The light, Ethan's virtue, is at this point unmarred by ethical trans-gressions. At the beginning of the novel, "a little light… into the storeroom" (10), and "a gray cat dart to get in, but it away" (10). The entrance of darkness into Ethan's store, which reflects his inner self, sig-nifies this onset of corruption in his life. In John Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, the triumph of darkness over light represents the moral degradation of the story's central character, Ethan Allen Hawley. He allows it to exist, knowing that it will convert light to shadow and virtue to dissolution. In the Christian creation myth, God creates light, signifying the introduction of goodness and morality into the world, but he does not wholly eliminate darkness, or immorality. The polar opposites of light and dark traditionally symbolize good and evil, right and wrong. This example literary analysis paper would be a good reference for a student who wants to study how changing images reflect a character's personality change. The first paragraph about the gray cat is particularly impressive. This sample high school AP English essay artfully explains how Steinbeck trades light imagery for dark as Hawley's character changes. As his morality decays, images of darkness begin to predominate. Light and Dark imagery in Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent - Literary analysis example paperĮthan Allen Hawley, a model citizen in Steinbeck's The Winter of Our Discontent, is tempted by the darkness.
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