The Winter of Our Discontent

By John Steinbeck

Subjects: Human behavior, Fiction, family life, general, Literature, Large type books, Manners and customs, Grocery trade, Fiction, family life, Fiction, American fiction (fictional works by one author), Social life and customs, Employees, Conduct of life, Classic Literature, Success

Description: Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune, and his father's loss of the family wealth, the hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, characterises successin every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery.'