A Study Of Ethan’s Character In The Winter Of Our Discontent From The Perspective Of Ethical Literary Criticism

The 1930 s is the glorious age of American novels and John Steinbeck is one of the dominant figures in this period.He creates a total of 17 novels in his life.Those works are featured with his realistic and imaginative writing style and show his sympathetic humor and keen social perception.If T.S.Eliot had tried to represent a spiritual wasteland in his famous poem The Waste Land,then Steinbeck had aimed to depict a material wasteland of the United States in his novel.Many of his works are based on American land and people.He describes the various living situations of American people under the poor material conditions.His novels show that poverty indeed can cause great suffering to people,even the devastating ones.But what he stresses is the persistent of tenacity and dignity of humanity under such unbearable pains.His language in the novel has obvious feature of poetic art,which can be mainly reflected in three aspects,namely,the metaphorical title of the novel,the vivid image of the character and the philosophical and poetic narrative language.The winter of our discontent is an important work in Steinbeck’s later writing period.The story starts with Ethan,the protagonist of the novel,who experiences a series of things.The writer successfully builds a hardships world that is full of spiritual emptiness and perplexity,which shows the author’s great concern towards the American people who confronts with economic and spiritual problems.Since its publication,it has received extensive attention from the world.Many people explore and study it from the aspects of the alienation,the biblical archetypes and so on.After reading and collecting a lot of information in this field,the writer finds that analyzing Ethan’s character from the perspective of ethical literary criticism is a worthwhile research direction.Because this novel depicts a vivid picture of the people who live during the post-war period.They abandon the traditional moral values for making financial gains.After going through a series of inner conflict,he finally escapes from the hypocrisy and corruptness of civilization.In view of this,the thesis will focus on exploring the main character in the winter of our discontent,analyzing the ethical situation of the post-war American society,the ethical choices and the awaking of his ethical consciousness.At last,it expounds the harsh heart journey of the protagonist.An analysis is made to further explore the processof self-development.People suffer from the impact of fate and it is usually results from a particular situation.During this period,their inner heart evolves from conflict,depravity to the eventual return.This thesis consists of the introduction,the main body,and the conclusion.The specific contents are as follows:The introduction part briefly introduces the novelist and the process of his creation,as well as the general literature review of his works at home and abroad.Through integrating the research status of the works,it points out the significance of choosing this topic and its profound practical significance in the process of human civilization.The second part is the main body,which can be divided into four chapters:The first chapter mainly introduces the theory of this thesis,namely ethical literary criticism.First,it emphasizes that ethics is the theoretical basis and it must start from the ethical standpoint to interpret,analyze those literary works.Next,it explains the information of its theoretical development,elaborates the concept,main principles,and core terms as well.At last,it interprets the future development of the theory.This chapter provide a forceful theoretical evidence for the following chapters.The second chapter analyzes the particular ethical situation,which embodied in The Winter of our Discontent.Ethical literary criticism requires that critics should criticize literary works in its specific ethical situation.Therefore,this chapter designs three parts to state the specific ethical situation that the protagonist confronts with.The first part elaborates on the background of the post-war United States.This period witnesses a rich society,while people in this society lack of spirit.They treat money and power as the most paramount.The second part discusses the earth-shaking changes that take place in the town.In this situation,he is anguished for a bad job.He even finds that he is out of tune with the surrounding people.The third part shows that the community and the family situation are totally different.So much complains and incomprehension come from family and friends,along with instigation and expectancy.This time,he could suppress his inner conflict no longer.He makes ethical choices under the impact of ethical situation.The third chapter mainly analyzes the inevitable ethical choices.The first part interprets that under the impact of the ethical situation,his natural factor begins to playits role.To be wealthy and powerful,he doesn’t hesitate to abandon the moral principles of the family.He let himself drift along with others.The second part discusses that for the sake of money,he chooses to flirt with his wife’s friend and lost the moral values.The third part tries to interpret that he betrays the boss and frames friends so as to gain the power and profit as well as the worship of his wife and children.The forth chapter focuses on the awaking of the ethical consciousness of the hero.Ethan’s awakening process mainly reflected in three aspects: First,he falls into an extremely distressed ethical dilemma.After experiencing painful ethical choices,he is materially rich but psychologically lonely and guilty.He longs to return to the original sincerity.Second,he gradually receives different positive “light” from his family and friends.The power of kind and love constantly help him overcome the temptation and danger.It guides him returns to his original humanity with pure and kind.The third part witnesses the call of faith from the talisman which represents the truth and positive power of his family.He finally comes to the original Ethan.The part of conclusion summarizes the full text and points out the main idea of this thesis.Use the ethical literary criticism to interpret the character in The Winter of our Discontent,it requires the readers to pay more attention to the particular ethical situation when analyzing the relationship between human free will and ethical order.All in all,the work reveals the hypocrisy of moral values as well as the perfect of human nature.It shows the inextinguishable power of ethics in people’s mind.