Analysis Of Winter Of Our Discontent

In the Short Story “The Winter of our discontent”, John Steinbeck expresses his views of the world and of its corruption. Ethan Hawley was introduced to us as a good hard working person who was exceedingly generous towards others even though he was often a victim of betrayal. He lived in a world where no one respected him because of his social status, which slowly ate away his honesty and moral value. What made it worse was that he endured endless accounts of pressure from his family and was expected to do better even though Ethan struggled to maintain his belief in this corrupt society. He came back to realize the mistakes he has done and wanted to change back to his old ways. We can compare this to the recent Occupy movement that happened …show more content…
He feels that society is attempting to alter his values of being honest and generous. The owner of the store that Ethan worked at was an Italian immigrant named Alfio Marullo. Marullo himself is a man who is corrupt and is willing to do anything to earn more money as he tells Ethan to charge customers higher to earn more money. Marullo goes on talking about how Ethan should manipulate customers, as this is the only way to stay in business. Marullo believes that “business is money and that money is not friendly.”(75) This goes against Ethan’s ethical values. Ethan starts to see this world as a dark place, which only seems to creep slowly towards him. He starts to realize that his families’ happiness depends on wealth; his wife constantly complains that they should be getting rich someday. We can see that Ethan is being persuaded to do something wrong by many people for the sake of money. He is offered a deal from Mr. Bigger 's and is told by Margie Young-Hunt that he will see a future of success and full of wealth if he accepts this bribe. The Banker tells Ethan to become ruthless, as society is a cruel place to be. Because of all this pressure it causes Ethan to think that he shouldn’t be a store clerk and that he deserves more and plans to restore the Hawley’s …show more content…
We can see to this in today’s society in the United States. We recently had the Occupy Movement in 2011 that began in New York. The Occupy Movement was about the awareness of social and economical injustice. Millions of people are in desperate situation and are in need of help and all society does is move them aside and continue to make money off of them for themselves. These people are being given bonuses for being corrupt and greedy and it seems like no one is going to stop them for any actions they are doing wrong as they believe they are in control. Therefore the Citizens have decided to finally stand up for themselves and fight against the unequal wealth distribution and bring justices to those who are doing wrong. We must understand there are still honest and good people in today society and we must fight for what society should truly be. Even though America was created as a land of freedom and equality it seems like it doesn’t truly stand for what it means. Steinbeck hopes that one-day people will reverse their actions and bring back their ethical