The Winter of Our Discontent

The Nobel committee claimed that while giving John Steinbeck the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature that he had resumed his place as an independent expounder of the truth with an unbiased feel for what is authentically American with The Winter of Our Discontent.The main character of Steinbecks final book Ethan Allen Hawley is a clerk at a grocery shop that his ancestors formerly ran. Ethans wife is restless now that he is no longer a member of Long Islands aristocratic society and his teenagers are pining for the enticing material comforts he is unable to supply. Then one day in the midst of a moral dilemma Ethan makes the decision to relax his own stringent standards.