42 pages • 1 hour read
John SteinbeckThe Winter Of Our Discontent
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1961A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Character Analysis
Ethan Hawley
Ethan Hawley is the protagonist and first-person narrator of The Winter of Our Discontent. He is a man who has fallen from familial wealth and power but is satisfied with his life until he notices other people pushing him to realize what they consider to be his full potential. While wondering what his full potential is, Ethan explores options to change his moral code and earn wealth and prestige for himself and for his family. His relative poverty frightens the town because he is the proof that a wealthy white family can experience poverty and diminished social status, and that birthright does not guarantee perpetual wealth. The novel follows his character development from apathetic to ambitious until he ultimately decides that his negation of his own moral code is not worth the guilt and the wealth he acquires. Ethan is easily swayed by other people, but he learns that only he can manifest his own destiny. Ethan also struggles with issues of masculinity. Feeling disconnected from his wife, Ethan turns to richer men to understand how to become greedy and therefore worthy of his wife and family. Ethan’s ultimate redemption is that, despite the immoral things he has done, he resolves to live for a more hopeful future.
Mary Hawley
Mary Hawley is Ethan’s wife. She grew up in poverty (though her brother, Dennis, became wealthy) and finds herself elevated in financial status through her marriage to Ethan. She becomes accustomed to their life and desires more money and social influence. Mary is characterized by her devotion to her children, her kindness to Margie, and her patience with Ethan. She sleeps soundly, which symbolizes her lack of concern for the world around her and her reliance on Ethan to worry about their wellbeing. Mary encourages Ethan to invest her inheritance from her brother and refuses to help him with the business of it. She is content with her role as a mother and homemaker and epitomizes the 1960s middle-class wife. Mary does not insult or berate her husband the way other people in the novel do, but she is still a source of stress and shame for Ethan, who worries that he does not show her enough love, appreciation, and leadership.
Allen Hawley
Allen is Ethan and Mary’s son. He is 14 years old and determined to be a television celebrity. Allen’s major contribution to the novel is two key moments. First, when Ethan shows Allen his library, he does so out of a genuine desire to connect with his son over the power of storytelling. This episode provides Steinbeck with the opportunity for metafiction, in which his novel evokes other texts and the reading process itself. Secondly, Allen uses the library to plagiarize his essay for the national competition, thus betraying his father’s trust. Because Allen wins the contest through cheating and is not remorseful about it, he becomes the symbol for the corruption of American capitalist individualism. Furthermore, Allen refuses to help his father in the grocery store, preferring to dream about being a celebrity. Allen places celebrity before manual labor, emphasizing a switch in American culture from valuing hard work to valuing popularity.
Ellen Hawley
Ellen is Ethan and Mary’s daughter. Steinbeck her as a “girl-girl-girl and thirteen to boot, sweet and sad, gay and delicate, sickly when she needs it” (74). . She whines to her father that she wants to be rich, and Ethan is consistently stunned to note how womanly she seems for her young age. But Ellen’s characterization drastically changes by the end of the novel. She saves her father’s life in two ways. She saves his life by switching out his razor blades with the family talisman. Figuratively, she saves his life because in doing so, Ethan discovers that she is pure of heart, and he can find purpose in living to raise her for a more hopeful America.
Danny Taylor
Danny Taylor is a former childhood friend of Ethan’s and another fallen member of a once-great Anglo-Saxon family. Danny has become destitute and dependent on alcohol. The residents of New Baytown consider him an embarrassment, a direct affront to notions of white superiority and privilege. Danny still owns family land and assets but spends his days drinking in a shanty dwelling. Ethan spends Part 1 feeling sorry for Danny, haunted by the memories of their friendship and Danny’s former vitality. In Part 2, Ethan’s greed outweighs his empathy, and he betrays Danny, despite his guilt in doing so. Danny thus becomes a challenge to Ethan’s moral relativism.
Margie Young-Hunt
Margie is a twice-divorced woman who is at the center of the town’s sexual activity. Steinbeck describes her entrance to Marullo’s store in highly sexualized language: “Margie Young-Hunt came in, pert-breasted in a salmon sweater. Her tween skirt clung lovingly in against her thighs and tucked up under her proud fanny […] (16). This description is told from Ethan’s point of view and reveals his lust for her. Margie represents two important elements. The first is seduction. She is unmarried and flirtatious, and looks for wealthy husbands by dating the town’s men in secret. Men give her favors, gifts, and attention for her body. Margie is trying to secure her financial future; with few employment opportunities within the social norms of 1960 America, she uses her sexuality for survival.
The second element she represents is fate. With her supposed psychic power, she foretells Ethan’s illustrious future. Her tarot card readings delight Mary, and though Ethan is suspicious of their validity, her predication inspires him to pursue wealth. Margie’s family ancestry includes accusation of witchcraft, cementing Margie as a symbol of mysterious, dangerous female power.
Alfio Marullo
Alfio Marullo is an Italian immigrant and the owner of the New Baytown grocery store. The store used to belong to Ethan’s family until his father lost their fortune during the Great Depression. Now, Ethan works as a clerk in Marullo’s store and resents his position. Ethan finds Marullo crude and uncultured; he finds Marullo’s obsession with profiting by upselling low-quality products distasteful. Unlike Ethan, Marullo has had to work for his security and understands the value of money in a way that Ethan never can. Marullo is from Sicily, which is notable because at that time, Sicilians were not considered white. Marullo began selling produce out of a cart, while Ethan’s family inherited generations of wealth. Marullo’s ownership of the store that the Hawley’s owned symbolizes the changes in 20th-century America that frightened those who believed in white supremacy, causing a backlash of violence against immigrants and people from other underrepresented groups. Marullo trusts Ethan, showing him generosity and never suspecting that Ethan helped engineer his deportation. Steinbeck highlights this irony as a shameful indictment of white America’s racism.
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