Winter of Our Discontent (Steinbeck)

The Winter of Our Discontent
John Steinbeck, 1961
Penguin Group USA
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143039488

Summary
In awarding John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Nobel committee stated that with The Winter of Our Discontent, he had "resumed his position as an independent expounder of the truth, with an unbiased instinct for what is genuinely American."

Ethan Allen Hawley, the protagonist of the novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With the decline in their status, his wife is restless, and his teenage children are hungry for the tantalizing material comforts he cannot provide. Then one day, in a moment of moral crisis, Ethan decides to take a holiday from his own scrupulous standards. (From the publisher.)

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Author Bio
• Birth—February 27, 1902
• Where—Salinas, California USA
• Death—December 20, 1968
• Where—New York, NY
• Education—Studied marine biology at Stanford University,
   1919-25
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, 1940;
   Nobel Prize, 1962.

John Ernst Steinbeck, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, was born in Salinas, California February 27, 1902. His father, John Steinbeck, served as Monterey County Treasurer for many years. His mother, Olive Hamilton, was a former schoolteacher who developed in him a love of literature. Young Steinbeck came to know the Salinas Valley well, working as a hired hand on nearby ranches in Monterey County.

In 1919, he graduated from Salinas High School as president of his class and entered Stanford University majoring in English. Stanford did not claim his undivided attention. During this time he attended only sporadically while working at a variety jobs including on with the Big Sur highway project, and one at Spreckels Sugar Company near Salinas.

Steinbeck left Stanford permanently in 1925 to pursue a career in writing in New York City. He was unsuccessful and returned, disappointed, to California the following year. Though his first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929, it attracted little literary attention. Two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To A God Unknown, met the same fate.

After moving to the Monterey Peninsula in 1930, Steinbeck and his new wife, Carol Henning, made their home in Pacific Grove. Here, not far from famed Cannery Row, heart of the California sardine industry, Steinbeck found material he would later use for two more works, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row.

With Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck's career took a decidedly positive turn, receiving the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. He felt encouraged to continue writing, relying on extensive research and personal observation of the human drama for his stories. In 1937, Of Mice and Men was published. Two years later, the novel was produced on Broadway and made into a movie. In 1940, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Grapes of Wrath, bringing to public attention the plight of dispossessed farmers.

After Steinbeck and Henning divorced in 1942, he married Gwyndolyn Conger. The couple moved to New York City and had two sons, Thomas and two years later, John. During the war years, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. Some of his dispatches reappeared in Once There Was A War. In 1945, Steinbeck published Cannery Row and continued to write prolifically, producing plays, short stories and film scripts. In 1950, he married Elaine Anderson Scott and they remained together until his death.

Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and keen social perception." In his acceptance speech, Steinbeck summarized what he sought to achieve through his works:

Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species.... Furthermore, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity of greatness of heart and spirit—gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature..."

Steinbeck remained a private person, shunning publicity and moving frequently in his search for privacy. He died on December 20, 1968 in New York City, where he and his family made a home. But his final resting place was the valley he had written about with such passion. At his request, his ashes were interred in the Garden of Memories cemetery in Salinas. He is survived by his son, Thomas. (Author bio from Barnes & Noble, courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center.)

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Book Reviews
(Older works have few, if any, mainstream press reviews online. See Amazon and Barnes & Noble for helpful customer reviews.)

Mr. Steinbeck displays considerable ingenuity in contriving unexpected twists of plot.... His own pleasure in a sprightly, prancing, frivolous prose style, unlike anything he ever wrote before, is attractive. But this change in literary personality... diminishes the weight of Mr. Steinbeck's attack on moral corruption. Satire, if it is to draw blood, inspire feelings of guide and contrition, cannot afford to seem too light and playful.... Nevertheless...this uneven novel is always pleasantly readable.
Orville Prescott - New York Times (6/23/1961)

Steinbeck...is less ready than he formerly was with the sturdy moral preachment and pat social answer. This is all to the good. Yet...this is a problem whose central problem is never fully solved, an internal conflict novel in which the central issued between nobility and expediency...is never satisfactorily resolved. For this reason, despite its obvious powers, The Winter of Our Discontent cannot rightly stand in the forefront of Steinbeck's fiction. Yet it is also a highly readable novel which bristles with disturbing ideas.
Carlos Baker - New York Times Book Review (6/25/1961)

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Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)

Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for The Winter of Our Discontent:

1. Steinbeck set his previous novels on the other side of the continent—in (or on the way to) California. Why might he have chosen the East Coast as a setting for his last work? What are the historical implications of the locale?

2. The Winter of Our Discontent takes place between two holiday weekends—one Easter and the other Independence Day. What is the metaphorical significance of these weekends?

3. Discuss the characters in this book, starting with Ethan Allen Hawley. Much of the book is spent inside his mind: what kind of man is he... what is his moral compass? What about his wife Mary and two children? What pressures do they exert on Hawley?

4. Care to comment on this passage from the book? Do you agree or disagree with the sentiments expressed—are they cynical...or realistic?

Strength and success—they are above morality, above criticism. It seems, then, that it is not what you do, but how you do it and what you call it. Is there a check in men, deep in them, that stops or punishes? There doesn't seem to be. The only punishment is failure. In effect no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught.

5. What are the moral issues at the center of this book? Does Hawley "sell his soul" for personal gain? How conflicted is he regarding the dilemmas he faces? Are those dilemmas similiar to today's...50 years later?

6. Is this book a tragedy...or comedy?

7. Does the book's ambiguous ending satisfy you? What do you think will happen to Hawley?

8. Do you feel, as one of the New York Times reviewer (above) does...that the moral questions are never fully resolved?

9. What is the significance of the title? The line is uttered by Shakespeare's Richard III—one of Shakespeare's most corrupt characters—who, in the history play of his name, contemplates his frustration during exile from power. Why might Steinbeck have considered "the winter of our discontent" a fitting title for this novel?

(Questions issued by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)

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