I couldn't sleep last night, so I got up and finished reading the last 50 or so pages of The Winter of Our Discontent. It's a wierd book and very different from the other Steinbeck I've read. It's set in 1960 instead of the '30s or '40s, so it has a more modern point of view. Most of the book is dialogue, using lots of slang and probably jingles and slogans too. And it doesn't help that the main character, Ethan Hawley, is something of a joker. What's tricky about the book is that what's going on in the dialoge is not what's really going on, so there were several parts where I was confused about the plot.

Let me explain. The main theme of the book is how business is at odds with human nature. To be successful in business, one needs to be calculating, efficient, and only think about the bottom line, but to be a successful human being, one needs to be caring, empathetic, and understanding. Hawley begins the book as a grocery clerk, and basically makes the choice to be a businessman rather than a human, and to do this he ends up fucking over some people that he really cares about. But he has to do whatever he can to win back the family fortune, right? So in much of the dialogue he is lying, playing dumb, or has an ulterior motive. He struggles with the guilt of his decisions, but also realizes that humans are both cruel and kind, depending on the situation.

The other main theme is that capitalism is going to destroy American "values", represented by Ethan's two kids. True business acumen breeds two types of people: cheats and snitches. This is more of an interpretation on my part, but it seems more and more obvious near the end of the book, and it's hard not to be disgusted with the kids once everything plays out. But morally, Hawley can't punish them because he's done both!

Unfortunately, I can't really recommend this book to anyone. I think it's an interesting picture of post-WWII America, but it's not really applicable today. The implicit racism and sexism in the novel don't exist in the same way nowadays. Also, the importance of family lineage and heritage that drives most of what Hawley is trying to accomplish doesn't apply today. And the "insights" into capitalism, like how a criminal with wealth is just called a capitalist, are common knowledge today. We know that God does not balance everything out in the end like Adam Smith said. A lot of people don't even believe in God now. There are just so many important political and social events that happened after the book was written.

I will say there was one part in the middle were Hawley was going to do something really bad, and had planned it for several chapters, and right when he was about to go through with it circumstances made him abort the plan. That part was pretty exciting.