Steinbeck critics have either ignored "The Murder," refusing it even the attention of condemnation, or treated it very gingerly because on the surface it is an enormously disturbing story with a theme and action seemingly allied to the John Wayne mystique that only a dominated woman and a dominant man will be happy together.
Quite short, the story can be summarized still more briefly. After the death of his parents, Jim Moore marries and brings to his California valley ranch Jelka Sepic, repudiating her immigrant father's advice to beat her regularly in order to make her a proper wife…. One evening as he is going to town he meets a neighbor coming to inform him about the butchering of one of his calves. Jim investigates and returns home unobserved to find Jelka in bed with her male cousin. After a curious pair of meditations at the water trough, Jim shoots the cousin and departs without speaking to Jelka. He returns at dawn with the deputy sheriff and the coroner, who remove the body, exonerate Jim, and caution him not to be too severe with his wife. Jim beats her severely with "a nine-foot, loaded bullwhip," and she then fixes his breakfast. The implication, strongly reinforced by the closing paragraph which shows her smiling and him stroking her head and by an introductory view of the happy couple in the indeterminate future, is that both have learned their lessons and have reached a new understanding of each other.
This is a free excerpt of 246 words. There are 2,043 words (approx.
7 pages at 300 words per page) in the full critical essay.
Read the rest of this Criticism with our Steinbeck, John 1902–1968: Critical Essay by Robert Murray Davis Access Pass.
