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...