The book is about Ethan Hawley. He comes from a family that has generations of respect and wealth. The family fortune has drizzled and been depleted by the time we get to the story, all Ethan has is the family house and a small inheritance that came to his wife from her brother. Ethan is a clerk in a store owned by Alfio Maurillo an Italian immigrant. Ethan has also survived serving in WWII so we see how that experience has affected his life and his views on morals and integrity to country, family and self.

In my opinion Ethan could be happy with this life if not for the needs and wants of his wife and children along with social pressure. He is a man with a wonderful work ethic and very high moral ground. He knows that his wife (Mary) and kids (Allen and Ellen) are wanting material things that he can not afford such as cars, TVs, and other things that he can not provide for them. Even a simple family vacation is not in their grasp. He sees signs of moral decay in his children. He sees the decline in respect for their elders and work ethic. Ethan is a man of high moral integrity and he has no desire to bend and stoop to the lowered standards of morality in which seem to surround him and yet he is tempted.

In this story we watch Ethan struggle to justify bending the rules to get ahead in life. We have an inside view to his actions and thoughts via the awesome first person narrative voice. He comes across opportunities to get ahead that very from lightly sinister to very criminal. Through Steinbeck's clever and elegant prose we get to see how these actions and behaviors are justified and played out to bring Ethan the opportunities for wealth. Some of the opportunities are whether or not he will turn in Maurillo for being an illegal immigrant? Will he go after a sexy middle aged seductress? Will he take a surcharge on supplies for the shop? Will he rob a bank?

Opinion and Thoughts
I liked the story. I have a hard time saying, "go get this book and read it, you won't regret it," because I think it could be one of those hit and miss books. It might not seem relevant, and yet it can be relevant. But it took some thinking on my part to see it as relevant. Once my mind got going with moral corruption and decay I couldn't help think in our time we are so desensitized to moral corruption because of all the high profile people in one money, sex, or corrupt scandal after another, that Ethan's actions may seem commonplace. Or maybe we can't see why he is so conflicted.

When the book opened up, it read like a 1960's movie. While reading I was thinking of what the other members were thinking of it and I didn't enjoy it as much as I enjoy it now in my memory. It was witty, sarcastic and well written.

I am a huge John Steinbeck fan and for me the book did not disappoint. I would read it and I couldn't seem to put it down. But I did not find myself rushing to pick it back up even though I knew that each time I didn't want to put it down. I read it in three to four sitting over a month. That is rather strange for me for a book that I like. The first time I stopped to keep pace with the group. Then it felt like a chore to pick it up. Perhaps I knew I knew I wouldn't get lost in a super plot driven book. And perhaps I knew I would feel Steinbeck's agitation. Yes, I think so! I could feel Steinbeck in there struggling it out with Ethan. Sometimes it was frustrating and seemed like work. Oh! The power of a good writer!

The book has lingered with me and even today in my office I sit here observing others and wonder if they are having an "Ethan Hawley" moment. For me that mean holding high moral integrity, or being able to justify the wrong action as reasonable, as an end to a means. For East of Eden fans, this will bring to mind Timshel. I believe that John Steinbeck had this always in his mind and his thoughts and in his writing. And that is why I continue to be a fan and will continue to savor his works. This was the last work published before he died. A year later he won the Nobel Prize for literature. It was a prize he didn't feel he deserved. I firmly believe as much as any one has ever deserved it, he did.

America, 1961 and 2001: This is a frightening book, with more real horror than ten of the standard fare. By detailing one man's sliding morals, it holds up a mirror to everyone, as we all have faced similar decisions between doing what is right and doing what is convenient. And facing ourselves can be truly horrifying -- especially when the collective result of everyone's decisions is clearly evident in the ethical morass of today's world, from a President trying to re-formulate the English language to the Enron financial fiasco to wide-spread cheating on exams at military academies that pride themselves on the honor system. For this novel Steinbeck decided to remove himself from his normal California setting in favor of the East Coast. By doing so he availed himself of a milieu where tradition and 'old money' set the standards for acceptance into 'society'. Ethan Hawley is a man whose family used to be part of that 'society', but due to bad financial decisions he now finds himself clerking for an immigrant who owns the grocery store he himself used to own. With a wife quietly but constantly chiding him about her desires for a better life, to be able to hold her head up in society, and two kids constantly clamoring for more things, Ethan finds himself at a crossroads between a rigid moral code instilled in him by his aunt and grandfather, and providing a better life for those he loves.Told partially in first person in spare but very effective prose, the road that Ethan spirals down is brilliantly portrayed, from his 'sermons' to the groceries, to his internal 'conversations' with his grandfather, to the seemingly chance happenings and conversations in his little town that spawns an idea and method for robbing the local bank, to his 'dropping a dime' on his immigrant boss, to his betrayal of his alcoholic friend Danny. Each action and decision proceeds logically from the previous one, each one more step down a path with no end, a path which Ethan continues to tell himself that he can abandon with no lingering aftereffects at any time. Each point is meticulously plotted, with all the proper items set in place before the action, and the choice of time, setting, and materials is rich in irony, a sure mark of an author fully in control of his subject.The ending is deliberately ambiguous. By the time I reached that point I had been so drawn into Ethan's character I found that his final decision was tremendously important to me. Each reader ultimately must draw his own conclusion about what Ethan will do, but regardless of what answer the reader reaches, no reader can remain unaffected by this book, and will find his life richer for having read it.Steinbeck was one of the great American writers. His Nobel prize was richly deserved, and this book, while not as well known as his Grapes of Wrath or East of Eden, is certainly one of the reasons why, rivaling his other works in power and insightful looks at American society, just as valid today as when it was written, and peopled by a very living set of characters.

http://www.fnordinc.com/2009/08-05/bo...

Deciding to read this was one of the best moves i have made in a long time. I have always felt that Steinbeck was hit or miss. some of his work is easy. Others can never cath my attention enough to be able to make it worth the time. Reading Discontent, i thought at first i would be working with the latter of the two choices. I was dead wrong on this. As Steinbeck’s last work published before his death, it is a work worthy of the title “Literary Classic” that it is often assigned.

Ethan comes from money. The founders of New Baytown included his family. Whalers and supposed pirates, their fortunes were amassed over generations. through a series of bad decisions and bad advice, Ethan’s father loses it all. Ethan finds himself stuck working as a clerk at a local, immigrant owned grocery.

The main character, Ethan Allen Hawley, took some getting used to, but after 20 pages or so, i was very endeared to his character. He has a strange reserved quality that keeps everyone at a distance, even his family and friends. Strangely though, no one recognizes his reservations as he hides it all behind a veneer of humor and silliness. People see his shiny exterior and, blinded by the glare, do not look further in.

His story lends itself to the reader in a manner that makes him very likable. Stuck in a self perpetuating cycle of sameness, Ethan cannot be happy with the world he is in, but is far too afraid of change to do anything about it. his wife and children depend on him and taking chances could lose him all he holds dear. This all changes when Ethans wife has her fortune read by a friend, Margie Young-Hunt. This reading of the cards starts a Ethan thinking that his world is of his own making and no one can change his world except himself, the cost of this change is negotiable.

The whole story takes place between Easter and July 1960. Reading it gives a Unique insight into the era, which is only intensified by the workings of Ethan’s mind, sense of humor, and utter need for something better than what he is.

The following passage was my favorite two paragraphs from the book. It is the internal thinking of Ethan as he goes up to the attic to help his son, Allen, locate some research material.

~~~~~~~~~~~~
I remember thinking how wise a man was H.C. Andersen. The king told his secrets down a well, and his secrets were safe. A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders. The tale I may tell to Allen must be differently built from the same tale told to my Mary, and that in turn shaped to fit Marullo if Marullo is to join it. But perhaps the Well of Hosay Andersen is best. It only receives, and the echo it gives back is quiet and soon over.

I guess we’re all, or most of us, the wards of that nineteenth-century science which denied existence to anything it could not measure or explain. The things we couldn’t explain went right on but surely not with our blessing. We did not see what we couldn’t explain, and meanwhile a great part of the world was abandoned to children, insane people, fools, and mystics, who were most interested in what is than why it is.So many old and lovely things are stored in the world’s attic, because we don’t want them around us and we don’t dare throw them out.
~~~~~~~~~~~~

fnordinc.com ( )

This is a wonderful short novel by a master of his craft at the peak of his form. It is also his last novel.

Some people at the time it was published felt it was a wrong turning for Steinbeck ("The Grapes of Wrath", "Tortilla Flat") to abandon both the west coast that had made him famous and brought his considerable social conscience to the world's attention for an east coast grifter's POV. "The Winter of Our Discontent" is a story that has nothing but shades of gray. Everyone in it is shady somehow. That is, I think, what verschmeckled the reviewers and made the public angry. Up until then, there were clear-cut Good Guys and Bad Guys in every Steinbeck tale. Here...no, no one qualifies as all good or all bad.

The POV is of Ethan, a man who is the degenerate scion of a venerable family. He is married with teenaged kids, and he will do anything to support his family. Including, to their horror, work for an Italian grocer as his clerk. The nerve of the man, a son of the founder of his town, working for someone who *should* be his gardener, according to his friends and his kids.

Well, he thinks, how can I help it, we all gotta eat. So he hatches a plot that will restore the family "honor" by swindling a friend. He goes through with it. He gets what he wants. And, frankly, so does the "swindled" friend, an alcoholic prowling for his next few thousand drinks.

This isn't really Steinbecky stuff, it's too hard to pin down from a moral standpoint. On the other hand, it's superbly told, and it's amazingly well crafted, and it's undoubtedly the best thing Steinbeck wrote after 1950. Reviews were harsh, sales were poor, and Steinbeck lost heart for fiction after that. He published two travel books before his death in 1968, a mere 30 years after "The Grapes of Wrath" burst on the scene. Imagine the wonders he could have produced had he lived to an Updikey 80-plus.

What a wonderful read, and so overlooked...please don't overlook it any longer! ( )

A happy-go-lucky grocery man turns his luck around and ends up finding out he's a man he can't live with. Filled with incredible, poetic metaphors that make the slow parts of the story worthwhile.

Steinbeck is able to capture the human soul and spread it out on the table for all to see. ( )