#thewinterofourdiscontent

[sowingseedsandshootinghoops]

The Worshipping of Success

Note on the text: I used John Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent as published in 1961 by the Viking Press

Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would do better to inspect their own communities and search their hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today (dedication page).

Steinbeck is my personal favorite American author, and what I loved most about this book is the way in he dissects the American attitude towards success.

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 for failure. In effect, no crime is committed unless a criminal is caught (186).

Americans worship at the altar of success. We pray the prayer of “the American Dream” and crafted the mythology of America being a place where anyone can achieve anything in service of this god. We praise people (athletes, singers, etc) for being successful regardless of what they are successful for or how they achieved that success. Not only do we want to be successful ourselves, but we want others to see us as such. It’s the 20th (and 21st) century version of “the ends justify the means”. So long as you are successful, especially financially, nothing else really matters. Or do we still have values we, as Americans, want to stick to regardless of how “successful” it turns out to be? That is the question that Steinbeck is interested in exploring here.

Ethan is a lowly store clerk in a general store when we first meet him. He is a solidly middle class man who earns on honest day’s wage for an honest day’s work. It isn’t glamorous but he is able to afford to feed his family and is, by all accounts, a really good, honest, and virtuous man. In fact, most of us would be proud to be the kind of person that Ethan is. Yet neither his wife, Mary, nor his two children, Allen and Mary-Ellen, seem to be particularly proud of their dad’s moral character. They are more interested in his ability to help them keep face with the neighbors. “It wouldn’t be so bad if you were a lawyer or in a bank or [something] like that” Allen says when Ethan asks him about why other kid’s tease him. Mary is also so desperate for her husband to “be somebody” that she gets her fortune read at the beginning of the book and repeats what the fortune teller all throughout the book: “you are going to be a big shot, did you know? Everything you touch will turn to gold- a leader of men” (17). It’s not enough that he be a good man who can offer them a comfortable, middle class life. They want him to be something more.

Ethan himself also struggles with that question. He’s not sure if it’s enough for him to just be a simple, good man, who just goes to work in a grocery store and goes home: “would my ancestors be proud to know that they produced a goddamn grocery clerk in a goddamn wap store in a town they used to own?” (2).

No where is this worship of “success at all costs” seen more clearly than in Allen’s essay writing contest. Allen has competed in, and won, a national essay competition on “why do you love America?” However everyone soon discovers that he plagiarized the essay and he is disqualified from the competition. When Ethan confronts him about it, Allen says

who cares? Everybody does it. It’s the way the cookie crumbles. . . . Don’t you read the papers? Everybody right up to the top- just read the papers. You get to feeling holy, just read the papers. . . . I’m not going to take the rap for everybody. I don’t care about anything” (277).

Everyone else is doing it, so why can’t I is essentially his response. He doesn’t think that there’s anything really wrong with what he did. It was all about getting first place and the problem is not that he cheated but that he got caught.

Now in the middle of this truthful, if somewhat cynical, critique of America, comes the character of Alfio Marullo, the Italian owner of the grocery store that Ethan works in, and an underhanded, sneaky, defense of idealism. Blink and you’ll miss it.

Early on in the story, Ethan refused a bribe from a competing store to sell out his boss. When Mr Marullo finds out he says that Ethan is a “good fella” and gives some money and gifts (including some expensive Easter eggs) as a reward and later decides to sell him the store when he goes back to Italy (96). Now Mr Marullo is just as corrupt and cynical and anyone else here (in fact it’s heavily implied that he came to America illegally). He is looking for his piece of the American Dream and he doesn’t particularly care how he gets it. More than that, he doesn’t even seem to particularly like Ethan. Every time they talk, Mr Marullo always speaks to him in a gruff and dismissive way. Even after he finds out how much of a “good fella” Ethan is. So everyone is surprised when he decides to sell Ethan the store, including Ethan. So when Ethan asks another character, Richard Walder, why he thinks Mr Marullo would treat him that way and give him the store anyways, he’s surprised to hear Richard tell him that he suspects Mr. Marullo was trying to figure what was Ethan’s “racquet, and he discovered that your racquet was honesty. . . [and] he [probably wanted] to make you [into] in a kind of monument to something he believed in once” (227). Despite Mr Marullo’s cynicism and seemingly Machiavellian drive for success, he actually believes in the importance of being a good and honest person. The reason he pays and rewards Ethan for being a good man is that he thinks it will inspire Ethan to continue being a good person. He wants Ethan to be a good AND successful person.

We do something similar with our heroes. It’s not enough that our heroes be successful at doing what they do, we need them to be moral too. It’s not enough that Abraham Lincoln be a great president, he has to be the most honest too. It’s not enough for George Washington to be a successful general who helps found a country- he has to be “unable to tell a lie”. Because despite our cynicism and obsession with success at all costs, we are always a highly idealistic nation. Somehow, deep inside, as much as we want to be seen as successful, we also want to be seen as moral. It’s an interesting dichotomy. Despite all our efforts it seems like we can just give up the fight for morality. How does the saying go?: “You are obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it”.

Which is what Ethan realizes at the very end of the book. By the end of the book he has become so disillusioned by the sheer volume of immorality that surrounds him that he has resolved to kill himself. But as he reaches into his pocket to get his knife he accidentally grabs a little token, what he calls a talisman, that his daughter Mary-Ellen gave him. In that moment he is reminded of all the good people that he has known who have managed to do some good despite all of the evil in the world, and how it’s every individual’s responsibility to keep fighting the good fight and encourage each other to keep doing the same no matter what:

Marullo’s light still burned, and Old Cap’n’s light, and Aunt Deborah’s light. It isn’t true that there is a community of light, a bonfire of the world. Everyone carries his own, his lonely one. . . . I had to get back- had to return the talisman to its new owner [i.e. his daughter] [or] else another light might go out (280-281).

It was his responsibility not just to keep on shining, just as others before him had done, but to pass it forward by encouraging his daughter to keep doing the same.

We do value success highly in our society and Steinbeck is right in critiquing us the way he does. But he’s also right in reminding us that morality still matters and that we would be remiss to forget that. That, in the end, the ends might not justify the means as much as we would like it to.

[silverhakai]

Earlier today at work. AC was on full blast inside, samantala naman sa labas parang sinasampal ka ng init. #ExcuseMyFace #MuntangaLang #SundayShift #ParaSaEkonomiya #WerkWerkWerk #TheWinterOfOurDiscontent #ShetSobrangInet #AnoBaTalaga https://www.instagram.com/p/CO74qWChxsZ/?igshid=pvk1f74g19og

[pointer8708]

#thewinterofourdiscontent (at Griffith Observatory) https://www.instagram.com/p/CXKsUNgFyfn/?utm_medium=tumblr

[toriroze]

On THIS DAY two years ago, Nina Leilani Deering a.k.a. @musicmusiceverywhere put on a special show about sadness & melancholy surrounding the holidays called “The Winter of our Discontent.” Nina introduced me to the song “Just a Sad Xmas” especially for this show because she said she had been saving the song to show to someone who could really do it some justice. I felt absolutely honored. These photos and videos are from that night in 2018. Peep the video of Nina playing a baroque song entirely from memory on the accordion ❤️ A year later (2019), we went into the studio and recorded “Just a Sad Xmas” featuring Nina on backup vocals and her beautiful accordion playing...And just a few short months after recording said song, my sweet angel Nina got called back to the sky - taking with her an incredibly untouchable knowledge & ability to create stunning music AND a love for humanity that is simply unparalleled. I miss you every day Nina. THANK YOU for sharing yourself with us. THANK YOU for going so hard towards everything you loved because you showed the rest of us what love actually looks like in action. You are one of a kind and I feel blessed to have been in your genius presence. I love you Nina ❤️ keep shining on us, baby #ninaleilani #music #genius #love #chosenfamily #shine #imissyou #accordion #loveinaction #thewinterofourdiscontent #weweretheluckyones #restinpower #justasadxmas https://www.instagram.com/p/CJY5Qwdj8BE/?igshid=1nzwq8f44vc3k

[kimberlyhorg]

I have been reading A LOT of Steinbeck lately and have been loving every minute of it. My background is in journalism so I admire/appreciate his extensive research in some of his books. I also ❤ how his character descriptions and how he set A the reader in time and place. I often travel to his old stomping grounds in Monterey and found the #johnsteinbeckstatue. #johnsteinbeck #johnsteinbecklibrary #canneryrow #thepearl #theredpony #tortillaflat #thelogfromtheseaofcortez #theeastofeden #travelswithcharley #thewinterofourdiscontent #americaandamericans https://www.instagram.com/p/CDEmS9Xg-SVBpebKbjXli9LvvDAyjmztMY2X2E0/?igshid=10r2r3xvh113b

[creatinglives]

"The Winter of Our Discontent", known as the last novel of John Steinbeck (1961) is about an upright, ethical man who, under certain circumstances, starts to crave for money and power. He turnes into a capitalist. Ethan Allen Hawley’s family once was a rich dynasty in the town, but his father lost the family fortune, so Ethan works in a grocery store. He is unsatisfied about the job and about being poor. His wife and his children complain about their status and his mind begins to change. . Ethan plans a bank robbery, makes sure his boss gets deported so that he can buy the store for a cheap price and misteriously succeds the land of his school friend Danny. But what shocked me was not only what he did, but how I, as I reader, nearly didn’t notice that he changed. It all felt so naturally and suddenly Ethan is on the way to rob the bank. It looks so dangerous how disregarded a good person can torture and misuse his power. Ethan at least sees what he did, in the end of the book. However, I had great fun with his character, he is clever and has an unique kind of humor, that made it light to read this book. . This good work was very different to other works of John Steinbeck I read. The others were stories about farmers with their very own language and it was more like they were suffering most of the time. Here we have a book about businessmen. About money and moral and how they don’t come together. That’s an important topic and Steinbeck worked it out amazing. His language didn’t loose it’s simplicity, while it handled complexity. Steinbeck is so far still my favorite writer from the States. . #thewinterofourdiscontent #derwinterunseresmissvergnügens #geldbringtgeld #johnsteinbeck #steinbeck #winterofourdiscontent #literature #bookstagram #instabooks #igreads #gayswhoread #capitalism #instagood #photooftheday #visualsoflife #leseempfehlung #kapitalismus #literatur #manesseverlag #джонстейнбек #стейнбек #зиматревогинашей #литература #книги https://www.instagram.com/p/B-aIj7rAp37/?igshid=h8p9r8a3idcb

[hello-thereadingnerd-blog]

@penguinrandomhouse #blackstorieshavepower #fangirl #quotestagram #quoteoftheday #johnsteinbeck #thewinterofourdiscontent #ofmiceandmen #thegrapesofwrath #instabooks #igbooks #booksofinstagram #bookstagram #quotetags #quotestoremember #bibliophile #books #bookalicious #readingbooks #readersclub #readingislife📚 #quotes #bookaholic https://www.instagram.com/p/B8xmcIxFtLi/?igshid=1v40o00wtlm8q

[writerdoc]

🖤 #quotesilove #johnsteinbeck #thewinterofourdiscontent #writinginspiration #furiousangels #amwriting #writeordie #writerswrite #wordwordswords #fortheloveofwriting #paranormalromance #darkromance #darkfantasy #darkandsexy #secondchances #vampires #shinethatlightanyway #writersofinstagram #ofdarknessandlight #bookstagram #workinprogress https://www.instagram.com/p/B6MtG1PAZkK/?igshid=167ra8964mgxs

[cavesandclouds]

Nice! #texas #austin #venues #livemusic #thewinterofourdiscontent #tour2017 #cavesandclouds (at Stay Gold)

[duttonart]

Something I made to remind myself in the new year: There's a choice between discontent and dancing in the moonlight.

[greeniezona]

Snow, ice, and winter titles. There hasn’t been any snow on the ground for days here, so this morning frost will have to do. ❄️ ❄️ #winterbooks #classicnovels #springsnow #yukiomishima #thesnowqueen #joandvinge #theicebeneathyou #christianbauman #ifonawintersnightatraveler #italocalvino #thewinterofourdiscontent #johnsteinbeck #frost https://www.instagram.com/p/Brk01bUnZ3_/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=qssq490bvv2c

[eating-their-words]

My #octoberwrapup: ~ 1) 🇺🇲 #theargonauts #maggienelson 3.5/5 2) 🇬🇧 #thewaroftheworlds #hgwells 3.5/5 3) 🇬🇧 #deathonthenile #agathachristie 3.5/5 4) 🇬🇧 #tenshortstories #roalddahl 4/5 5) 🇫🇷 #oldgoriot #balzac 4.5/5 6) 🇺🇲 #thewinterofourdiscontent #johnsteinbeck 4.5/5 7) 🇺🇲 #awrinkleintime #madeleinelengle 3.5/5 8) 🇬🇧 #kisskiss #roalddahl 4/5 9) 🇬🇧 #therazorsedge #wsomersetmaugham 4/5 10) 🇺🇲 #passing #nellalarsen 4/5 11) 🇬🇷 #thegreekpassion #kikoskazantzakis 4/5 12) 🇺🇸 #thediaryofadamandeve #marktwain 3.5/5 13) 🇺🇲 #thedreamkeeper #langstonhughes 4/5 ~ #eatingtheirwordswrapups #bookstagram #SpookishBookish https://www.instagram.com/p/Bpjavdsnhp2/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1od9zr9fbpoy6

[booksarekey-blog]

“It's so much darker when a light goes out than it would have been if it had never shone.” ― John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent . If you hadn't guessed I have school aged kids... so I know about crazy days like Johnny Appleseed day! But since we are bookstagrammers, I figured we could gush over some great American Authors today... and there are so many I adore... mostly because of their wisdom hidden in pages of literature... but also because I had a teacher in high school who loved American Authors and taught a class comparing these authors and their work to different cultural issues that helped normal everyday people understand the plight of people all over the country, and the world... Steinbeck is one such author. While his works tend to be only read for school assignments, I highly suggest them as a chance to see the history of America, raw and unedited for political correctness. #readgushsept17 . Do you have a favorite American Author - new or classic? . square #bookishshapes17 | hate #ampersandsept17 | books & flowers (or in this case leaves) #fanaticalbirdsept . . . . #bibliophile #instabooks #bookaddict #booknerd #booksorority #algorithmbusters #fortheloveofbooks #alwaysreading #Steinbeckquotes #thewinterofourdiscontent #americanauthors #johnnyappleseedday #autumnreads

[ewharris]

New record cover art! By @richardtscott #mimeticdesire #thewinterofourdiscontent #cavesandclouds get your preorder on at https://igg.me/at/0ZO5GgvdpR0/x/16246116

[yosoylamonstruita]

Hay que decir Chao Chao al pendejo. Since nobody ain't got time for the administration of pendejos. #washingtondc #mydccool #acreativedc #notaswamp #thewinterofourdiscontent #dc #seeninshaw #donalderesunpendejo #theresistance #disruptj20 #boybye (en Shaw, Washington, D.C.)

[hashtagcwinstagram]

#Repost @cavesandclouds ・・・ Life as a house...#cavesandclouds #tour2017 #thewinterofourdiscontent http://ift.tt/2pBaKJu