East of Eden - Part Three
Chapters 23-33
Welcome to Reading Revisited, a place for friends to enjoy some good old-fashioned book chat while revisiting the truth, beauty, and goodness we’ve found in our favorite books.
Our third Wednesday of East of Eden musings, and our third set of 11 chapters!
I hope you enjoyed Part Three, this is certainly my favorite Part thus far, and may be my favorite of the whole novel. (It is, after all, at the center, the heart, of the novel - more on this in our final EoE post.)
At the end of chapter 25, I was exultantly fist pumping for Adam, in the midst of chapter 28, I was sobbing for the world, and when Tom picked Dessie up at the station in chapter 32, there was too much pure joy to be contained, and the ending fall that had to come, only served as deep future shadows to highlight the current brightness.
Let me begin by saying: there is no chance I will do justice to this Part. It’s too masterful. In fact, this has been the most difficult Part for me to write “literary musings” on, because the effort seems so futile; there is no way to begin to touch on the beauty of Part Three. Peter Kreeft has said (I paraphrase), that the better the original work, the worse the commentary on it. Therefore, apologies from me to you. Perhaps the best method for gaining deeper insight into this Part is simply to reread it over and over again.
But, before we begin, a little fun first.
When perusing the different East of Eden book covers to be found online, I came across several that felt they were longing for a subtitle. In the spirit of Dessie Hamilton, below is an exercise in having a little fun.
First: East of Eden: Simba Returns Home.
Did no one tell the illustrator that this book is set in California not Sudan?
Next: East of Eden: Elvis Reflects.
Trying to appeal to the younger generation?
Below: East of Eden: A Romantic Tale of Love and Loss with the Grandson of Mr. Darcy and Jane Eyre, set in British India.
Next: East of Eden: the Beach Read You Can’t Let Your Parents See.
Below: East of Eden: starring Daphne from Scooby Doo with an understudy by Blanche from A Streetcar Named Desire
And lastly: East of Eden: the Hardy Boys Turn Fratricidal
I hope you enjoyed that, now, onto Part Three.
First, let me remind us of the ground we covered in this Part: We begin, as we have in the previous two Parts, with the Hamiltons. Una has died, and her death breaks Samuel into an old man. Thanksgiving of 1911, his children come up with a plan to rotate Samuel and Liza through their houses. Tom is against this forced vacation. The first house Samuel is set to visit is Olive’s (where John’s sister Mary is (very amusingly) wishing she was a boy). Before he leaves the Hamilton homestead, Samuel says good bye at the Trask ranch; we meet 11-year-old Cal and Aron, and we get the stunning “timshel” or “thou mayest” exploration of free-will. Because of this, Samuel tells Adam that Cathy is a madam in Salinas, in a house now called Kate’s. Samuel dies in Salinas, presumably in the narrator/author’s house. Adam goes to the funeral, goes to Kate’s, confronts her as she gets drunk (for the third time in the novel), sees her for who she is, and triumphs! His next action (as any self-respecting American man’s would be!) is to buy a Ford from Will Hamilton. Now that Adam has conquered the hold Cathy had on him, we see Cal and Aron hunting a rabbit, discussing who will give it as a gift to their father, and questioning if their mother is really dead. Evil has not been vanquished, but has simply moved on to wrestle within the next generation. The boys come home to Abra’s family who took shelter from the rain in the Trask house. We meet Abra, a little girl who is used to being able to control people, but can’t control Cal, and whose fairy tale about the boys keeps getting overturned by reality, and which she has to keep re-spinning. Abra throws away the rabbit that Aron has given to her (instead of to his father) because she is afraid something inside the gift will bite her (because Cal planted this doubt in her mind). Lee tells Adam he should tell the boys the truth about their mother and narrates his (Lee’s) parent’s story. Adam writes his first letter to Charles in over 10 years. Will Hamilton delivers the Ford, but can’t teach them how to start it, nor can he restart it himself. 19-year old mechanic “Call me Joe” teaches Adam, Lee, Cal, and Aron how to drive the Ford. Adam drives it into town, with the help of the other three chanting the directions, and receives a letter from Charles’ attorneys that says his brother has died leaving his $100,000 fortune to be split equally between Adam and Cathy. Cal overhears Adam discussing the will with Lee, prays to be good, and chooses not to tell Aron that their mother is a prostitute in Salinas. Adam goes to Cathy, and tells her of the inheritance. He terrifies her because she can’t find an ulterior motive in his actions. Dessie moves back to the Hamilton ranch after an off-stage heartbreak, and she and Tom work at creating happiness. They plan to take a trip to Europe. Dessie is having pains, Tom gives Dessie salt water, she dies. Tom Hamilton confronts his perception of his sins, considers himself a murderer, writes a false letter to his mother about a horse which he says he is trying to break, and writes a second letter to Will Hamilton asking him to convince their mother that Tom really was killed by being bucked off a horse. Part Three closes with Tom having dropped these letters off at night at the post office in King City, and is now riding west, toward the Hamilton place, with a loaded gun. “He was a gallant gentleman.”
To begin again with narration: Since Steinbeck includes facts of his life into his fiction, it is interesting to see which moments he alters and which he leaves the same. In real life, Samuel Hamilton died in 1904, when John Steinbeck was 2 years old. In this fictional narrative, however, Samuel lives until he sees the death of Una (Truth), and dies shortly thereafter, on March 15, 19121.
(The Hamilton Family, on Samuel and Liza Hamilton’s 50th anniversary, 1899)
Now, onto our list of things we have been paying attention to: The themes are so prevalent in this Part Three, that I will not attempt, this time around, to compile them all. The themes I will not be touching on this time, but will continue to keep in mind, are: Biblical Storylines (Samuel as prophet; Adam as first man); Broader Biblical themes (death and resurrection; water; Mark of Cain); Fatherhood/Motherhood. Below, I’ve focused upon just four themes (with the fourth being a cheat because I’ve combined three themes into one).
First, Time:
“Seems to me you put too much stock in the affairs of children. It probably didn’t mean anything.”
“Yes, it meant something.” Then he said, “Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?”
“Maybe you’re right,” said Adam.
It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me,” said Lee, “that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.”
“And memory.”
“Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed against us” (chapter 30, pg 376).
In A Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, which are John Steinbeck’s letters to his editor as he wrote this novel, he mentions that he wrote this book for his sons. One small but sweet level to read this passage on, is as a little, personal note to his sons, recognizing the personhood and value of their lives, for the entirety of their lives. And this reading adds depth to my reading of Adam, and the very end of the novel (more on this in our post on Part Four).
Second, Names:
Cal and Aron - these slight nicknames (chapter 24, pg 299), perhaps, give us hope (I like reading with a biased filter of hope), that these boys who were named shortly after the story of Cain and Able was read, might be able to make their own story, that perhaps we won’t just repeat the failings of the past.
“Names are a great mystery. I’ve never known whether the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name. But you can be sure of this - whenever a human has a nickname it is a proof that the name given him was wrong.” (Samuel Hamilton, Part Two, chapter 22, pg 263).
Abra
And [Mr. Bacon] too addressed the boys, “My daughter’s name is Abra, boys. Isn’t that a funny name?” He used the tone adults use with children. He turned to Adam and said in poetic singsong, “‘Abra was ready ere I called her name; And though I called another, Abra came.’ Matthew Prior. I won’t say I hadn’t wanted a son - but Abra’s such a comfort. Look up, dear” (chapter 27, pg 342).2
Abra’s father, unlike Lee’s above suggestion to treat children as full people, seems to see children as having less capacity for understanding since he uses his “tone adults use with children”on the boys. Abra, perhaps, never really enters into her father’s world as a full person, worthy of respect. Thus, ironically by trying to be more adult than children, it seems he is the one who remains childish and only sees those around him as ghosts peopling his personal world (reference to a future passage in Part Four, chapter 52, pg 578).
Third, Biblical Storyline Allusion to Cain and Abel
Timshel or Thou mayest (Chapter 24)
“The King James version says this - it is when Jehovah has asked Cain why he is angry. Jehovah says, ‘If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.’ It was the ‘thou shalt’ that struck me, because it was a promise that Cain would conquer sin.”
Samual nodded, “And his children didn’t do it entirely,” he said.
Lee sipped his coffee. “Then I got a copy of the American Standard Bible. It was very new then. And it was different in this passage. It says, ‘Do thou rule over him.’ Now this is very different. This is not a promise, it is an order.” (emphasis in the original, Chapter 24, pg 301)
I find it so fitting that we begin with a 1611 British translation, move to a 1901 American translation, and will reach the peak of this narrative’s Biblical translation from living, wise American immigrants.3
“After two years we felt that we could approach your sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis. My old gentlemen felt that these words were very important too - ‘Thou shalt’ and ‘Do thou.’ And this was the gold from our mining: ‘Thou mayest.’ ‘Thou mayest rule over sin.’ The old gentlemen smiled and nodded and felt the years were well spent.”
…
Lee’s hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. “Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James Translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel - ‘Thou mayest’- that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man…
Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination4 in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. 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.” Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph (chapter 24, pg 303).And this above passage, is why I have hope regarding Cal and Aron when comparing them to Adam and Charles and Cain and Abel. Through Cal, are we getting a window into who Charles was? Though there’s this weight, similar to reading Biblical narratives, which feels like we are repeating the same story and failings over again, there is also not no hope (like in chapter 30 when Cal endearingly prays to be good, and chooses not to use his knowledge about their mother as means of hurting Aron or gaining power over him.) How will this repetition of a set of brothers differ this time? We are shown that despite all previous stories working against these boys, they still have a choice. Free-will is still the outrageously, preposterously, and awe-inspiringly powerful gift to man which makes him Man. Timshel.
Fourth, Evil/Monsterness with sub-themes of Power and Appearance vs. Reality: There are two scenes (from chapters 25 and 31) in this Part, which build on the theory of monsters we have been tracking, as well as build upon our specific understanding of Cathy. And doesn’t she grow small when we see her better? It’s so fitting and so invigorating to see evil for what it is, and know that it is truly tiny.5
Scene in chapter 25: Cathy has just displayed the grotesque pictures of powerful men which she keeps as blackmail to gather power under herself. And Adam is feeling “gloriously safe, better than he had for many years” (320).
Adam drained his glass. He felt remote and inspective. He thought he could see all her impulses crawling like ants and could read them…He said, “It doesn’t matter whether you liked Sam Hamilton. I found him wise. I remember he said one time that a woman who knows all about men usually knows one part very well and can’t conceive the other parts, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there.”
“He was a liar and a hypocrite too.” Kate spat out her words. “That is what I hate, the liars, and they’re all liars. That’s what it is. I love to show them up. I love to rub their noses in their own nastiness.” (322)Cathy cannot understand goodness. It baffles her. Like the tempters in Screwtape Letters who cannot see the motive for Christians’ actions, because they cannot believe the motive could actually be love, Cathy can see no impulses in man except lustful, twisted ones.
And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why we wait and don’t cast judgement in the midst of a book. I told you last time about my uneasiness as regards the theological soundness of Steinbeck’s theory of monsters, but how I chose to trust this “chemistry hold” as a means of revealing deeper truth. Well, it was worth the trust and the patience, if only for chapter 25. Look at the insight we gain into evil. This is what fiction can accomplish.
After this, Cathy reveals that the “final thing” she wants (at least for now… evil is never satisfied since the is-ness of it is absence, it cannot be filled; evil is the absence of all things, therefore it’s a pit without bottom) is to use her power and money to wreak revenge on the man who beat her up (a rather small-minded dream for a woman who inherited $60,000 from Faye, don’t you think?). When Adam remains untouchable to her, she grows scared, and screams for his physical destruction.Her hands writhed in her lap. “Adam,” she said, “I hate you. I hate you now for the first time. I hate you! Adam, are you listening? I hate you!”
Adam tried to sit up, fell back, and tried again. Sitting on the floor, he looked up at Kate. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It doesn’t matter at all” (325).Then Adam is able to stand, walk to the door, and smile at her.
Then he went out and closed the door gently behind him. Kate sat staring at the door. Her eyes were desolate (326).
And I whoop and holler and dance for joy. This man has entered the lair of evil, and come out alive and unscathed. Timshel.
Scene in chapter 31: Now, if I were author, I think I’d be too scared to type another word after concluding chapter 25. I’d think, “Let’s just end it there. That’s too good to outdo.” But Steinbeck is not Jessica, and he is a master. So he continues, and not only continues, but has Adam go back to Kate’s house to tell her she has inherited $50,000 from Charles. Cathy does not believe Adam doesn’t have an ulterior motive.
“What don’t I understand, Mr. Mouse?”
“You know about the ugliness in people. You showed me the pictures. You use all sad, weak parts of a man, and God knows he has them.”
“Everybody -”
Adam went on, astonished at his own thoughts, “But you - yes, that’s right - you don’t know about the rest. You don’t believe I brought you the letter because I don’t want your money. You don’t believe I loved you. And the men who come to you here with their ugliness, the men in the pictures - you don’t believe those men could have goodness and beauty in them. You see only one side, and you think - more than that, you’re sure - that’s all there is.”
She cackled at him derisively. “In sticks and stones. What a sweet dreamer is Mr. Mouse! Give me a sermon, Mr. Mouse.”
“No. I won’t because I seem to know that there’s a part of you missing. Some men can’t see the color green, but they may never know they can’t. I think you are only a part of a human.6 I can’t do anything about that. But I wonder whether you ever feel that something invisible is all around you. It would be horrible if you knew it was there and couldn’t see it or feel it. That would be horrible” (384-5).
Now we have seen what Steinbeck can show us with a pure evil character. Is it possible, perhaps, that he will, now that we have received this lesson, change it up on us? Is it possible he will now develop a crack in Cathy’s inhumanness, and allow for this very evil person to see enough light to change, just a small bit, and become human? Will he take his timshel argument and actually cause pure evil Cathy to begin to wonder (since she is, after all, a Man and not a monster) if goodness could exist, if she does have a choice? Will he play off of the Hosea and Gomer narrative to some degree? Or, will he go along a different, also deep path, will he have her remain pure evil? Will he show us how a purely evil character finishes their life? Will she refuse to admit that there could be motives that aren’t self-serving? Will she have the choice, and then choose to remain less than human? This is what I will be asking myself in Part Four.
How this book (published in 1952) is like other books; or, how this book is in conversation with other books:
“Joe had gone east and was helping to invent a new profession called advertising. Joe’s very faults were virtues in this field. He found he could communicate his material daydreaming - and, properly applied, that is all advertising is. Joe was a big man in a new field” (chapter 23, pg 277).
Reminds me of…
“‘I think this is an awfully immoral job of ours. I do, really. Think how we spoil the digestions of the public.’
'Ah, yes - but think how earnestly we strive to put them right again. We undermine ‘em with one hand and build ‘em up with the other. The vitamins we destroy in the canning, we restore in Revito, the roughage we remove from Peabody’s Piper Parritch we make up into a package and market as Bunbury’s Breakfast Bran; the stomachs we ruin with Pompayne, we re-line with Peplets to aid digestion. And by forcing the damn-fool public to pay twice over - once to have its food emasculated and once to have the vitality put back again, we keep the wheels of commerce turning and give employment to thousands - including you and me” (Dorothy Sayers, Murder Must Advertise, 51, published in 1933).“Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great state with only yourself as audience” (chapter 24, pg 295).
Reminds me of…
“Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.”
(Shakespeare’s Macbeth in Macbeth, published 1623)“Adam shivered. He looked closely at her. Her face and her laughter were childlike and innocent. He got up and poured himself another drink, a short drink. The bottle was nearly empty. ‘I know what you hate. You hate something in them you can’t understand. You don’t hate their evil. You hate the good in them you can’t get at. I wonder what you want, what final thing’” (Adam to Cathy, chapter 25, pg 323).
Reminds me of…
“That the Enemy really loves humans. That, of course, is an impossibility. He is one being, they are distinct from Him. Their good cannot be His. All His talk about Love must be a disguise for something else- He must have some real motive for creating them” (C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters, chapter 19, published in 1942).“I have often thought that perhaps formal good manners may be a cushion against heartbreak” (chapter 28, pg 356).
Reminds me of…
All of Jane Austen :) (published from 1811-1817)“The woman is still your wife and she is still alive…A whore springs full blown from the earth” (chapter 30, pg 378).
Reminds me of…
“Plead with your mother, plead-
for she is not my wife,
and I am not her husband -
that she put away her harlotry from her face,
and her adultery from between her breasts;
lest I strip her naked and make her as in the day she was born.”(Describing Hosea’s harlot wife Gomer, Hosea 2: 2-3a, 8th century BC)
“In time Mrs. Morrison found unassailable reasons for not going to the little house by the bakery. They weren’t disloyal. They didn’t want to be sad as much as they wanted to be happy” (chapter 32, pg 390).
Reminds me of…
“Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone.”
(Ella Wheeler Wilcox, “Solitude”, published 1883)
Almost finished, and now to list far too many and far too few poignant passages:
“She didn’t laugh and play like the rest of us. There was something set apart about her. She seemed always to be listening. When she was reading, her face would be like the face of one listening to music. And when we asked her any question, why, she gave the answer, if she knew it - not painted up and full of color and ‘maybes’ and ‘it-might-bes’ the way the rest of us would. We were always full of bull. There was some pure simple thing in Una,” George said. (chapter 23, pg 276)
Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands. (chapter 23, pg 282)
“We know him from the insides of ourselves.” (chapter 23, pg 286)
Perhaps it takes these two kinds to make a good marriage, riveted with several kinds of strengths. (chapter 24, pg 292)
“And while I tell you, I am myself sifting my memories, the way men pan dirt under a barroom floor for the bits of gold dust that fall between the cracks. It’s small mining - small mining. You’re too young a man to be panning memories, Adam. You should be getting yourself some new ones, so that the mining will be richer when you come to age.” (chapter 24, pg 296)
“I went along with them, marveling at the beauty of their proud clean brains. I began to love my race, and for the first time I wanted to be Chinese.”
(chapter 24, pg 303)
“But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There’s no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentlemen who were sliding down to death are too interested to die now?”
Adam said, “Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?”
Lee said, “These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it…Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this - this is a ladder to climb to the stars.”
(chapter 24, pg 304)
“This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because ‘Thou mayest.’” (chapter 24, pg 304)
Lee smiled. “My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructible.” (chapter 28, pg 357).
Adam said, “Were they ignorant? Why couldn’t she have gone to the boss and told him she was a woman and pregnant? Surely they would have taken care of her.”
“You see?” said Lee. “I haven’t told you enough. And that’s why this is so long. They were not ignorant. These human cattle were imported for one thing only - to work. When the work was done, those who were not dead were to be shipped back. Only males were brought - no females. The country did not want them breeding. A man and a woman and a baby have a way of digging in, of pulling the earth where they are about them and scratching out a home. And then it takes all hell to root them out.” (chapter 28, pg 358).
Last musing, and to end in the middle on a (newish) final theme:
Fairy Tale & Myth
In Part Two, as Samuel comes to deliver Cathy’s children, Lee says:
“Since I’ve come here I find myself thinking of Chinese fairy tales my father told me. We Chinese have a well-developed demonology” (chapter 17, pg 189).
On the first page of Part Three, Steinbeck begins with the story of Una Hamilton. In Edmund Spenser’s 1590 epic poem, The Faerie Queene, Una is the main character of Book I, opposite the Red Cross Knight, who is St. George. She represents Truth, Unity, Purity... and it is the Red Cross Knight’s job to protect her. As regards East of Eden, George Hamilton picks up his only role in the narrative in order to tell his broken impression of what Una’s death meant to the family, while Tom Hamilton continues to be described as a “red man” of great strength, and “a dragon killer…a rescuer of damsels” (chapter 33, pg 401). It seems as if these two men were meant to be reminiscent of, or point towards, the Red Cross Knight. Then these thoughts on fairy tale themes were bolstered by the interaction between Abra and the twins.
[Abra] drew on her fairy tales. “You poor children,” she said, “does your father beat you?” They shook their heads… “Poor darlings,” she began, and she seemed to herself to have a little wand in her hand tipped by a twinkling star. “Does your wicked stepmother hate you and want to kill you?”…His words destroyed the story she was writing but almost immediately supplied her with another. The wand was gone but she wore a big hat with an ostrich plume and she carried an enormous basket from which a turkey’s feet protruded (chapter 27, pg 347, emphasis mine).
And the height of this theme (for me) is reached in Lee’s telling of his parent’s story, in Chapter 28, the very center of Part Three (and the very center of the story…more on this in the last EoE post). Many aspects of this story within the story feel like a fairy tale: the motherless child (Lee) who grew up “in a little dark shack alone with my father” (what fairy tale doesn’t have a main character who lacks at least one parent?); the lovers separated by duty/honor/family; a woman disguised as a man to be with her love (The Brother’s Grimm “The Twelve Huntsmen”); small things (“a little boulder jumped down a hill and broke my father’s leg) having large consequences (the rape and death of Lee’s mother); and the feel and tone of the narrative. And beautifully, these fairy tale motifs are either the gilding or the foundation (I cannot decide which) of a very real story. Fiction, fairy tales, myths, they have a means of conveying real truth. Let me place before us one of my favorite passages:
“I hope they get there,” said Adam.
“I know. And when my father would tell me I would say to him, ‘Get to that lake - get my mother there - don’t let it happen again, not this time. Just once let’s tell it: how you got to the lake and built a house of fir boughs.’ And my father became very Chinese then. He said, ‘There’s more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty. The storytellers at the city gate twist life so that it looks sweet to the lazy and the stupid and the weak, and this only strengthens their infirmities and teaches nothing, cures nothing, nor does it let the heart soar.’”
“Get on with it,” Adam said irritably.
Lee got up and went to the window, and he finished the story, looking out at the stars that winked and blew in the March wind (chapter 28, pgs 359-60).
And before I place any reflections down, let us reach the conclusion of this sad narrative:
“And whether with worry or work - it doesn’t matter - my mother went into early labor. And then the half-mad men knew and they went all mad. One hunger sharpened another hunger, and one crime blotted out the one before it, and the little crimes committed against those starving men flared into one gigantic maniac crime.
“My father heard the shout ‘Woman’ and he knew. He tried to run and his leg rebroke under him and he crawled up the ragged slope to the roadbed where it was happening.
“When he got there a kind of sorrow had come over the sky, and the Canton men were creeping away to hide and to forget that men can be like this…
“Before you hate those men you must know this. My father always told it as the last: No child ever had such care as I. The whole camp became my mother. It is a beauty - a dreadful kind of beauty. And now good night. I can’t talk any more” (chapter 28, pg 360).
It’s just incredible. I struggle to find an adjective to adequately or fully describe the poignancy of this tale. There are many levels on which it moves me. On the most basic level, it moves me as a historical reality. I am sure, without doing any research, that the bones of this story have truth. That Cantonese men worked under hard conditions (where order was kept the “only way our poor species has ever learned to keep order…the whip, the rope, the rifle” (chapter 28, pgs 358-9)), to build the infrastructure of California. But one aspect of Steinbeck that makes him a master, is that he does not merely place this story in his novel in order to propagate a hard truth. He’s not merely drawing our attention to a social evil (while this is important, it is something which I do not find as impactful as what Steinbeck actually achieves). He interlays within this hard truth ways of telling this story which make it feel like a myth of creation. There’s this deep fittingness to the evil tragedy of it, as well as a deep fittingness to it as an origin story for the man (Lee) who becomes father and mother to this generation’s Cain and Able Cal and Aron. Stories inside stories are always important. Stories of creation and birth are always important. This could be considered, on multiple levels, the veritable creation story of California: how she was literally and physically built, who built her, how her only child was born of her, and how that child is raising the two original sons in the Edenic cradle valley. It’s epic, and mythic, and fairy tale-ish, and sad, and beautiful, and it’s pretty much the dead center of Part Three, which is pretty much the dead center of the novel. Is this story, in a nut shell, what Steinbeck is attempting with his entire novel? The interweaving of truth and myth, reality and fairy tale, fact and fiction, into one great creation story of America?
And, that’s where I’ll leave us. Far too long, and hopelessly short. We didn’t even talk about…humor (in characters and situations and writing), the importance of place/land (shoutout to Wallace Stegner and Wendell Berry), the question of fatherhood as regards the twins (is Adam the father, or Charles? And is it possible Adam is the father of one fraternal twin, and Charles the father of the other? Are we supposed to figure it out from the clues given? Or is it supposed to remain ambiguous?), Dessie & Tom & happiness & cowboys & suicide & that how a man dies is a reflection of who he is and how he lives7, or so many other things… But, on we march.
Next musings on East of Eden will be (here’s the schedule):
July 10 - Part Four (~190pgs)
July 11 - Revisiting the Whole
Until next time, keep revisiting the good books that enrich your life and nourish your soul.
In Case You Missed Previous East of Eden Posts:
In Case You Missed It:
Reading Revisited ep.4: Hannah’s Bookish Bio with Kelsie Hartley and Hannah Suire
Reading Revisited ep. 3: Crossing to Safety with Hannah Suire, , and special guest
A Few Reminders:
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Book lists from previous years can be found here.
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I am positive there is significance to the dates on which things occur. Steinbeck was very explicit as to the timeline of Faye’s death by Cathy back in Part Two, and he clearly provides dates and seasons and rain references to other events throughout the narrative. If someone were to follow this trail, and outline when events occurred, I’m sure it would be fruitful.
I wonder if Steinbeck felt he was going to ruffle some feathers with this comparison of translations, and the choosing of an unofficial one as the favorite? When Samuel asks, “Do you then not think this is a divine book written by the inky finger of God?” (302), it feels as if Steinbeck is poking at a hole he perceives in Protestant Christian theology. Beautiful to me, is Lee’s response, “I think the mind that could think this story was a curiously divine mind,” which, while it does not use philosophically accurate terms to describe Catholic’s understanding of Divine Inspiration (that the Bible was written by God through a divinely inspired author, who was a real man in a real time and place) hints towards the truth of Divine Inspiration.
What with Liza Hamilton’s strict views, the idea of “monsters” or people who are born evil or damned, and this acknowledgement of Predestination, it would be interesting to follow Steinbeck’s religious experience with Predestination. Growing up in the Episcopalian Church in the early 1900’s, was Predestination accepted in his church community and household? To what degree or extent, if it was? Steinbeck became an agnostic (according to my brief googling), therefore no matter where he began, where did he end up?
In Paradise Lost, Satan is depicted at his largest (he appears to be of gigantic proportions) at the beginning of the epic. However, as the epic progresses, he takes on varies forms, each one smaller than the last. Thus, at the conclusion of the epic you see him for all he is, a tiny slivering reptile, that is small minded and (as we know from the end of the story of salvation) able to be crushed by the heal of a mere girl.
Steinbeck keeps mentioning that Cathy (or others like her) are only “part human.” If we accept the “monster theory chemistry hold,” and view her as a pure evil character, then she has no timshel, and therefore she is not a man. It is timshel that makes a man a man, that makes a human human. Free-will is the necessary divide between apes and men.
A long standing motif has been: the way in which a person rides a horse is a direct symbol for how well that person’s passions are bridled. Therefore, in Kristin Lavransdatter it is fitting that Erlend dies from a wound to the groin while riding a horse (he was never a master of his lusts). Interesting enough, Tom wishes people to think he died due to unbridled passions (i.e. being bucked off a horse he cannot control). It’s as if he understands what people think and expect of him enough that he is able to concoct for them a suitably plausible story for how he died.
I never thought of the fairy tale aspects weaving in with the biblical/mythic aspects-so interesting to consider (Lee as fairy godfather is my new favorite take). I also loved the passages about the turn of the century/changing times, the simultaneous strands of optimism/hope in progress/the “future” and pessimism/belief that the good old days are in the past and can’t be recovered. It’s very American to oscillate between those two extremes, and I think if you look at the political landscape, politicians are always appealing to one of those two narratives.