42 pages • 1 hour read
John SteinbeckThe Winter Of Our Discontent
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Degradation of American Culture
Primary among Steinbeck’s messages in The Winter of Our Discontent is his criticism of extreme American individualism and capitalism. The central character in the novel is a naturally good man who is satisfied with his life until the tentacles of American capitalist ideology infiltrate his sense of self. Ethan is happy with his financial status, but he changes his ambitions when his family and neighbors begin to pepper him with questions about his apathy. Confronted with American values of greed and wealth, Ethan decides to ignore his internal conflict about acquiring wealth for the sake of wealth and begins a dangerous journey into sacrificing the values that make him a good person.
Chief among these pressures is the presence of Mr. Baker, the town banker. Mr. Baker represents the American stock market. His zest for capitalism rests on the idea that money begets more money. He encourages Ethan to speculate with his wife’s inheritance, despite Ethan’s reservations about losing the money, a lesson the country learned but seems to have forgotten after the Great Depression. Mr. Baker insists that Ethan does not have to lose his money if he takes the risk of investing, believing more in the cycles of stock markets and the idea that a truly smart man can make wealth from poverty. Mr. Baker also helps Ethan betray Marullo, another representation of the bank system in which institutions of wealth in America redline immigrants and other non-white individuals from property and business ownership to secure a white monopoly. Furthermore, Ethan learns from Mr. Baker how to take advantage of Danny. Mr. Baker tries to convince Danny to sign over the rights to his family’s estate with liquor, a deal Mr. Baker wants to make so that he can directly profit from the valuable landholdings still in Danny’s name. Ethan takes over this plan and successfully tricks Danny into giving over his land to Ethan by manipulating Danny’s alcoholism. Mr. Baker’s ruthlessness becomes Ethan’s ruthlessness.
Ethan’s son Allen also emphasizes this theme. Allen’s plagiarism of his prize-winning essay and his moral ambivalence when Ethan discovers him devastates Ethan. Allen defends his actions by pointing to the lessons he learns from American media. Allen has internalized the capitalist ideal that individuals can and should manipulate the system for their own gain. With lessons such as these Allen feels entitled to use whatever means necessary to get ahead Ethan’s realization that he has not raised his son to value morality over greed distresses him, , but it also parallels Steinbeck’s criticism of the ways in which American youths are raised to care more about individual gains than community and moral integrity.
The Importance of Family
Steinbeck’s novels are often about the importance of family, whether that family is a nuclear family, or in the form of close friendships between men. In The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck again emphasizes the theme that family is important to the wellbeing of the individual, and indeed of the country.
The first family of importance in this novel is the Hawleys. Ethan loves his wife and children, even though he does not fully understand them and often does not like them. Ethan’s self-consciousness adds to his conflict with his family. Because Ethan is struggling to understand himself, he projects his lack of self-knowledge onto his family. Ethan decides that people are essentially unknowable, but that does not stop him from wishing he could be closer to understanding the members of his family.
Ethan’s conflict is only one part of the problem. Also informing his family’s dynamics are his wife, Mary, and their children, Allen and Ellen. Mary, Allen, and Ellen all place pressure on Ethan to make more money. As leader of the family, it is up to him to support his family and protect their public interests. Ironically, his hesitancy to invest Mary’s money is, in his mind, in his family’s best interests. He wants his family to have security in the event of his death. But Ethan’s dreams for his family differ from their dreams for themselves.
These conflicts do not negate the power of the family unit. Ethan consistently reminds himself to be kinder and more aware of Mary. Though he finds her confusing and unknowable, his love for her informs his sense of self. When Margie attempts to seduce him, Ethan refuses her, emphasizing his devotion to his wife. Allen is a disappointment to Ethan. He refuses to work, proving a lack of work ethic and respect for labor that Steinbeck himself advocates. Ellen is another mystery to Ethan until she saves his life by switching his blades with the family talisman, thereby giving her father a reason to live and hope for the future. Thus, each person in Ethan’s family has a distinct and important influence on his character development. Though Ethan craves solitude, Steinbeck shows that man is not an island, and a family helps challenge, push, and support an individual.
Another family unit in this novel comes in the form of the ghosts of Ethan’s family legacy. His ancestors factor heavily into his imagination. Ethan constantly lives in the past because he misses having the advice of his forefathers. With only the memories of the once-great Hawleys, Ethan is on his own to decide his family’s future legacy. The pressure of this is unbearable, particularly because the stories and legends of the past fascinate Ethan. This family, the one in his memory, inspires Ethan but ultimately prevents him from living in the moment and envisioning a different, brighter future.
The Fallacy of White Supremacy
In The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck challenges American society’s belief in white supremacy and proves it do be a fallacy. Danny Taylor is the first example that inherited white privilege does not confer integrity or moral superiority. Danny is a member of a once-illustrious settler family. He grew up with privilege, wealth, and the powerful connections that his family legacy could buy. Despite this privilege, the Naval Academy expels Danny, and becomes dependent on alcohol and economically unstable. His alcoholism consumes his life for decades, and no one in the town really knows the reason for Danny’s downfall . It is inconceivable in New Baytown that a man like Danny, from such a prestigious family, could fall into such destitution. Danny is a problem for the town. His pitiable status poses a direct threat to notions of white superiority: Danny’s downfall negates the town’s ability to claim that the descendants of the white New Baytown settlers are superior.
Ethan pities Danny, but Danny reminds him that Ethan is just like him. He and Danny share an apathy toward wealth and ambition that shocks the town. When Ethan hastens Danny’s death by providing him with enough money to buy copious drugs and alcohol, Ethan erases an inconvenient reminder of his fallibility. Danny becomes the victim of greed, ambition, and a town’s desperate attempt to ensure its reputation.
The townspeople pity Ethan. His neighbors pointedly ask him how he can stand being poor when he comes from a wealthy lineage. They convince him that wealth, power, and status are his birthright. This attitude is tied to their belief in white supremacy. The white townspeople believe that Ethan should not accept a lower economic status because it implies that they too could succumb to downward social mobility and that no natural law dictates that they remain at the top of the socioeconomic pyramid.
Worse than Ethan’s apathy about his financial status is his comfort working for an immigrant. That Ethan would lose his family business is one thing; that an immigrant bought out the business is seen as an entirely different level of shame. Ethan must say, “Yes, Mr. Marullo” (19) when Marullo gives him an order at work. The town never accepts Marullo because although he is successful and generous, they consider him a foreigner. The xenophobia and racism of the town is apparent in the amount of people who support the idea that Marullo should be deported and that Ethan should reclaim his grocery store. Marullo’s very presence calls Ethan’s white superiority into question.
Steinbeck’s writing dismantles the fallacies of institutionalized white supremacy. In The Winter of Our Discontent, Steinbeck articulates that no amount of inherited whiteness, wealth, or power can make a person good nor deserving of wealth or opportunity.
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