This Son of York

Let's talk literature. When I was younger, my father got me interested in reading classic Western authors. (By "got me interested," I mean "forced me to read them until I developed a genuine interest myself"). Though his method was rather blunt, I'm grateful. One of the works that I ended up exploring on my own was The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck.

Our main character, Ethan Allen Hawley, is the descendant of a long line of aristocrats. He is also a grocery clerk. Plagued by the social inadequacies of low income, his wife and kids lament their socioeconomic status as Ethan maintains his integrity - at the cost of prosperity. As the book progresses, Ethan's morals begin to crumble as he makes dishonest but materially rewarding choices, eventually leading to his entry into the corrupt politics of his town.

For our purposes, the most relevant ideas in this novel deal with the basic challenges to integrity presented by competition. Ethan is driven to succeed by his family and his desire to preserve his lineage's honor, but his moral values become an obstacle. This issue is highly relevant to many fields of competition today, be it sports, finance, politics, or any other playing field involving dishonesty and unfair advantages. One can say that Ethan has lost a different type of competition in succumbing to immorality - that of ethical standing. The unfortunate factor which nullifies this in the novel is that no one cares about that contest; Ethan's own son plagiarizes speeches written by American historical figures to win a national writing competition and then rationalizes his decisions by stating "Everybody does it... - just read the papers."

Ethan's struggle with himself leads to him attempting suicide at the end of the novel. He is foiled by his young daughter, Ellen. Unlike his other child, the plagiarizer, Ellen is the physical embodiment of youth and innocence throughout the novel, an image which sounds cliché but is in fact painted beautifully by Steinbeck's flowing narrative. In the end, she is the hope which must come with all deviations from moral standards: no player in any field is wholly good or evil.

It is a custom of mine to do some research on books after I read them. I was disappointed but not surprised to find that The Winter of Our Discontent, the last novel he wrote, is often considered a runt among Steinbeck's works; to me, it is the Cinderella of his literary children, though that metaphor partially fails because I do enjoy his other writings. If for anything else, I appreciate Steinbeck's hidden but present optimism regarding the strength of human integrity - it is fallible, but one must never give up.