The Winter of our Discontent

Caption: the words of Shakespeare, one of the greatest wordsmiths of the English language, thus reduced to crass commercialism and the pursuit of the almighty dollar. Funny, isn't it?

I'm currently re-reading John Steinbeck's Winter of our Discontent. I haven't read this book since I was a sophomore in high school. I remember it made a huge impression on me, but I didn't realize why until re-reading it today. The whole point of the story is to ask whether honesty and morality are dead (it was published in 1961).

I must say that I appreciate Steinbeck's attempt to end the novel with something akin to hope, but I must say that I'm not so hopeful as he was able to be. One of Ethan Allen Hawley's dilemma's in the book is to fight with his own sense of honor and his shame at having lost the wealth that went along with the prestige of his family name. To gain back the wealth, he feels as though he will have to sacrifice his integrity. But then, it seems to him as though everyone else is doing it; what is integrity worth, really? It certainly isn't going to pay for the children's education or let his wife hold her head high in town.

I find myself wondering while reading this book if Steinbeck is right - are people in the modern world so lacking in integrity, a strong sense of what ought to be and what ought not, a sense of pride or a sense of responsibility?

Another book in the stack I picked up last month in my written-in-English book forays was a novel by Donna Leon about the Commissario Brunetti in Venice, Italy. While one book, Steinbeck's, is about American morality in the mid-twentieth century, Leon's book is about crime in Venice at the turn of the twenty-first century, and yet the book I read by Leon, Willful Behavior, also engages the same issues. Brunetti's wife, Paola, is a literature professor who was trying to teach her students about honor as seen in specific works of Edith Wharton. Only one student actually understood the concept, because the characters who acted with honor were not rewarded for their efforts. In fact, one loses her life and one loses every chance at happiness; events such as these do not make an especially compelling case for honorable action.

What do honor and integrity matter in today's world? Leon said, through Paola, that modern students are almost incapable of understanding the difficulties of acting with honor in a world in which a throwaway culture is embraced, selfishness is the order of the day, and our idols/role models are not people who live their lives with integrity, but people like Brad Pitt, Lindsay Lohan, Rush Limbaugh, and George Bush.

Should we give up? After all, if you believe that there is only one life and it doesn't matter what happens afterward, either that you will be reincarnated as a toad if you're a jerk in this life or that you will go to hell - if it doesn't matter how you live, then honor and integrity most certainly don't matter either.

Another part of Leon's book that I found interesting was her treatment of the Bible, for which Paola is described as having no special fondness. During her lecture on Wharton, she sees that the students are disinterested and uncaring, and is tempted to say something about those who have eyes to see but do not see, ears to hear but do not hear, but "she refrained, realizing that her students would be as insensitive to the evangelist as they had proven themselves to be to Wharton."

In Steinbeck's novel, Hawley's son plagiarizes an essay written during the 19th century for the "I love America" contest so that he can go to Washington, DC and meet the president. When he is caught, he tells his father, "That's the way the cooky crumbles."

Is it really? When asked by Jesus if he would leave like other disciples had, Peter replied, "Lord, to whom shall we go?" If we as a society choose to "move beyond" honor and decency, integrity and respect, because they come from outdated notions in an outdated religion, where shall we go?

I wonder what the executives of Enron said when they were caught. "That's the way the cooky crumbles" perhaps?