Word: marullo
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Totems of Status. The book's hero, Ethan Allen Hawley, is a decent sort who loves his wife, has two teen-aged children and seems affably adjusted to failure. He clerks in a grocery store that he once owned for a Sicilian-born boss named Marullo. However, Ethan is haunted by totems of past status. The sleepy Long Island port of New Baytown in which he lives was once virtually the fief of his whaling-captain forebears. He carries one such captain's narwhal stick and lives in his great-grandfather's white shiplap house with...
Almost black-magically, Ethan's luck and character (but not his dialogue) do begin to change. He discovers that his boss Marullo entered the U.S. illegally, and he tips off the immigration authorities. The unsuspecting Marullo, who admires Ethan for his loyalty, gives him the store before he is deported. Author Steinbeck has other heavy ironies to put in the moral fire, and at book's end, Ethan owns the world of New Baytown but he has, of course, lost his own soul. How does he learn that? He discovers that his son has cribbed from the speeches...
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