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As Steinbeck told a reporter in England, the theme of The Winter of Our Discontent is immorality. Using the Hawley family of New Baytown as representative of every American, the novel condemns the American nation as soft, comfortable, and content. Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent grew out of two aborted attempts at transforming and modernizing older texts. Begun in 1958, the first work, Don Keehan, was a modern western and was evidently a takeoff on Cervantes's Don Quixote; it was also interrelated with a second work, an adaptation of Malory's Morte D'Arthur, since both legends and quests were direct descendants of each other and were, Steinbeck felt, in some way intermingled with the American Dream. Consequently, Steinbeck decided to use the translation of Arthur to say what he wanted to say about his own time: condemning its immorality and decrying the decay of such values as loyalty, courtesy, courage, and honor.

Another source for the novel was the Steinbeck short story "How Mr. Hogan Robbed a Bank," which was first published in the Atlantic Monthly in March 1956. In fact, some of the story's details have direct parallels in Winter. Hogan is a grocery clerk like Ethan Allen, and he schemes to rob the bank next to his grocery on the Saturday night before Labor Day. Unlike Ethan, however, he goes through with the robbery, obtaining $8,320. Yet another factor in the composition of Winter was the fact that Steinbeck had discovered that the new generation, including his own sons, was being raised by example to believe that success was more important than honesty and that greed and lack of principles had become an accepted norm. Specifically, the television quiz show scandals and the election of 1960 influenced the production of Winter. Steinbeck felt that the scandal over the TV game show, The $64,000 Question, especially scholar Charles van Doren's involvement in the fraud, asserted America's superficiality and greed.

Steinbeck saw the conflict on which the novel is centered (Ethan Hawley's betrayal of himself and his brother Danny Taylor) in larger terms. Thus the Bible, Shakespeare's sonnets and plays, especially Richard III, Malory's Morte D'Arthur, and documents from American history are all alluded to in important ways by the text. Not surprisingly, the Republican candidate for president, Richard Nixon, became for Steinbeck a symbol for such degradation in the political scene. His given name in Richard fit well into America's Revolutionary past (as in Ben Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack) and also provided an association with the villainous Richard III who betrayed both his brothers for a kingdom and for an increase in his estate. The biblical characters of Judas and Cain were also natural associations with "tricky Dick," suggesting still another betrayal of a friend/brother that causes his ultimate death.

Steinbeck's manipulation of religious images is perhaps the most obvious technique used in The Winter of Our Discontent. The temptation, betrayal, crucifixion, and burial of Christ provide a time pattern for the first half of the novel and shape its characters as well. Religious images thus appear and disappear, and some merge into paradoxical opposites that suggest the characters' good and evil natures simultaneously. The first section of the book begins on Good Friday and ends on Easter Tuesday. During this brief time period, Steinbeck brings his protagonist Ethan Allen Hawley (suggesting a New England pronunciation of "holy") to a confrontation of his two natures--sinful and godly. Like Christ before him, Ethan must decide if he can bear the temptations of the world and conquer them. The other option is, of course, to capitulate, worshipping power, prestige, and money as the new American gods and ignoring the moral beliefs on which this country was founded.

Three more temptations remain before Ethan capitulates to "death." First, the bank president, Mr. Baker, urges Ethan to invest his wife's legacy. However, despite Baker's convincing argument, Ethan recognizes that at this point he is unwilling to risk his wife's legacy to gain more wealth. Second, Margie Young-Hunt, the town whore, offers herself to Ethan. Despite her suggestive words and her attempts at seduction, Ethan is able to resist the temptation of the flesh by quoting the Gospel for Good Friday. The third temptation occurs as Ethan is confronted in the dark store by Mr. Biggers, an agent for B. B. D. & D. Wholesalers, who asks Ethan to deceive his boss, Alfio Marullo, and buy from Biggers in return for a 5 percent kickback. Biggers jests at Ethan's honesty and his suggestion that he will turn the 5 percent over to Marullo. To Biggers, no sin is involved, and he offers a richly constructed wallet as a bribe. This time Ethan capitulates. He recognizes that a betrayal of Marullo will win him the grocery store, a betrayal Baker will bring him power and prestige, and a betrayal of Danny will restore riches as well as an increased social status (he can sell Danny's property for a planned airport). As the novel's central metaphor, betrayal implies that selling one's soul has become the norm of society.

Ethan's subsequent visit to his "Place," a cave about five feet deep carved into the harbor, prefigures his eventual death and burial. Thus Ethan's entry into the cave begins a subsequent moral decline and a loss to an unholy Trinity of mortal and materialistic temptations. Ethan's descent into hell begins approximately on Holy Saturday; his eyes are suddenly open to the world around him, and he appears to others as a changed man. Ironically, he also receives more respect for his Judas traits than for his Christian ones.

Not surprisingly, very few residents of New Bay town are shocked by Ethan's changes since, like the majority of Americans, he maintains the facade of respectability and makes his motives appear pure rather than tainted. Easter Tuesday reveals an Ethan who has been thoroughly "converted" to evil but who maintains a paradoxical revulsion for moral betrayal on higher levels. Although Ethan maintains he has changed goals and is no longer influenced by morality, he still exhibits a double standard by expecting his children to reject his self-centered role modeling. Unfortunately, he fails to see his own duplicity and continues his "descent into hell," though at times he inexplicably calls out to Mary, his wife, to serve as his intercessor (the role of the Virgin Mary) and to guard him from evil within and without. Other biblical symbols used by Steinbeck involve Margie Young-Hunt (the town whore with a witchlike personality). Margie's visions reveal Ethan as the hanged man in the tarot pack and as a snake shedding its skin. This snake image also brings to mind Steinbeck's preoccupation with the book of Genesis and the first stories of mankind. Thus Ethan's association with the serpent not only reminds the reader of the first temptation in Eden but is complicated by the fact that Ethan also functions as the innocent Adam who is tempted by Margie's sensual Eve.

Steinbeck first examines specific early forefathers, including the protagonist's given name, Ethan Allen. The name recalls a revolutionary war figure who can be historically associated with a takeover of land and with secret attacks on a neighboring country. Moreover, some of the revolutionary Allen's unethical acts were approved by the U.S. Congress, giving him respectability and prestige despite his tendency to play both ends against the middle for his own benefit. The strong parallels to the present-day Ethan are obvious.

The book also examines the original American stock from which Ethan has descended and suggests it is not nearly as pure as he might claim. First of all, Ethan acknowledges he is descended from both Puritans and pirates, underscoring the duality of America. Even though literal piracy is out, the impulse lingers: People want something for nothing, wealth without effort. Steinbeck asserts that a new generation of greedy Americans, including some of the biggest people in the country, have defected from honor, ethics, and morality and have chosen evil methods to attain desired success. As he observes the past, he recognizes that all of New Baytown is involved in a similar sellout of morality. Consequently, the value of the historical past has become relative since Ethan's present tarnished reputation is revealed to be an inherited trait from the patriarchs who first settled America. Even the admirable words of famous men like Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln (patriarchs whose words are plagiarized in Ethan's son's "I Love America" essay) cannot resuscitate the dying morals and values that were once so important.

Yet Ethan's so-called honesty is still impressive to Alfio Marullo, who wants to make a monument to what America once was, a down payment so the light of morality will not flicker and die out. To Marullo, the Statue of Liberty, the Declaration of Independence, and the Bill of Rights are still praiseworthy. The positive side of America is still alive. In fact, Steinbeck symbolizes Marullo's hope for America's future in the July 4 setting of a land of justice, love, and equality. Steinbeck's historical references are designed to reform American society: to motivate the removal of ethnic prejudices, kickbacks, political manipulation, sexual blackmail, and phony real estate promotion. Ethan's remorse about his history, his simultaneous action and regret of action, indicate that perhaps his integrity will return and his morality and America's will be renewed.

Steinbeck's use of literary allusion is significant, especially to Shakespeare's history play Richard III. The title is taken from the opening soliloquy and is spoken by the title character himself. This soliloquy effectively sets up the theme of opposites, for in Shakespeare's play, the winter of discontent has been miraculously transformed into summer by the ascension of the Yorkist monarch and the abdication of Henry VI, the Lancastrian holder of the throne. Furthermore, Richard himself is revealed as a paradox. Outwardly he appears to be the helpful servant of his brothers, King Edward IV and the Duke of Clarence, but inwardly he is plotting their deaths and his own ascension to power.

Richard is the epitome of duplicity, providing a clear parallel to Ethan. As Ethan contemplates suicide and returns to the cave to slit his wrists, he is paralleled to King Arthur, too, who despairs over the decline of the Round Table and the rise of his evil nephew/son Mordred. Though Arthur/Ethan may die, the light-bearer of the future is ready to reassume the moral task. Thus as Ethan reaches for the razor blades to slit his wrists, he discovers the family talisman instead. Similar to the Holy Grail in the Arthurian legend, the talisman becomes his salvation. Although a metamorphosis occurs a second time as Ethan dismisses suicide, the reader is still unsure of both Ethan's future and that of his family. The heritage of truth, justice, and honesty is hanging in the balance and its continuance is questionable. It is still threatened by materialism, greed, and selfishness. The reader, as in the Arthur myth, must wait for the return of the king (Jesus/religious morality) before a restored Camelot (Paradise) can be attained. This renewal takes on historical meaning as well when associated with the Kennedy presidency and the descriptions of a return to Camelot, where knightly actions would right wrongs by means of potent deeds and legislation. As Steinbeck has skillfully shown, Ethan and the America he stands for are at that low point. The jeremiad was designed to recall them to a higher purpose.

Steinbeck's interweaving of biblical, historical, and literary texts in this story of America's declining morals indicates the complexity of the work. What appeared to the early critics as weakness now seems an insightful and innovative technique utilized by a determined experimenter. Steinbeck's final novel is an excellent example of the well-crafted tale. His interweaving of opposites, his merging of symbols, and his experimentation with style and humor make the novel a worthy successor to The Grapes Of Wrath as a social document calling on all America to account for its ambivalent reaction and commitment to moral uprightness.

Bibliography:

Astro, Richard, and Tetsumaro Hayashi, eds. Steinbeck: The Man and His Work. Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 1971.

Benson, Jackson L. The True Adventures of John Steinbeck, Writer: A Biography. New York: Viking, 1984.

French, Warren. John Steinbeck's Fiction Revisited. New York: Twayne, 1994.

Hayashi, Tetsumaro, ed. John Steinbeck: The Years of Greatness, 1936-1939. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993.

Hayashi, Tetsumaro. A New Study Guide to Steinbeck's Major Works, with Critical Explications. Metuchen, N.J.: Scarecrow Press, 1993.

McElrath, Joseph R., Jr., Jesse S. Crisler, and Susan Shillinglaw, eds. John Steinbeck: The Contemporary Reviews. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

Owens, Louis. John Steinbeck's Re-Vision of America. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1985.

Parini, Jay. John Steinbeck: A Biography. New York: Holt, 1995.

Simmonds, Roy S. John Steinbeck: The War Years, 1939-1945. Lewisburg, Pa.: Bucknell University Press, 1996.

Tedlock E. W., and C. V. Wicker, eds. Steinbeck and His Critics: A Record of Twenty-five Years. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1957.

Timmerman, John H. John Steinbeck's Fiction: The Aesthetics of the Road Taken. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986.

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