Republic of Uzbekistan Ministry Higher Education, Innovation Bukhara State University interpretation of the protagonists in the novels by j. Steinbeck and writer's style dissertation work By Durdona Bakhtiyorova Scientific supervisor: dots

3.2 Protagonists represent humanity and social issues in the novel
Fiction plays an important role in forming the moral, ideological and scientific outlook of the young generation. The educational significance and influence of a work of art is complete only if the visual means and specific features of the work of art embodying the ideological, moral, and sophisticated influence on the formation of a new person are understandable to the reader.
Imagery and emotionality are the main features of the artistic text. Because the writer has a free attitude towards the natural and social existence, and in order to reveal the essence of this existence, he makes full use of various lexical units, artistic images, figurative tools and subtle aspects of the literary language.
All the words used in the literary text are called figurative tools. With the help of these words, the writers convey the content and idea of ​​the work to the reader, and instill in them a personal reaction to the described event.
As the writer chooses heroes, characters and life elements for his work, his work is always directed towards a certain goal. For this reason, the writer assigns a specific meaning to each image and describes it with individual qualities. Each lexical-stylistic element plays a very important role in this.
In every society, there are naturally such vices that cause a person's moral decline. In "The Winter of our Discontent", Steinbeck also sheds light on the dominant society in America in the 1960s and the aspects that make a person morally disabled in it, and the fact that the pure and honest main character Iten becomes a victim of this society. Therefore, the author begins the novel with the following epigraph. In fact, there were a number of people in the society who were similar to the fate of the main character, and even today you can find many such people. “Readers seeking to identify the fictional people and places here described would do better to inspect their own communities and search their own hearts, for this book is about a large part of America today”⁶⁸.
The place where the events take place is a small town in New England. The main character is from the generation of the founders of this town, his economic situation is not bad, in a word, he is a middle-class honest American. In those years, Steinbeck was worried about the changes in the country's traditions and lifestyle. One of the aspects worthy of such concern was the lack of a worthwhile goal in society. In his novel, he reveals how the lifestyle in the country affects an ordinary honest person. This kind of lifestyle clearly shows that he starts committing treason and crime for the sake of wealth. Here we present his conversation with his wife, because members of the money-loving society were also in his family: his wife and son. They think completely against Iten's worldview and want to make him think that he is wrong. Because there are many people with such opinion in the society that covers them. “Do you love money so much, Mary?........... Do I love money? No, I don’t love money. But I don’t love worry either. I’d like to be able to hold up my head in this town. I don’t like the childrento be hang-dog because they can’t dress as good –as well – as some others. I’d love to hold up my head. – And money would prop up your head?........ – That’s what you think. You just don’t see it. ………In this town or any other town a Hawley grocery clerk is still grocery clerk. ……..I do blame you for sitting wallowing in it. You could climb of it if you didn’t have your old-fashioned fancy-pants ideas. Everybody’s laughing at you. A grand gentleman without money is a bum.⁶⁹”
The main character, Iten, is very cheerful, likes to joke, and enjoys life. Every day is the same for him, but he tries to find pleasure in every day, he is not even indifferent to the nature and animals around him. He talks to them, which shows his unusual nature. ““Do you know what is spermaceti is?” Red Baker gave a whinning sigh. “I see you don’t…….. Read “Moby-Dick, dog. That’s my advice to you””⁷⁰. Or, in this passage, we see him talking to the birds, as if he were talking to his loved ones, he is having a heart-to-heart conversation. “Halfway down the first block a delinquent gang of English sparrows were fighting on the new-coming lawn of the Elgar house, not playing but rolling and picking and eye-gouging with such ferocity and so noisily that they didn’t see Ethan approach. He stopped to watch the battle.
“Birds in their little nests agree,” he said. “So why can’t we? Now there’s a bunch of horse crap for you. You kids can’t get along even on a pretty morning. And you’re the bastards Saint Francis was nice to. Screw!” He ran at them, kicking, and the sparrows rose with a whispered roar of wings, complaining bitterly in door-squeak voices. “Let me tell you this,” Ethan said after them. “At noon the sun will darken and a blackness will fall on the earth and you will be afraid.””⁷¹
In fact, the writer expresses his thoughts through the main character's speech, because in this passage, "as long as the birds live in a small nest, why can't people live in harmony with each other?" he tells the reader directly. ri asks a question.
We know that the main character's appearance or inner world is emphasized in a work of art. The appearance image is called "portrait depiction" and it cannot be found in all works. In this novel, we cannot find a passage describing Iten's appearance. But Steinbeck reveals his inner world, the changes in it that gradually become inner, sometimes with monologues, sometimes with the help of dialogues. The first two parts of the novel are narrated in the third person, from the third part to the end of the first part, it is narrated by the first person. The second part begins with the tenth part, two parts of it are narrated in the third person language and the rest in the first person language. Speaking from the third person language brings the reader closer to the main character, because it is possible to witness the changes in his thoughts, thoughts, and inner world.
At the beginning of the novel, the main character is honest, a person who knows that living is not in wealth, but in family happiness. For him, every day is a reward and he spends it in a good mood. He has a good relationship not only with family members, but also with everyone around him, always joking. Why do they call it Good Friday? What’s good about it?” “Oh! You!” she said. “You always make jokes.” The coffee was made and the eggs in a bowl with toast beside them when Ethan Allen Hawley slid into the dinette near the window”⁷².
Everyone's heart is important to Iten, he doesn't hurt anyone, he doesn't want to hurt anyone. “Now whose feelings can I hurt, sugarfoot?” he said to his wife. “There ain’t nobody nor nobody’s feelings here. Just me and my unimum unimorum until—until I open that goddam front door.”⁷³
The main character has his own imaginary world, even during his work in the store he greets the day warmly, every day he sweeps the front of the door, there is no deception or betrayal in his world, only goodness reigns. “He raised the green shades on the big windows, saying, “Come in, day!” And then he unlocked the front doors. “Enter, world.” He swung the iron-barred doors open and latched them open. And the morning sun lay softly on the pavement as it should, for in April the sun arose right where the High Street ran into the bay. Ethan went back to the toilet for a broom to sweep the sidewalk.
A day, a livelong day, is not one thing but many. It changes not only in growing light toward zenith and decline again, but in texture and mood, in tone and meaning, warped by a thousand factors of season, of heat or cold, of still or multi winds, torqued by odors, tastes, and the fabrics of ice or grass, of bud or leaf or black-drawn naked limbs. And as a day changes so do its subjects, bugs and birds, cats, dogs, butterflies and people”⁷⁴.
Iten is very honest, simple and humble, he does his work wholeheartedly. His life is quiet and peaceful. He does not complain about his fate. “Ethan Allen Hawley’s quiet, dim, and inward day was done. The man who swept the morning pavement with metronomic strokes was not the man who could sermonize to canned goods, not a unimum unimorum man, not even a silly-billy man. He gathered cigarette ends and gum wrappers, bud cases from the pollenizing trees, and simple plain dust in the sweep of his broom and moved the windrow of derelict toward the gutter, to await the town men with their silver truck”⁷⁵.
In 1960, a change was taking place in the dominant society in America, which worried Steinbeck. The main character Iten is also afraid of the wealth of people, his wife and children. “Men don’t get knocked out, or I mean they can fight back against big things. What kills them is erosion; they get nudged into failure. They get slowly scared. I’m scared. Long Island Lighting Company might turn off the lights. My wife needs clothes. My children—shoes and fun. And suppose they can’t get an education? And the monthly bills and the doctor and teeth and a tonsillectomy, and beyond that suppose I get sick and can’t sweep this goddam sidewalk? Course you don’t understand. It’s slow. It rots out your guts. I can’t think beyond next month’s payment on the refrigerator. I hate my job and I’m scared I’ll lose it. How could you understand that?”⁷⁶
We will witness his honesty in another place. When his son asks for help in writing an essay, he says that it will be mine, not yours. This proves his truthfulness. “Maybe you could help us with the essays.” “Then they wouldn’t be yours.”
Iten is kind and caring to his wife. He cares about his health. He takes Mary's every opinion into account, he does not want her to be offended. “Mary so loves her sleep that I have tried to protect her in it, even when the electric itch burned on my skin. She wakens if I leave the bed. It worries her. Because her only experience with sleeplessness has been in illness, she thinks I am not well”⁷⁷.
The main character likes to be alone, he has his own place to sit in the bay, he suffers from insomnia at night and goes there. In this place he finds pleasure, and no one knows that he suffers from insomnia at night. Because Iten does not reveal all his secrets. “That was the place I was headed for. I spent nighttide there before I went in the service, and the nighttide before I married my Mary, and part of the night Ellen was born that hurt her so bad. I was compelled to go and sit inside there and hear the little waves slap the stone and look out at the sawtooth Whitsun rocks. I saw it, lying in bed, watching the dance of the red spots, and I knew I had to sit there. It’s big changes take me there—big changes……. It sounds uncomfortable and silly, sitting cross-legged in a niche like a blinking Buddha, but some way the stone fits me, or I fit. Maybe I’ve been going there so long that my behind has conformed to the stones. As for its being silly, I don’t mind that. Sometimes it’s great fun to be silly, like children playing statues and dying of laughter. And sometimes being silly breaks the even pace and lets you get a new start. When I am troubled, I play a game of silly so that my dear will not catch trouble from me. She hasn’t found me out yet, or if she has, I’ll never know it. So many things I don’t know about my Mary, and among them, how much she knows about me. I don’t think she knows about the Place. How would she? I’ve never told anyone. It has no name in my mind except the Place—no ritual or formula or anything. It’s a spot in which to wonder about things. No man really knows about other human beings. The best he can do is to suppose that they are like himself”⁷⁸.
The main character is ready to help any representative of society. He cannot just pass by the suffering person, he will certainly show his sympathy and help. When her husband's brother is sick and on his deathbed, he is by her side and does not spare his help. “Only a year ago Mary’s brother Dennis died in our house, died dreadfully, of an infection of the thyroid that forced the juices of fear through him so that he was violent and terrified and fierce. His kindly Irish horse-face grew bestial. I helped to hold him down, to pacify and reassure him in his death-dreaming, and it went on for a week before his lungs began to fill. I didn’t want Mary to see him die. She had never seen death, and this one, I knew, might wipe out her sweet memory of a kindly man who was her brother”⁷⁹.