John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Steinbeck's swan song, The Winter of Our Discontent, is a morality tale of post-war America, set in a coastal town on Long Island. We are far removed from the Salinas Valley in which Steinbeck staked his claim to American literature. It may be no accident that he marked out the same region F. Scott Fitzgerald had for Gatsby as a beacon from which to examine the moral zeitgest of America at a critical historical juncture, the period beginning in 1960.

Ethan Allen Hawley is the impoverished scion of an old New England family. A war hero and well-educated, he is reduced to being a clerk in his father's grocery store, now owned by a Sicilian immigrant. By turns cynical and jovial, Ethan exasperates his friends and family with his keen sense of irony, which masks his insecurity about his fortunes, while it mocks the shallow pursuit of money. But money, in this day and age, is there for the taking. On Good Friday, Ethan is thrice tempted by figures who promise either adventure or quick prosperity. Though he is the most honor-bound character in the novel, Ethan is not impervious to these temptations, for they seem to answer his call for redemption.

I don't know how believable Ethan's undoing is, but it does illustrate Steinbeck's concern (common among American authors) with the fall of good men to the allurements of modernity -- easy money, shady investments, consumerism, and of course, a glittering future. That the story is set during Easter week in 1960, in the light of a dawning era, suggests the evanescence of Ethan Allen Hawley as a model of the good American and the succession of one who has not yet been tested.