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Common Ground

In many of John Steinbeck's works there are themes and elements that parallel his other works. Steinbeck often tackles the result of people's bad fortune and the realization that their dreams have been destroyed. We can see that in his Pulitzer Prize winning The Grapes of Wrath and his critically acclaimed novel Of mice and Men Steinbeck shows us the results of people having their dreams destroyed. Steinbeck shows us that in his work he gives different characters similar goals and aspirations and has them destroyed in similar ways.

In both of the above-mentioned books key characters have their dreams destroyed. "Steinbeck often created characters possessing lofty goals; lofty goals in a world of despair and corruption. His characters did not have a dream of tangible luxuries, but a dream of corporal well being and refuge with loved ones"(Thomas 238). In Of Mice and Men, Lennie and George travel to California in order to find work. Once they salvage up enough money, Lennie and George plan on being independent and not worrying about the outside world and its enigmas. George stated "Someday we're gonna get all the jack together and were gonna have a little house and a couple of acres an' a cow and some pigs." (Roberts, 187). George's dream ran deeper than a love for farming and independence. The motivation for this dream was not just a product of the poor state of the country and widespread unemployment, but it was a dream that could ensure a happy ending for Lennie. George is anxious to secure his own place so that Lennie can live the type of life where he can be happy and not be hurt by people who do not understand his simple ways. George would run the farm; Lennie would tend the rabbits. This was Lennies dream, to tend the rabbits. He could think of nothing else more enjoyable than tending the rabbits. "Lennies dram is to have all the rabbits that he can take care of, and his attempts to do the right thing are motivated by his fear that George won't let him take care of the rabbits." (Tedlock 243). In The Grapes of Wrath the Joad family also dreams of moving out west. They do this in hopes of escaping the direful situation in Oklahoma. "Gonna buy a car and shove out west where it's easy living." (Steinbeck 57). The Joads like Lennie and George plan on saving up enough money for their own plot of land. Once this task is accomplished they hope to live a self-sufficient life and rely on one another. They believe that once in California they will find life easier and find all they need in surplus. "Jus' let me get out to California where I can pick me an orange when I want it. Or grapes, there's a thing I ain't never had enough of. Gonna get me a whole bunch of grapes off a bush, or whatever, an' I'm gonna squash 'em on my face an' let 'em run off my chin".(Steinbeck 105).

There is clearly a parallel between the themes of these two books. As both works have the same basis for the characters dreams. How the dream was destroyed George and Lennie never had their dreams come true. When they arrived at the homestead for work; George and Lennie at once felt hostility from the ranch owner's son Curley. Curley was a sinister short-tempered man possessing little physical stature. From Curleys first encounter with Lennie, Curley was looking for an excuse to fight the simple-minded Lennie. "Curley develops a hatred for the bigger man which will be expressed in his desire to mutilate Lennie in the final scene." (Magil 4296) Lennie ended up killing Curleys wife. This was not a malicious act however. It was an accident that had an unfortunate consequence. "Lennies greatest difficulty is remembering. While he never plans to do anything wrong, he simply cannot remember what is wrong and what is not." (Magil 89). That consequence being the death of Curley's wife, and that Curley ordered the men to kill Lennie. The workers assembled and took up arms. George knew that the men were not out to right a wrong, but out to seek vengeance. George decided that he must kill Lennie. George knew that this was the only solution that would spare Lennie the misery that would be inflicted on him by Curley and his men. Like George and Lennie the Joads never saw their dreams materialize. They to were victims of the greed of this time period. The people of the west were averse to change. They were afraid of the migrants because of their different life styles. "Sure they talk the same language, but they ain't the same. Look how they live. Think any of us would live like that? Hell no!" (Steinbeck 302). The Joads soon learned that the people of the west actually hated the "Oakies". A man returning back to the Midwest from California told of the troubles to be found ahead. "People gonna have a look in their eye. They gonna look at you an' their face says, "I don't like you, you son-of-a-bitch." Gonna be deputy sheriffs an they'll push you aroun'. You camp on the roadside an they'll move you on. You gonna see in peoples faces how they hate you."(Steinbeck 306). As the Joads arrive into California they see that their dreams will go unanswered. The land looked beautiful but the circumstances would not allow for prosperity. "Looking into the valley the Joads regret that theirs cannot be the tranquil life that it promises."(Tedlock 40). The dreams of George of and Lennie were destroyed as a result of apathy.

Throughout this novel we can see how Steinbeks characters have a total lack of interest in others well being. In the first chapter the bus driver drops George and Lennie off miles from their destination. The driver did this just to spare himself a few minutes of work. The dream was not destroyed due to killing of Curley's wife at the hands of Lennie. But as a result of Curley's lack of empathy. If Curley were more understanding and considerate of Lennies condition the dream may have grown and bloomed into reality. However given the circumstances George had no choice but to sacrifice he and Lennies dream so that Lennie would not suffer at the hands of Curley. George decided that the only solution was to kill Lennie. The Joads also had their dreams destroyed at the hands of apathetic people. The Joads were treated and looked at by the ranch owners like a team of oxen. They were expected to work long and hard hours for insulting wages. The authorities did not have any concern for the poor who were being taken advantage of. Children were not even spared from the work and, like their parents went hungry. "The kid's yo ought to see them. Little boils, like comin' out, an' they can't run around. Give 'em some windfall fruit, an' they bloated up." ('Steinbeck 363). They turned their heads away from the atrocities that were taking place in front of them, and bowed their heads to the almighty dollar. The migrants had no choice if they wanted to work. If they refused the wages somebody else would be glad to take the job. "Suppose you got a job an' work, an' there’s jus' one fella wants the job. You got to pay him what he ast's. But suppose them men got kids, an' them kids is hungry. Spose a dime'll buy a box of mush for them. An you got a hundred men, jus' offer 'em a nickel. Why, they’ll kill each other fighting for that nickel". (Steinbeck 324). It was a rat race. The only way to get ahead in the world portrayed by Steinbeck was to turn your back on your fellow man.

In these to works of Steinbeck the plight of the migrants is examined. Often it's the wealth of the landowners pitted against the poor. In both works this wealth has molded the authorities into cold heartless men. These greedy individuals destroy the dreams of the migrants. The villainous characters he portrayed only had a sense of present pleasure. They had no concern for the fact that at the present moment a child had no life or food. The lower class had no way of getting ahead. Steinbecks charecters never had their dreams materialize into achieved goals. This was true in both of Steinbecks above mentioned works. George and Lennies followed their dream only to have it turn into a nightmare. The Joads journey led them from the barrenand sterile land, to the green, fertile yet poisonous land. In the end dreams turned out to be just that, dreams, nothing more.

"I TRADED A HABIT OF CONDUCT AND ATTITUDE FOR COMFORT AND DIGNITY AND A CUSHION OF SECURITY"

John Steinbeck showed alarm and disapproval to the rise of materialism and the post-World War 2, capitalistic morals found in America during the 1960's. These views were expressed through various characters in his novel The Winter of Our Discontent. This book dealt with the downward spiral of a good man, Ethan Allen Hawley. Pressured on all sides by influences once considered immoral, but now accepted in the 1960's, Ethan, a grocery store clerk from a family of sea captains and wealthy businessmen, "...traded a habit of conduct and attitude for comfort and dignity and a cushion of security".

Ethan's son Allen embodies the ideals of the up and coming generation in the 1960's. Growing up in the age of the supermarkets, game show scandals, and fixed traffic tickets, Allen's view of "Something for nothing. Wealth without effort" represented the exact opposite that of his father. Ethan, a man perhaps too concerned with the past, was a character Steinbeck used to speak his voice. Ethan was a man accustomed to honesty, good business, and respect. Allen lived in a world much different than that of Ethan. Allen was raised thinking that being dishonest, immoral, and underhanded was accepted. "Everybody does it. It's the way the cookie crumbles.", Allen said when confronted by his father about plagiarizing famous speeches for the "I Love America Contest". The only real opposition came when a person got caught. It almost seemed as if society allowed these illegal actions as long as the person(s) evaded punishment. The only reason Allen seemed upset was because he got caught, not because what he had done was wrong.

Steinbeck seemed to show that he felt family history to be very important. Ethan showed great persistence in asking Mr. Baker about the sinking of the Belle-Adair, which Ethan's predecessors felt to have been purposefully burned by the Baker family for the insurance money. Ethan's primary motivation to make a few immoral decisions came from internal pressure he felt to live up to the name of Hawley. He seemed very self-conscience and maybe even ashamed of the fact that he was a lowly grocery clerk, in a foreign owned store, which his family had once owned. Ethan began to hate Mr. Baker when he discovered that the Baker family had used the Hawley's trust in them to gain more land in New Baytown by giving bad investment tips. The prevailing view in the 1960's had become "You got to look after number one". This idea was shown through Margie Young-Hunt, the aging woman who was recognized even by herself as being, "New Baytown's playmate...". Margie was a self-serving woman who married and divorced for money. She lived her life for herself, always looking upon a situation and deciding what she could get out of it. She didn't sleep with the men she did (Chief Smith, Marullo, Danny, Joey, Biggers, etc.) for money, or because of a low self-esteem, or for any reason other than for her own personal gain. Through these men she became more knowledgeable about New Baytown than anyone else did, "These friends talked freely and without fear to her, for to them she was a kind of Andersen's well-receptive, unjudging and silent."

John Steinbeck uses Ethan's encounter with Mr. Biggers to show the contrast between his views, as shown through Ethan, and the views of the majority of America in the 1960's, as shown through Mr. Biggers and Ethan's wife, Mary. Ethan was offered a deal from Biggers, a wholesale food salesman. If Ethan bought from him, he would get a five percent bonus, and Marullo would never know. "This five percent could be in cash-no records, no trouble with the tax boys...". Then Biggers offered Ethan a bribe. Ethan was appalled at Mr. Biggers offer; "You want me to double-cross the man I work for?". Biggers responded with a stereotypical American response, "Who's double-crossed? He don't lose anything and you make a buck. Everybody's got a right to make a buck."

Later, Mary attacked and scolded Ethan for being naive and morally pure. "I'd like to be able to hold up my head in this town," Mary would gladly trade "...a habit of conduct and attitude for comfort and dignity..." Steinbeck used Mary to show the typical American desire for the materialistic things in life. She was so preoccupied with being respected and comfortable that she condoned unethical ways of getting money. Mary, and the children, were so absorbed with having a car, a t.v., money for summer camp, that they accepted the contests, the scams, the bribes, the insider information, and the five percent bonuses as suitable and guiltless ways to obtain"...comfort and dignity and a cushion of security."

Because of the criticism that Steinbeck gave the post World War 2 America, The Winter of Our Discontent was not a popular book in the states, although very popular abroad. The book condemned a trend of moral degradation that America as a whole did not want to recognize. Steinbeck pointed out the increasing number of Americans that were grabbing, "...the gold ring for a free ride," (212) with disregard for their friends, neighbors, and family. Through his description of the "downfall of a good man", Steinbeck forced Americans to be wary of their materialistic wants, and to take heed of what is just and ethical.

[Steinbeck's Primitivism]

      There were a few social realists in the period [the 1930s] who did promise something different from the automatism of contemporary naturalism and the cult of the hard-boiled, notably John Steinbeck; but his case has always been a curious one. Steinbeck's approach to the novel was interesting because he seemed to stand apart at a time when naturalism had divided writers into two mutually exclusive groups, since the negation of its starved and stunted spirit came more and more from writers who often had no sympathy with realism at all, and were being steadily pulled in the direction of surrealism and abstractionism. Naturalism had made for so drearily uniform a conception of the novel, so mechanical an understanding of reality, that it is not strange to find many writers, and particularly so many young writers, revolting entirely against realism to work in Innerlichkeit. Just as the literary criticism of the crisis period was marked by the conflict of two groups of absolutists, one absorbed in "social significance," the other in technical problems, so it is significant to note the polarization in fiction between a grim surface realism and a literature of private sensibility. Inevitably, in a world where the public reality can seem so persistently oppressive and meaningless, while the necessity for new means of communication is so pressing, the more sensitive artist is steadily withdrawn into himself, into those reaches of the unconscious where "one can make a world within a world." But in this conflict between the outer and inner worlds of reality, between the fragmentary realizations that each represents, the patterns of contemporary desperation can nullify one another.

      Steinbeck, standing apart from both the contemporary naturalists and the new novel of sensibility that one finds in Faulkner and Wolfe, brought a fresh note into contemporary fiction because he promised a realism less terror-ridden than the depression novel, yet one consciously responsible to society; a realism mindful of the terror and disorganization of contemporary life, but not submissive to the spiritual stupor of the time; a realism in some equal measure, if only in its aspiration, to the humanity, the gaiety, the wholeness, of realism in a more stable period. It is the failure of so many contemporary American novelists to suggest even the urgency of such an achievement that marks their unconscious submission to the demoralization in contemporary life. Yet it cannot be said that Steinbeck's work, which has become more and more tenuous and even sentimental, has really answered to that need. With a writer like Farrell, oppressively narrow as his world is, one at least knows where he stands -- his integrity, his materialism, and the full range of his belief. Steinbeck is a greater humanist, and there is poetry in some of his best work, particularly in The Long Valley stories and The Pastures of Heaven, that naturalists of Farrell's stamp have never been able to conceive. But there is something imperfectly formed about Steinbeck's work; it has no creative character. For all his moral serenity, the sympathetic understanding of men under strain that makes a strike novel like In Dubious Battle so notable in the social fiction of the period, Steinbeck's people are always on the verge of becoming human, but never do. There is a persistent failure to realize human life fully in his books, where the characters in many American naturalistic novels have simply ceased to be human. After a dozen books, Steinbeck still looks like a distinguished apprentice, and what is so striking in his work is its inconclusiveness, his moving approach to human life, and yet his failure to be creative with it.

      Steinbeck's moral advantage as a realist in the depression era was to be so different in his region -- the Salinas Valley in California -- his subject, as to seem a different kind. It was his famous "versatility" that first earned him his reputation -- his ability to follow a Tortilla Flat with In Dubious Battle, Of Mice and Men with The Grapes of Wrath -- but this was the least noteworthy thing about him and has come more and more to suggest not versatility but a need to fell his way. His great possession as a writer was not an interest in craft or an experimental spirit; it was an unusual and disinterested simplicity, a natural grace and tenderness and ease in his relation to his California world. Artistically, notably in early works like To a God Unknown and The Pastures of Heaven, these appeared as shyly artful primitivism reminiscent of Sherwood Anderson, and in its boyish California mysticism, of Frank Norris. But at bottom Steinbeck's gift was not so much a literary resource as a distinctively harmonious and pacific view of life. In a period when so many better writers exhausted themselves, he had welded himself into the life of the Salinas Valley and enjoyed a spiritual stability by reporting the life cycles of the valley gardeners and mystics and adventurers, by studying and steeping himself in its growth processes out of a close and affectionate interest in the biology of human affairs. Steinbeck's absorption in the life of his native valley gave him a sympathetic perspective on the animal nature of human life, a means of reconciliation of people as people. The depression naturalists saw life as one vast Chicago slaughterhouse, a guerilla war, a perpetual bombing raid. Steinbeck had picked up a refreshing belief in human fellowship and courage; he had learned to accept the rhythm of life. In one of the most beautiful stories in The Long Valley, "The Chrysanthemums," the heroine asks:

Did you ever hear of planting hands? ... It's when you're picking off the buds you don't want. Everything goes right down into your fingertips. You watch your fingers work. They do it themselves. You can see how it is. They pick and pick the buds. They never make a mistake. They're with the plant. Do you see? Your fingers and the plant. You can feel that, right up your arm. They know. They never make a mistake. You can feel it. When you're like that you can't do anything wrong.

      It was this "unpanicky questioning of life," as Edmund Wilson put it, that gave Steinbeck's work its unusual tenderness, gave his Valley-bred simplicity an advantageous perspective on contemporary social problems. With his deep amateur interest in biology, it gave him the necessary detachment and slow curiosity to approach the modern social struggle as a tragicomedy of animal instincts, which, as the best things in The Grapes of Wrath and In Dubious Battle testify, meant an aroused compassion, and understanding of the pain that the human animal can suffer and the mistakes he can make. The Doctor in In Dubious Battle, speaking for Steinbeck, disputes the Communist organizer's instinctive terrorism, and sats quietly:

My senses aren't above reproach, but they're all I have. I want to see the whole picture -- as nearly as I can. I don't want to put on the blinders of "good" and "bad," and limit my vision. If I used the term "good" on a thing, I'd lose my license to inspect it, because there might be bad in it. Don't you see? I want to be able to look at the whole thing.

Later, he adds reflectively: "Group-men are always getting some kind of infection."

      This was the spirit of The Long Valley, the spirit of the old pioneer grandfather in "The Leader of the People," who, reminiscing of the westward migration, described it as "a whole bunch of people made into one big crawling beast.... Every man wanted something for himself, but the big beast that was all of them wanted only westering." People in Steinbeck's work, taken together, are often evil; a society moving on the principle of collective mass slowly poisons itself by corrupting its own members. But beyond his valley-bred conviction of the evil inherent in any society where men are at the mercy of each other's animalism, Steinbeck knew how to distinguish, in works like The Long Valley, In Dubious Battle, and The Grapes of Wrath, between the animal processes of life and social privation. Out of his slow curiosity, the strength of the agrarian tradition in him, Steinbeck was able to invest the migration of the Joads, if not his monochromatic characters, with a genuine tragic quality precisely because he felt so deeply for them and had seen first hand the gap between their simple belief in life and their degradation. He did not confuse the issue in The Grapes of Wrath; he was aroused by the man-made evil the Okies had to suffer, and he knew it as something remediable by men. And where another social realist might have confused the dark corners he described with the whole of life, Steinbeck had the advantage of his Western training, its plain confidence in men. The old pioneer grandfather in The Long Valley, remembering the brutality of men on the great trek, also remembered enough of its glory to say:

It wasn't Indians that were important, or adventurers, or even getting out here.... When we saw the mountains at last, we cried -- all of us. But it wasn't getting here that mattered, it was movement and westering. We carried life out here and set it down the way those ants carried eggs. And I was the leader. The westering was as big as God, and the slow steps that made the movement piled up and piled up until the continent was crossed.

      It was these associations that contributed to the success of The Grapes of Wrath and made it the most influential social novel of the period. Though the book was as urgent and as obvious a social tract for its time as Uncle Tom's Cabin had been for another, it was also the first novel of its kind to dramatize the inflictions of the crisis without mechanical violence and hatred. The bitterness was there, as it should have been, the sense of unspeakable human waste and privation and pain. But in the light of Steinbeck's strong sense of fellowship, his simple indignation at so much suffering, the Joads, while essentially symbolic marionettes, did illuminate something than the desperation of the time: they became a living and challenging part of the forgotten American procession. Though the characters were essentially stage creations, the book brought the crisis that had severed Americans from their history back into it by recalling what they had lost through it. It gave them a design, a sense of control, where out of other depression novels they could get only the aimless maniacal bombardment of rage. The lesson of the crisis, so often repeated in the proletarian novel and yet so lifeless in it, was suddenly luminous: it was an event in history, to be understood by history, to be transformed and remembered and taught in history. It was as if Steinbeck, out of the simplicity of his indignation, had been just primitive enough to call men back to their humanity, to remind depression America that a culture is only the sum total of the human qualities that make it up, and that "life can give a periodical beating to death any time," as a contemporary poet put it, "if given a chance and some help."

      It was this tonic sanity in a bad time, his understanding of the broad processes of human life, that gave Steinbeck his distinction among the depression realists. But no one can pretend, particularly after a book like The Moon Is Down, that it tells the whole story about him. For Steinbeck's primitivism is essentially uncreative, and for all his natural simplicity of spirit, there is trickiness, a stage cunning, behind it that has become depressing. Though his interests have carried him squarely into certain central truths about the nature of life, he has not been able to establish them in human character. Nothing in his books is so dim, significantly enough, as the human beings who live in them, and few of them are intensely imagined as human beings at all. It is obvious that his mind moves happily in realms where he does not have to work in very complex types -- the paisanos in Tortilla Flat, the ranch hands in Of Mice and Men, the Okies in The Grapes of Wrath, the strikers in In Dubious Battle, the farmers in The Long Valley, and the symbolic protagonists of democratic struggle and Nazi power in The Moon Is Down. But what one sees in his handling of these types is not merely a natural affection for this simplicity, but a failure to interest himself too deeply as individuals. It is not their simplicity that makes Lennie and George in Of Mice and Men into furry little animals, or the Joads into stage creations, or the characters in The Moon Is Down into manikins; it is Steinbeck's simplicity of characterization. It is not their paganism that makes the paisanos in Tortilla Flat so hard to take from one point of view; it is their undiluted cuteness. Steinbeck's perspective on human life always gives him a sense of process, an understanding of the circuits through which the human mind can move; but he cannot suggest the density of human life, for his characters are not fully human.

      It is in this light that one can understand why Steinbeck's moral serenity is yet so sterile and why it is so easy for him to step into the calculated sentimentality of Of Mice and Men and The Moon Is Down. In writers of a certain natural awkwardness, like Dreiser and Anderson, there is sentimentality, an impurity that follows from exaggeration and lack of control; but one is always conscious of the amplitude through which they move. Steinbeck is not awkward, no; but though he is restive in his simplicity, his imagination cannot rise above it. And it is that simplicity and facility, working together, a tameness of imagination operating slickly, that give its work its surface paradox of simplicity and trickiness, of integrity of emotion and endless contrivance of means. This does not mean a lack of sincerity; it does mean that Steinbeck is not so simple that he does not know how to please; or to take, as it were, advantage of himself. It is, after all, the cunning behind the poignant situation in Of Mice and Men, a certain Wollcott-like ambush of the heartstrings, that makes his little fable meritricious in its pathos, a moment's gulp; and it is the same air of calculation in The Moon Is Down, so much more glaring because of its subject, that makes this allegorical drama of the struggle of free men today merely depressing.

      The Moon Is Down, published after Pearl Harbor, was heartily disliked by many people; but chiefly, as it would seem, because Steinbeck had not been tough and violent enough, had not portrayed his Nazis in Norway as the brutal gangsters that Nazis in Norway, as elsewhere, have been. But this demand for absolute realism was too shrill with war tension, and missed the root of the book's failure. What is really striking about the novel -- so openly written, like Of Mice and Men, for the stage -- is how fantastically simple the whole anti-fascist struggle appeared to Steinbeck even as allegory, and yet how easy it was for him to transcribe his naievete into the shabbiest theater emotions. There is credulity here, even an essential innocence of spirit, and the kind of slow curiosity about all these war-haunted creatures that has always made Steinbeck's interest in the animal nature of life the central thing in his work. He does not appeal to the nature of Hitlerism, no; he has never appealed to any hatred. The Doctor, with his patient wisdom, speaks for him here as another doctor, a student of human affairs spoke in In Dubious Battle. But it is not the student's detachment that one remembers here; it is the facility that can turn this greatest of contemporary themes into a series of contrivances. We hear the affirmation of nobility Steinbeck wanted to make, as we hear it in all his work; but we cannot believe in it, for thjough it is intended to inspire us in the struggle against Hitlerism, there are no men and women here to fight it.... And Europe under Hitler, even a representative stage Europe, is not Monterey, where the paisanos had their fun; and it is not the Salinas Valley; and the people locked in its supreme struggle today are not Steinbeck's familiar primitives, only seeking to be human. No, they are not primitives at all. But Steinbeck's world is a kind of primitivism to the end -- primitive, with a little cunning.

The Times They Are a Changing:

A Look at the moral Disintegration of America in Steinbeck’s The Winter of Our Discontent

The life of Ethan Allen Hawley, which had for so long held to an irrefutable ethical standard, was about to undergo an unexpected and irreversible change. Likewise he was not alone; progress was descending upon all of New Baytown like the jets which swarmed "with increasing regularity" (196) at the nearby Templeton airfield. With them was coming a new breed, more and more focused on material wealth rather than honesty and principle. Ethan’s fourteen-year old son, Allen, was the embodiment of this new morality by which money was God and "morals are paintings on wall and scruples are money in Russia" (from the movie Sabrina, 1995). There was only one goal for this "forward-looking group" (141): money; and as Allen so clearly states, for them "it’s all dough, no matter how you get it" (91).

Ethan had always believed there existed certain "unchanging rules" (217) of basic kindness and decency which had always, and should always, govern men. He lived his life simply and honestly, guided by visions of his grandfather and Aunt Deborah who had, from his early youth, instilled in him this strong moral foundation; he was" the kid with the built-in judge" (153). The rules, however, were changing, and changing rapidly. No longer would virtue be the deciding factor when faced with temptation; if one stood to gain from a situation, "who gets hurt? Is it against the law?" (34). Quite the contrary, by the new standards, it would be a crime to act on one’s own behalf. Moral consequences were irrelevant; the only consideration was success, and "success is never bad" (239). Those still clinging to Ethan’s "old-fashioned fancy-pants ideas" (43) would be devoured by progress like the old Bay Hotel, "now being wrecked to make room for the new Woolworth’s (11).

Under this new law, business was "a kind of war" (115), and as such, casualties were inevitable. To survive, one had to be ruthless, step on anyone who got in the way; "some men had to get hurt, some even destroyed" (239). Ethan could see this reality, from Baker, who used and manipulated anyone he could if he meant he would profit, to his son, who gladly sacrificed his integrity for a watch an a spot on TV. They were mercenaries, focused only on personal gain, and while Ethan said he"wish[ed he] could admire them, even love them the way . . . Allen [did]" (196), just like the jets these soldiers"only function was killing" (196); their actions left him with "a sick feeling as though [his] soul had an ulcer" (196).

Ethan’s initial response to the corruption which had overtaken New Baytown was to fight the change. He rebelled against Murullo’s idea of "good business" (28)–business that didn’t give credit, that wasn’t kind, and that only looked after "number one" (27); and he rejected Biggers’ offers of money because they clashed with his ethical standards. Right and wrong were unambiguous concepts to him. But, when Ethan tried to imbue his son with these same values, Alole3n responded by saying, "you want me break the law?" (217). Already he had been consumed by the unfettered greed which Steinbeck saw destroying America.

At the root of this plague was "the Great God Currency" (168); money had so wholly become the focus of people’s lives that it was a religion, treated with as much reverence and adoration as the Christian God has once been by New Baytown’s Puritan forefathers. Without money, a person was nothing, an insignificant peon to be "canceled" (216) or tossed aside like a piece of trash without a second thought; even in the eyes of Ethan’s wife, "a grand gentleman without money [was just] a bum" (43). Mary and Allen longed for the chance to "wipe the sneers off the faces" (42) of their prosperous neighbors, and the only way they could see to accomplish their goal was to get money. Televisions and high society took precedence over the scrupulous standards of an honest grocery clerk.

Overwhelmed by the constant attacks on his moral code–from others and from himself–Ethan finally succumbed to the "law of the fang" (277). With the reassurance that his lapse in honor would exist only to meet a limited objective, he temporarily exchanged "a habit of conduct and attitude for comfort and dignity and a cushion of security" (257); and so began the descent of a good man. Just as he had once been so devoutly upright, as soon as the "game stopped being a game" (275) Ethan surrendered completely to his new course of action; he dedicated himself wholeheartedly to the idea that "man must carve and maul his way to get to be the King of the Mountain" (195), even if it meant carving through innocent friends, like Danny and Marullo. What did it matter that the entire affair repulsed him and left him with "a taste like a spoiled egg" (59)?

In the end, Ethan’s scheme was a success; the store was his, and the most important piece of property in town now lay under his name. The Hawley name would once again command respect in New Baytown. He had needed only to adopt the new morality for a moment, like a man trying on a different suit . . . The only "trouble with a well-made suit, it lasts too long" (233), a truth Baker knew only too well. Too late, Ethan realized that abandoning his entire code of ethics was not so simple a matter; even if he did return to his old principles, as if he had never strayed from them, his conscience would be forever marred by his indiscretions.

Not hat the rest of the world would ever notice. Maybe he’d got a little blood on his fingers, but Ethan had fought the fight; and more importantly, he’d won. "After all, in the end "it’s all dough, no matter how you get it" (91).

[The American Dream and Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent]

      Steinbeck's novel The Winter of Our Discontent (1961) is a series of variations on the theme of success and what motivates men towards it, set in motion as the hero assesses the way the business world operates and how he might begin to take part in it. Reflecting back on his New England family's past fortune, and his father's loss of the family wealth, the hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, characterizes success in every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery.'

There is no doubt that business is a kind of war. Why not, then, make it all-out war in pursuit of peace? Mr. Baker and his friends did not shoot my father, but they advised him and when his structure collapsed they inherited. And isn't that a kind of murder? Have any of the great fortunes we admire been put together without ruthlessness? I can't think of any.

      To mobilize himself to succeed, Hawley must acknowledge his own animal ruthlessness, an ability to fight and kill masked by the conditions of his mundane life. He remembers a fleeting desire to destroy his brother-in-law during his final illness, of killing during the war, of slaughtering small animals as a boy. Then he launches his own career by destroying two other men: Marullo, the Sicilian grocer he works for in a store his family used to own, and Danny Taylor, his oldest friend. He anonymously reports Marullo to the Immigration office for illegal entry, and receives the store almost as a gift. Destroying Danny Taylor is a deeper betrayal, for Hawley still thinks of him -- grown into an alcoholic -- as a brother. His decision to 'succeed' is a decision to give up the ideal of brotherhood, and is thus an incontrovertible acknowledgement of the costs of success. Danny trades Ethan his family property (suitable for an airport) for $1,000, with which Danny can either buy a cure or enough liquer to kill himself. Both men know he will choose the latter course; Hawley becomes rich from his death.

I knew what I had done, and Danny knew it too.... Maybe it's only the first time that's miserable. It has to be faced. In business and politics a man must carve and maul his way through men to get to be King of the Mountain. Once there, he can be great and kind -- but he must get there first.

      Ethan Hawley's motives for engaging in business are complex, even tortured. Nowhere is there a sense of the simple delight in work and its intrinsic rewards that permeates earlier success stories. Now, once the bloody foundations of competition are acknowledged, an intricate series of rationalizations are brought into play. One is the social status money can bring, and Hawley justifies success as a means to an end:

I do not want, never have wanted, money for itself. But money is necessary to keep my place in a category I am used to and comfortable in.

More important is his family's need for comfort and social worth. Hawley doesn't want his wife to be 'poor Mary Hawley' any more. As he says:

Temporarily I traded a habit of conduct and attitude for comfort and dignity and a cushion of security. It would be too easy to agree I did it for my family because I knew that in their comfort and security I would find my dignity. But my objective was limited and, once achieved, I could take back my habit of conduct.

      In both books, then, [Steinbeck's and Weidman's] limited success is neccessary for the sake of one's family and the fulfillment that comes from providing for them, but the moral foundations of success in general are treated very critically. There are two consequences of this understanding of success in the taken-for-granted universe of these books; both represent something new. First, the old certainty that morality and success walk hand in hand is shattered. In its place enters moral relativism and doubt. Both books question the rational foundation of the social world. In Steinbeck's novel, for instance, Hawley thinks about the forces of progress in Baytown:

Now a slow, deliberate encirclement was moving on New Baytown, and it was set in motion by honorable men. If it succeeded, they would be thought not crooked but clever.... To most of the world success is never bad.... Strength and success -- they are above morality, above criticism.... The only punishment is for failure.

      A second consequence of the newly critical view of business success that appears in these novels is that the family and the private realm are simplified and idealized. In particular, the wife for whom the protagonist sacrifices his moral purity is bathed in a radiant light of wholesomeness, purity, and warmth. This suggests a moral arrangement that assigns different standards to family and work. In The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit these two spheres made conflicting demands on the hero's limited time and energy, but business was uninteresting rather than immoral. In Steinbeck's novel, business is evil, and this formulation creates a moral dilemma for Hawley that almost drives him to suicide.

     The moral and human costs of success are now clearly visible in a way foreign to the novels of the previous decade. Perceiving these costs, novelists accord a new importance to the familial contribution and personal fulfillment of the breadwinner. This marks a more privatistic moral justification for success than prevailed when the individual and the social organization progressed in lock step. The costs of success also compel Steinbeck's and Weidman's heros to engage in critical introspection and moral reflection about the social order; their search for a meaningful life marks them as representatives of a 'humanistic' formulation of the fulfillments to be gained by success.