned. Marullo, an Italian immigrant, owns the store and calls Ethan "kid".

For a short novel, the book includes a wealth of characters, many of which I found well described. There is Ethan's wife Mary who is impatient with the family's impoverished lots and eager for Ethan's economic success as well as the couple's two children, Allen, who is writing an essay called "Why I Love America" and the sexually precocious daughter Ellen. We meet the town banker, Mr. Baker, a bank clerk and a friend of Ethan's, Margie Young-Hunt, twice married and the town seductress, and Danny Taylor, Ethan's childhood friend who has thrown away a career of promise and become a drunk.

The book describes the deteriorations of Ethan's life as he gradually loses his integrity and succumbs to temptations to lift his life, and the lives of his family members, from its materially humble state to a state consistent with Ethan's felt family heritage and education and with the desire of his family for material comfort. The story is sad and told in a style mixing irony and ambiguity that requires the reader to reflect and dig into what is happening. The story ends on a highly ambiguous note with Ethan's future left in doubt.

The book describes well the lessening of American standards and values. The book seems to attribute the loss to an increasing passion for commercial and economic success among all people in the United States. Juxtaposed with the economic struggle are pictures of, in steinbeck's view, what America was and what it could struggle to be. I think the images are found in religion (much of the story is, importantly, set around Good Friday and Easter and these holidays figure preminently in the book), and in America's political and cultural heritage. In the old town of
New Baytown, America's history figures prominently with speeches from American statesment such as Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, and Abraham Lincoln tucked (suggestively) in the family attic. The book is set against a backround of New England whaling and reminds the reader inevitably of a culture that produced Melville and a work of the caliber of Moby Dick.

The most convincing scenes of the book for me were those where Ethan ruminates his life in his own mind and compulsively walks the streets of New Baytown at night. I was reminded of Robert Frost, a poet of New England and his poem "Acquainted with the Night" which begins:

"I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light."

Steinbeck captures much of the spirit of this wonderful poem.

The plot of the book seems contrived at is climax and depends too much on coincidence. The characters, and their inward reflections on themselves, the descriptions, the setting, and the theme of the book, mingled between a love for our country and a sense of despair, make the book memorable.