East of Eden

Although centered around the lives of just two families, John Steinbeck's East of Eden can be described as a novel of truly epic scope. Set in the period from the United States Civil War until the end of World War I, the story follows the lives of three generations of the Trask family, from Connecticut, and their contact with the Hamilton family on the opposite side of the country in the Salinas Valley in California. For those who have not read the novel, I will give a brief evaluation before getting into more detail for those who have. ***Spoilers are included in the ‘In Detail’ section,*** so you may not want to read past the quick evaluation if you have not read the book already! Quick Evaluation for those Who Have not Read It Starting from the opening chapter, Steinbeck's style is exceptionally vivid. You feel you are right there in all the beauty of the Salinas Valley. At the other extreme, when Steinbeck delves into sordid subjects, you also feel right there. The novel includes some of the most intensely developed characters in all of literature. Their interactions are complex and full of genuine dilemmas. You feel the character's happiness and their sorrow. You cannot help but root for some, hope for a demise that cannot come soon enough for others, and have no idea how things will turn out for the remainder. The themes covered are the most important possible: family, love, good and evil, happiness, sorrow, and the relationship or lack of it between these things and money and success. If these sound like themes of interest, and you are not queasy about a considerable percentage of the book delving into dark themes, then this book is highly recommended and will be hard to point down through most parts. Although, from the description on the cover, I worried that the book might become too overtly and excessively religious, this was not the case. Also, although the book is said to describe something distinctive about American culture, this seems like a stretch since nearly all themes have universal applicability. The only real weaknesses of the book are that, ultimately, some things that happen or fail to happen are rather unbelievable, and some things seem exaggerated compared to real life. These, however, are only minor dings on the overall brilliance of the story. In Detail [Spoilers Begin] Key Themes The key theme of the novel is family. Specifically, what a strong family makes possible and the destructiveness that absence of familial strength, or complete absence of family, can have. This is where the juxtaposition between the Hamilton's and the Trask's is most pronounced. We see that although the Hamilton family is not immune from tragedy, they are generally happy. For me, Samuel's humor and the Hamilton family’s gentle teasing of each other best demonstrate this, along with the scene where Samuel’s daughter Olive courageously takes to flying at an early airshow. Although Samuel has both had bad luck and never seriously set his mind to becoming wealthy, it seems safe to say that because of his devotion to his family, he is the richest man in the novel. With the Trask's, by contrast, there is general unhappiness, struggle, and uneven and even dubious love throughout. It is fascinating to ponder how this may have affected Adam's attraction to Cathy and Charles's repulsion from her. This is in addition to the more obvious replay of the Cain and Abel story through Caleb and Aron. Another central theme is the relationship between family and good and evil. The question of how much someone should worry about inheriting traits, especially undesirable or even evil ones, from their parents is particularly prominent. This, of course, is best exemplified by Caleb. He is already prone to worry that he is not good, and he begins to worry even more after finding out who his mother, Cathy, really is. (Although it is not mentioned in the book, the fact that he worries about this at all tells the reader that he is something much different from her and can avoid her course.) At the same time, although some children inherit traits considerably from their parents, others seem quite different. Caleb's difference from Aron shows this in the positive direction, while Cathy's difference from her parents shows an extreme in the other direction. Deeply Developed Characters Beyond the resonance of the themes, the book's other great strength is the depth of characters. As in real life, there are some very good people, like Samuel and Lee, one very bad one, Cathy, and many such as Adam, Charles, Caleb, and Aron, somewhere in between. All characters are completely three-dimensional. Samuel and Lee have had darkness in their backgrounds but emerge above it and become sources of love and light to those around them. Cathy, by contrast, seems to be a pure psychopath (meaning probably due mainly to genetics versus environment) or, at best, only a hair's width away from it. Despite this, Steinbeck is able to get readers inside her head convincingly. Cathy sees herself as stronger and smarter than others, something she realized very early on. Projecting, she can only see evil in others and their attempts to control her. In her mind, any attempt to control her warrants nearly any retribution, including murder. As she gets older, we even see glimmers of conscience in Cathy in the events leading up to and including her suicide. For instance, she worries that her arthritis is punishment for accepting the inheritance from Charles. Additionally, the reader wonders: did she leave Aron rather than Caleb her money because she ultimately realizes she is missing something Aron has? Nonetheless, even these glimmers of conscience do not prevent her from taking out Joe Valery with her last actions since he foolishly thought he could out-manipulate and harm her. Indeed, whether her decision to give everything to Aron was partly motivated by a desire to stir conflict among the twins is unclear. One even wonders if part of her motivation in committing suicide is because she realizes how weak she is becoming, both mentally and physically, compared to her youth. She can no longer be as competently evil as she once was. All these themes are woven together in a sick intensity in her suicide scene, which competes with the opening chapter for the most vivid in the novel. Some Minor Blemishes on a Great Novel Despite the novel's strengths: the depth of its characters, and the power and universality of its themes, some things in the book are blemishes on its greatness. For example, some things stretch the limits of believability. For instance, it stretches credibility that Adam could have such schizoid traits that learning from Cathy that Charles may be the twins' father does not lead to conflict with him. Similarly, given that Charles does not like Cathy, why would he leave half his money to her instead of giving it all to Adam or leaving it held in trust for the twins? Also stretching the limits of believability, why would Cathy, who seems all about vengeance, not get even with Edwards, who beats her within an inch of her life and leaves her for dead? Finally, although stories exploring good and evil on such a grand scale may inevitably have to take some liberties versus just recounting ordinary people's mundane day-to-day lives, the book overplays some things. One is just how prominent in American life brothels were. Was nearly everyone, married, unmarried, from laborer up to politician and lawyer, really visiting them regularly? To such an extent that nobody gets upset in the slightest upon learning that someone else has. Overall, there is quite a bit of somber reading to get through here. Nevertheless, the strength of the Hamilton family and the rise of Caleb and Abra into adulthood make the story, ultimately, a hopeful one.

John Steinbeck's American epic, East of Eden, is a complex analysis of good and evil in society. The book follows two families over three generations (from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of World War I) as their lives intertwine and the characters are faced with a series of tough moral decisions. Reading this book is like being caught in a giant moral dilemma; Steinbeck provides the reader with enough information to form opinions on the morality of the characters in the book. This forces the reader to make tough decisions about who is good and who is evil, while Steinbeck never ceases to shock the reader with the actions of his characters. Steinbeck's novel is held together by the complex and highly developed characters he features as the focus of the book. There are several important characters that can all be defined by a very distinct set of qualities. There is the extremely wise Samuel Hamilton, the intelligent, but naive Adam Trask, and the notoriously evil Cathy Ames. Steinbeck spends a great deal of time developing these characters and the reward is a satisfying representation of America in a period of dishevelment as industrialization and west ward expansion are the focus of society. The plethora of characters created by Steinbeck creates a complex and intricate balance in the novel; the actions of one character will undoubtedly affect all of the characters in either a positive or adverse way. These characters are what truly makes this novel an American classic; Steinbeck's ability to create a memorable cast drive the rest of the story. One of these characters, Cathy Ames, may be the most evil, twisted character ever created in all of American literature. The reader is introduced to Ames as she murders her parents by lighting their house on fire. From this point on, it is clear that Ames is the embodiment of evil in the novel. As Ames becomes ingratiated into the main plot, more evil actions ensue, including the attempted murder of her husband and the murder of a madam in charge of a brothel. These actions occur before Ames becomes truly evil by the end of the novel. Another of the more memorable characters in East of Eden is Lee, the Trask family's loyal Asian servant. Lee is meant to play the stereotypical Asian role in the novel, but Steinbeck attempts to break race barriers by incorporating Lee into the main plot of the novel. Lee is extremely intelligent and very wise. He puts up a facade of a stereotypical Asian servant around ignorant and arrogant Americans. However, around people he trusts, such as Samuel Hamilton and Adam Trask, he reveals his intelligence. Lee is very complex and Steinbeck ensures that he plays an important role in the novel. The novel lacks a clearly defined plot; it follows two families over several generations as they struggle to establish themselves in the Salinas Valley in California. However, the novel does act as an allegory to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. There are several obvious references to the book of Genesis throughout the novel (East of Eden, Adam Trask, and the twins Caleb and Aaron, meant to represent Cain and Abel), creating an interesting outlet for Steinbeck to analyze religious and social issues prominent in society during this era of American history. There are times when Steinbeck's commentary is somewhat subtle and there are times when his commentary is blatantly obvious as the narrator provides insight into the state of society during this time. However, unlike other fictitious novels that attempt to tackle heavy topics such as religion, Steinbeck is able to provide this commentary without sounding too pretentious; he doesn't claim to know the answers to some of the more controversial issues regarding religion. This adds depth to Steinbeck's already complex and layered novel, contributing to the intricacy of this intelligently written novel. East of Eden, like all of Steinbeck's novels, is full of descriptive passages that are essential in establishing the setting for the novel. The novel also takes place in the Salinas Valley of California, the same place that Steinbeck grew up in as a child. Steinbeck's knowledge of the region enables him to provide deep, descriptive details of the setting for the story. The setting is almost as important as the characters, as the distinct environment of the Salinas Valley shapes their behavior throughout the novel. In fact, the Salinas Valley is a metaphor for the lives of the Hamiltons and the Trasks. The valley appears to be heavenly and fertile, but as one digs into the soil unexpected layers of clay, dirt, and rock are revealed. The Hamiltons and the Trasks also appear to have it all together, but as the reader is familiarized with these characters, it becomes clear that they struggle with a great deal of internal conflict. Steinbeck's emphasis on setting also adds to the complexity of the novel, creating a memorable multilayered epic that has become an American classic. In writing this novel, Steinbeck took on a nearly impossible challenge; he attempted to write a novel that would encompass ideas about morality, religion, and politics, while remaining intelligible to his audience. Steinbeck deserves to be commended for accomplishing this feat. Reading this book should be a requirement for everyone as it successfully touches the reader emotionally, logically, and ethically. The highly complex, but relatable characters will surely find a way to sneak into one's heart and become a conscious reminder of ethical behavior. This novel will truly change lives and this is what has kept it moderately relevant in today's society. Reading this novel will not disappoint.

One of the best novels I’ve ever read. Steinbeck’s writing is profound in it’s simplicity and exploration of good and evil and the meaning of th Cain and Abel story and timshel.

Many of us read the book Of Mice and Men during our early high school years. Some adored it, some loathed it, and some slept through the whole thing. If you are like me, you adored the tale. Due to this admiration for John Steinbeck's novel, I decided to continue down his line of work and read East of Eden. Steinbeck depicts an innovative version of Eden through his characters and their actions. These situations, and those who partake in them, arouse a deeper understanding of sin and the power of change within the reader. The novel enlightens the reader by showing them that we all have the power to choose what happens in our lives. The relentless struggle between "good and evil" can transform the individual, according to the novel, as long as she exercises her power to choose. Steinbeck's Eden is filled with a vast array of characters. The novel begins with Samuel Hamilton and the Trask family. As the novel grows, so do the two families. The reader embarks on a journey down the lineage of the two families. Depicting the loves, losses, triumphs, and failures, the beloved, and the despised, characters go through. The reader will come to adore the able Samuel as well as despise the monstrous Cathy. Steinbeck depicts horrendous situations while still allowing light, wit, and love to shine. Steinbeck writes in such a manner that the reader cannot help but love the characters, and bear a deep sorrow for the losses experienced in the novel. Steinbeck, with his choice of characters and innovative interpretation of Eden, has created a plot that was destined to be interesting. The characters, plot, diction, and dialogue give an awe filled escape from reality. Unfortunately, this escape is one that the reader has to deeply desire. East of Eden is not a book for a reader looking for an "easy" read. The novel provides a reader with a deep journey. I deeply enjoyed it, but I had to focus to embark on it. Therefore, if you are looking for an easy read, this is not the book for you. If you are looking for a book with a deeper meaning that will provide you with vast entertainment, then go to your local bookstore and pick up a copy. The choice is yours.

I felt this book was part fiction, part essay. The characters were extremely well-developed; even minor characters were developed through at least several paragraphs of background information. No one felt flat to me. I enjoyed the story very much, but what I loved about the book is that it wasn’t just a story. It was deep thought—years of contemplation—written into a story, and as a result, it leaves the reader with the opportunity to contemplate some of the same themes just as deeply. In Chapter 34, Steinbeck wrote: “Humans are caught—in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too—in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.” But I think East of Eden went further than that. It gave us the opportunity to delve deep into our own psyches and see why we choose good when we do, and why we choose not-so-good when we make that choice. “Faced with two sets of morals, you’ll follow your training. What you call thinking won’t change it.” In other words, we are more like robots to our conditioning than we realize. We are driven by our subconscious minds, and unless we look—really look at why we make the choices we do—we will keep right on making the same kinds of choices, for better or worse. “The emotion of nonviolence was building up in him until it became a prejudice like any other thought-stultifying prejudice.” “It’s a hard thing to leave any deeply routine life, even if you hate it.” “We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff. It must be that we want it that way.” All these lines point to not being aware of ourselves. But what if we can learn about ourselves through Steinbeck’s characters? Steinbeck’s characters were driven by a desire to be happy—or to be loved, which they thought would make them happy. And yet very few, except for possibly Sam Hamilton and eventually Lee, ever looked to discover the difference between true happiness and imagined happiness. When we chase imagined happiness, we make mistaken choices. Conversely, we can’t chase true happiness, because it’s what’s right here, right now, with things exactly as they are. “You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.” Clearly, Stenbeck put forth the hypothesis that we can choose between the good and the not-so-good nature within us, and likely everyone who reads East of Eden sees that theme. But what if there was also a deeper theme? Before we can choose, we must look at the imagined ideas we have about happiness—the ideas that drive us subconsciously—and question them.

When I’m considering watching a movie I first check the running time. If it’s more than 120 minutes I think twice. Between the screenwriter, the director, and the editor most stories can be told in less than two hours. A significantly longer running time indicates someone who doesn’t know what he or she is doing, or someone in love with his or her own work. There are exceptions, of course, such as biopics or sweeping historic accounts. The same is true for books. Especially in non-fiction many 600-page books could be edited down to 300 pages. But even in fiction the 300-page metric (or so) tends to hold. There are exceptions, of course, such as "East of Eden." I did not mind this book’s 600 pages at all. The first word of the second paragraph tells the reader the story will be told in first person. Along the way that fact needs remembering. "I" as a pronoun, indicating the author, appears just a handful of times. Mostly the narrative seems omniscient. Clearly Steinbeck chose first person as a means to deliver his personal philosophies, present to a notable degree. This deliverance would likely have been awkward in third person. The story tells about the Hamiltons and the Trasks. Adam Trask leaves New England for California. Samuel Hamilton sails from Ireland, only to make his further way clear across the continent. Adam Trask has inherited money, enough to buy a fine ranch. Samuel Hamilton has nothing. His dusty spread, gained by government allotment, is, even in the better years, only marginal. The basic story is simply one of good and evil, but Steinbeck went on for 600 pages because a parable cannot illustrate the fluidity of both good and evil that flows back and forth through human lives. In this fluidity evil inadvertently oozes out of good people and goodness sometimes escapes from an evil life into that very life. Both despite their struggles and because of them, the Hamilton clan possesses a human wealth beyond purchase. Still, illustrating the oozing, Tom Hamilton, son of Samuel, is, genetically, a brooder. His outlook is of his nature, largely unchecked by his nurture, as perhaps it might have been. He never leaves home, which eventually finds a population of one, himself. He is one of those who constantly loses today because he’s always pursuing yesterday – to simply reclaim it, or to hold it static in order to fix the past. When, from outside his own life, yesterday presents itself he destroys it. His destruction is completely inadvertent, and yet a blindness he has that allows the destruction is one of neglect in his nurture. As further example, Cal (Caleb) and Aron Trask (he disliked Aaron) are Adam’s twin sons by a woman who lacks a certain human dimension, which, by that omission, emphasizes her abilities to manipulate and control others, both for her own specific gain and simply because she can. She abandons her sons days after they’re born. Cal wrestles with the omission, which he has inherited to a degree. Eventually his internal give-and-take delivers him to a battered state of understanding. Aron is unclouded by the omission, is a paragon of goodness, and so becomes a victim of unbalance. Steinbeck grew up in Salinas and the Salinas Valley, the setting of the story. His early life mirrors the time of the story. His paternal grandfather did the emigrating from Germany, so there would have been talk of the old country. He was a war correspondent for the Herald Tribune and worked with the OSS. From his experiences we can infer his acknowledgement of the ability in America to throw off ancient ways, also acknowledging that the farther west one travelled the more one could outpace the tentacles of Puritanism that continued to exist in the East. The cliché and reality of California, which continues today, was an even more utterly contrasted state two centuries back, and even one century back. So, I read the last fifty pages of "East of Eden" in the leafy parking lot of a suburban library branch. The building is new and modern, in a well done mid-century way, leaving me to wonder how the plans ever survived the city council, in these days of varying degrees of neoclassicism. It is attached to what was originally a three-story grade school from the early 1940s that is now the city hall and police HQ of this suburban town. Around in all directions are Cape Cod-y homes, both pre- and immediately post-war. These houses are attractive, well proportioned and well built— somewhat humble contrasts to the Barbie castles. Many are barely larger than the master bedroom suites in those ostentatious, multi-gabled clown shows, and yet were coveted by returning G.I.s eager to find normality again. Early fall is at hand right now, with enough leaves on the ground and beginning colors in canopies to confirm the season. Hurricane Delta made landfall yesterday evening on the Louisiana coast. The system has already moved up the Mississippi Valley and will soon turn into the Ohio Valley to deliver a fair amount of rain tomorrow, and so today, a Saturday, has increasingly become overcast. I point out the day of the week, and the season, because it’s the sort of day I lived for as a kid – open ended, unstructured, free, with a certain contemplation implicit to cooler weather and indirect sunlight. As my wife says, the geography of childhood. And, hell, I still live for these days, days extraordinary simply because they are so ordinary, which is to say "Jesus! I’m a sentient being walking around on the surface of a planet!" And that’s what Steinbeck was after in "East of Eden," and that is just what he achieved—basically a Cheever short story x 500. Steinbeck needed six hundred pages to establish for the reader the pace and canter of daily life – i.e., life – in this California valley, and in one of its small towns. He needed that many words to let us into the life and minds and dreams and nightmares of a dozen or so human beings. That many words to expose the tumult behind the face of conformity, a template that makes it easier for you and me to connect on a same frequency. A hallmark of great writing is an implicit prescience, a story as true today as it was during the time of its creation. "East of Eden" was published in 1952, so we can assume Steinbeck was writing the story in the post-war years of the late 1940s and very early 1950s. In the story evil wins when the truly good are ambivalent, unwilling to spend time and effort to stand up to, or even acknowledge, the calculations of connivers. There could hardly be a better description of our present time.

This story is amazingly rich and multi-leveled; I believe that it would take many readings to truly mine the depth of all of the nuances. I enjoyed it and will now explore more of Steinbeck’s writings.

This is a story about the endurance of the human soul, about choosing to be who you would like to be rather than believing you were cut with a mold that can’t be broken. But also it’s a story about forgiveness, the freedom of choice and the long road one must walk between one’s beginning and one’s end, and all the causes and effects in-between. Steinbeck’s masterpiece, for to call it anything less is impossible, has left me with a sense of loss. When I came to the end of this epic tale of family and humanity, I felt abandoned simply because I ran out of words to read. I wanted to carry on in his characters’ lives, spying on their darkness, watching them evolve and bloom and outrun the forces haunting them. No book has made me feel quite so much sadness and excitement at once. Perhaps because I’m a writer, I relished the painterliness of Steinbeck’s prose. I turned every single one of its six-hundred and one pages at a furious pace, and yet I indulged and languished and roamed the landscape he had painted for me, and me alone. The story is so personal, a reader might feel it is written for her. It is a story we must hear, a story we know, a story with which we can connect, as we do with all the ones passed down from civilization to civilization. We commune with great stories, religious accounts, epic tales, because we see ourselves most readily in them, and as Lee (one of "Eden’s" finest characters) says, that’s why we keep telling, and retelling, them from one generation to the next. Steinbeck draws on the "Old Testament," turning over the story of Cain and Abel and making it his, for us anew. And because we see ourselves in it—our good and evil—we devour his retelling as though it were medicine to save our soul, the cure for all our ails. But perhaps I exaggerate, indulging in the power of the writer a little too much. Or maybe I do feel my soul a little shaken by my experience, swept up in the writer’s magic. Either way, I am satisfied to credit Steinbeck for my joy at venturing into his Eden. And it is the great landscape, the backdrop of his tale that speaks most readily to the reader. Steinbeck’s setting is in fact a large part of the whole. Like the characters he unearths, the soil on which they stand seems to reach for the sky, yearning to live too. You can’t read "East of Eden" without experiencing the tan valleys of Northern California and the lush green dales of Connecticut. You see his East and his West, you practically smell the air of each, and you believe the world he creates to be the same one in which you live. The opening of the book sets you up for that, tells you, dear reader, you will feel every ounce of nature’s beauty just as the narrator does; her dangerous flirtations, her permanency, her changeability, her gales, her forces, her perpetual and enduring spirit. We do not simply live in nature, but come from it. We embody it; all her forces. I think Steinbeck reminds us of this in such subtle and rare ways it seeps into the subconscious as we follow his narrator through the story of Adam Trask, Samuel Hamilton, and all the characters in-between and after. “I remember my childhood names for the grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer—and what trees and seasons smelled like—how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.” Effortlessly, Steinbeck strings you along with his prose, fooling you into not seeing the great and gargantuan task he is laying before you. “Timshel,” he teaches you. “Thou mayest,” the two words from "Genesis" that seem to speak most profoundly, for they admit to free will, and your ability to choose to rule over sin. John Milton’s "Paradise Lost" also speaks of this freedom, one in which man has often stumbled, misunderstanding his disobedience, his choice between good and evil. Steinbeck examines this idea throughout the narrative, and shows you the outcomes of those who struggle with the same, and it is in their differences that choice becomes apparent. I have said little about the characters, the plot, the style and themes, and yet I have said everything I can about a work that has touched me so deeply. I will leave you with this short quote, said once again by Lee, the Chinese American who is the most philosophical, and enlightened of Steinbeck’s family of characters, the sage most inborn to the writer: “But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

Very long book but amazing

good

Estou amando a leitura

Güzel bir kitap..tavsiye ederim

Excellent