I
love America, and even if John Steinbeck paints a thrilling picture of
its horrors, his writing seems to have the opposite of its intended
effect on me. Although he puts forward fantastic arguments of the
country's man-made problems, every book of his that I've read just makes
me ache to be an American, to live in that beautiful country with its
wild excesses and rampant commercialism. The problem with Steinbeck is
that his depictions of nature are so alluring that no matter how
depraved his catalogues of societal ills become, I still can't tear
myself away from the idea that to live inside the America of his books
would be a wonderfully pure existence. Even The Grapes of Wrath
convinced me that begging for work in a California stuffed wall-to-wall
with starving migrants would be a brilliant way of life.
The
Winter of Our Discontent is the novel that won Steinbeck the Nobel
Prize, and it definitely stands up well alongside The Grapes of Wrath
and East of Eden, two of his most famous works, and the two that I had
read before Winter. The book tells the story of Ethan Hawley, a man
who's spent his entire life doing good and getting nowhere, and finally
snaps and uses Capitalism's wiles against it in an attempt to beat the
system and become rich. What follows is a total disintegration of morals
as Hawley chases respect and a life of gentility, and he's sucked under
the current of scum that engulfs those who abandon decency in pursuit
of Yankee dollars. But still, what a country. Take away its society and
it would be perfect.
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