Steinbeck's last great novel focuses on the theme of success and what motivates men towards 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, characterises successin every era and in all its forms as robbery, murder, even a kind of combat, operating under 'the laws of controlled savagery.'
Джон Эрнст Сте́йнбек — американский прозаик, автор многих известных романов и повестей: «Гроздья гнева», «К востоку от рая», «О мышах и людях», «Зима тревоги нашей» и других; лауреат Нобелевской премии по литературе.