The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck

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 Steinbeck’s last novel, works as a clerk in a grocery store that his family once owned. With Ethan no longer a member of Long Island’s aristocratic class, 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. Set in Steinbeck’s contemporary 1960 America, the novel explores the tenuous line between private and public honesty, and today ranks alongside his most acclaimed works of penetrating insight into the American condition. This Penguin Classics edition features an introduction and notes by leading Steinbeck scholar Susan Shillinglaw.

Why I Picked It Up

Thanks for reading Words Like Silver! Subscribe for free to support my work.

Subscribe Now

placeholder

After East of Eden became one of my all-time favorite books, I had a sneaking suspicion Steinbeck might be my favorite Great American writer. Naturally, I need to read more of his work.

The introduction to The Winter of Our Discontent starts off with a bang, with Steinbeck's confession that he worries he uses his best tricks in East of Eden and has nothing to say to readers. (The Winter of Our Discontent was his last novel, released to mixed reception; I loved it.) The modern equivalent, for contemporary readers, might be Fredrik Backman saying he might have just published his last.

How do you possibly follow up your microcosmic book—the everything—with more? (I still want to read Steinbeck's journals about the process, and I hope they might help me on my next.) The introduction analyzes his concern that he might write about the past because it's easier than the mess of the present. For him, that was on the precipice of the 1960s.

“'If this is a time of confusion,' Steinbeck had written a few years earlier, 'might it be best to set that down?'”

I agree with Steinbeck too that genuine patriotism should allow, and invite, critique rather than blind idolatry. He prioritized gallantry and decency, seeing the malaise of immorality affecting the American character. So maybe "the Alone Generation" might spotlight some much-needed truths for the Anxious Generation or supposed male loneliness epidemic nowadays, and, of course, the results of the most recent election. Lots to chew on here in regards to balancing individual and cultural responsibilities.

My Thoughts

God, I love Steinbeck. Something about his work scratches my brain exactly. I feel so lucky to live in a world where I can read his books.

His books are piercing, layered, brilliant, warm, incisive, and never loses its poignancy or sense of fullness—like yes, the world is big and bad and complicated, but there are small beacons and moments that circle us back to what's right. His characters are vivid in the way that people are, and for some reason, that's difficult for many writers to do; scraps of dreams and references and inconsistencies make them feel actual.

I was nervous to go into my second Steinbeck work just because East of Eden is such a masterpiece, but I absolutely loved The Winter of Our Discontent too. I talk a lot about the ways in which we're nudged to and from belief (in anything) and the entire book centers on that: erosion. A constant shifting.

My recent philosophical dabblings in Nietzsche would agree that morality isn't static—that it changes with reference points and how we adapt or soften language. My recent psychological dabblings into Lisa Feldman Barrett's How Emotions Are Made would argue the same, because neuroscience proves that you can change how you feel about something by using a different word. I also picked up on slight touches of The Stranger by Camus.

Ethan, the narrator's, started doubting that his moral steadfastness is the "right" way of doing things because doesn't Puritanism say that success is a sign of righteousness? It's not that the ends justify the means but that the ends redefine the means entirely.

Voice-wise, there was plenty I loved. Ethan's monologues to the vegetables. The eeriness of the tarot. You're almost, at a certain point, begging for fate to reward him to prove that there's a code to follow, and sometimes it does. Everyone thinks they're the hero, and in this book, everyone assumes bending the rules is fine because of circumstances.

Personally, I think a lot about fundamental attribution error and how aptly it sums up just about everything we do wrong. When we do something, we were forced into it; when they do it, it's because it's who they are.

“a cognitive bias where people tend to overemphasize personality-based explanations for others' behaviors while underestimating situational influences.”

And Steinbeck has some gorgeous lines on the thought. (I also talked about this in my East of Eden voice note.)

“All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.”

He also writes scenes like short stories. He writes again about what stories he thinks people want to hear about, and how we carry guilt and burden. Like his narrator Ethan, Steinbeck has moments of silliness or lightness that make the book feel more alive.

The prose actually does remind me a lot of the balance I loved recently in Beartown—a certain emphasis on patterns within the universal and how people end up alone within themselves.

“No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself.”

Steinbeck has searing moments and symbols that distill everything complex down to its simplest moments: reaching for the talisman in his pocket, for example. The definition of a talisman. Going to The Place, or being shaken out of a daymare. The characters also like to remind you that snitches get stitches.

The book—and its introduction—also talks about how language reshapes an experience, and why we have to come up with moral reasons for what we do. What would it look like if we just took actions at face value? I loved everything about how it all came together, and what The Winter of Our Discontent asked.

Lines I Loved

“Can you honestly love a dishonest thing?”

“You know how advice is—you only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyways.”

“When a condition or a problem becomes too great, humans have the protection of not thinking about it. But it goes inward and minces up with a lot of other things already there and what comes out is discontent and uneasiness, guilt and a compulsion to get something—anything—before it is all gone.”

“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”

“Like most modern people, I don't believe in prophecy or magic and then spend half my time practicing it.”

“Can a man think out his life, or must he just tag along?”

“Men don't get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared.”

“A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cates, dogs, butterflies and people.”

“When two people meet, each one is changed by the other so you’ve got two new people. Maybe that means—hell, it’s complicated.”

“A little hope, even hopeless hope, never hurt anybody.”

Much more to love, but I'm trying to keep these shorter. I could go on for another two thousand words, but what you need to know: The Winter of Our Discontent was a worthy follow-up. I'm excited to read more from Steinbeck. And there's a lot—both thematically and within the cinematic flair of the story—that would resonate in the modern climate for various reasons, especially in regards to the scope of what we're responsible for.

What chips away at you? What strengthens you? And what happens when those things don't match up to traditional ideals of success?

I could sit with a lot of the book, dissect all of it with a friend, or I could simply relish it for an afternoon. It has the vivid sort of stain I crave from any (favorite) book that passes through my mind: a sense of distinction.

For fans of:

Dear Life by Alice Munro; Beartown by Fredrik Backman; The Stranger by Albert Camus; Meditations by Marcus Aurelius; East of Eden, of course; slightly The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas.