East of Eden - Part Two
Chapters 12-22
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Happy Wednesday, I hope you have enjoyed (can that word be used on such a dark part of the novel?) this second set of 11 chapters from East of Eden.
Before we enter in, here’s my briefest summary of the ground we covered in these chapters: Adam and Cathy move to the Salinas Valley (leaving Charles on the Connecticut farm), where Cathy tries to (and fails to) abort the baby (*babies) she’s carrying with a knitting needle. We get more Hamilton Family character development, including Olive Hamilton’s airplane ride. Adam buys and builds on some of the best land in the valley, hiring Lee to serve in the house, and hiring Samuel Hamilton to find water and build wells and windmills in order to make his land “a garden.” We learn to absolutely love Liza Hamilton for who she is. In Chapter 17 (the very center of Part Two!) Samuel is digging up a buried star with two of his sons (Tom and Joe), when Cathy goes into labor and viciously bites Samuel’s hand as he helps her deliver the fraternal twin boys. After Cathy has recovered, and while Samuel is battling a fever from the infection of her bite, Cathy sends everyone away from the ranch, shoots Adam in the shoulder, and leaves (end of Chapter 17). Next Steinbeck describes the three prostitute houses in Salinas, and that Cathy has joined Faye’s. Faye falls for Cathy, willing all her positions to Cathy as a daughter, Cathy gets drunk (for the second time in the novel), reveals too much about her sadistic, power-hungry self, and then carefully plots out and completes the murder of Faye. Part Two ends with Lee bringing Samuel Hamilton to the ranch to wake Adam out of his year-long stupor, and name the boys. The original suggestion was Cain and Able, the names they settle on are Caleb and Aaron.
Now, to begin where we began before, on narration: During this rereading, I found myself enjoying the way in which the Hamilton storyline grounds the Trask fiction into a specific time and place - into reality.
On a first read, the anecdote about Olive Hamilton selling war bonds and flying in a plane felt like a distraction, on this reread it feels like an integral way of giving readers the feel and the fabric of the time.
Speaking of time, I’m pulling this theme forward from our list of things we’re keeping in mind, and placing it here, because it deserves the first word. Give yourself a pleasant few minutes, and reread the two pages of chapter 12. I do not recall a better written and descriptively succinct summary of American history. I’ll provide the first paragraph below, as a reminder:
You can see how this book has reached a great boundary that was called 1900. Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to be - more rich and meaningful the farther back it was. In the books of some memories it was the best time that ever sloshed over the world - the old time, the gay time, sweet and simple, as though time were young and fearless. Old men who didn’t know whether they were going to stagger over the boundary of the century looked forward to it with distaste. For the world was changing, and sweetness was gone, and virtue too. Worry had crept on a corroding world, and what was lost - good manners, ease, beauty? Ladies were not ladies any more, and you couldn’t trust a gentleman’s word (129).
In this first paragraph, Steinbeck sets the stage for Part Two, giving us a multi-faceted impression of time, acknowledging both the conservative strain (everything was better in the past) and the progressive strain (everything will be better in the future), and allowing neither to have the last say. Build upon these thoughts with:
We must get out of this banged-up century (130).
And:
He was not alone in his preoccupation with the future. The whole valley, the whole West was that way. It was a time when the past had lost its sweetness and its sap. You’d go a long road before you’d find a man, and he very old, who wished to bring back a golden past. Men were notched and comfortable in the present, hard and unfruitful as it was, but only as a doorstep into a fantastic future. Rarely did two men meet, or three stand in a bar, or a dozen gnaw tough venison in camp, that the valley’s future, paralyzing in its grandeur, did not come up, not as a conjecture but as a certainty (157).
This book was published in 1952. Steinbeck’s readers were as aware as we are that the years after 1900 were to be some of the bloodiest in memory. I sense a deep, near-hopeless sadness and a near-futility entering into Part Two, which undermines all of Adam’s happy plans. (It’s perhaps a similar reading experience to the beginning of Genesis, since we know the Fall is coming.)
Now, let’s pick up the list of what we were paying attention to and continue to build upon it:
Names: The majority of chapter 22, the last of Part Two, is dedicated to the naming of the twins. I’m confident an entire essay, if not thesis, could be written on this one chapter. Therefore, I’ll simply limit myself to placing before us some poignant moments:
“This man has not admitted that his sons live. He has cut them off mid-air” (Samuel Hamilton, 256).
“We’ll think long and find good names to clothe them” (Samuel Hamilton, 259-260).
“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. How do you favor the standard names - John or James or Charles?” (Samuel Hamilton, 263).
What do we make of this considering Cathy has gone by so many versions of her name? Catherine, Cathy, Kate. If her given name is wrong, what should her name be? And what do we make of the fact that she gives the nicknames to herself (i.e. they are not given to her)?
“Suddenly Samuel laughed. ‘In two minutes,’ he said, ‘and after a waterfall of words. Caleb and Aaron - now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned’” (272).
Caleb is now the third character to have a name beginning with “C,” the other two being Charles and Cathy. Aaron is named with an “A” like Adam. Seems like we’re being set up for more brother conflict, similar to Part One’s conflict between Adam and Charles, and to Genesis’ reoccurring conflict between brothers (Cain and Abel, Ishmael and Isaac, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, etc.). How will this potential for conflict develop in this iteration?
Biblical Allusions:
Biblical Storylines
Samuel as prophet:
“Louis turned to Adam, and there was just a hint of hostility in his tone. ‘I want to put you straight on one or two things, Mr. Trask. There’s people that when they see Samuel Hamilton the first time might get the idea he’s full of bull. He don’t talk like other people. He’s an Irishman. And he’s full of plans - a hundred plans a day. And he’s all full of hope. My Christ, he’d have to be to live on this land! But you remember this - he’s a fine worker, a good blacksmith, and some of his plans work out. And I’ve heard him talk about things that were going to happen and they did” (140).
And… pages 145-146 when Samuel envisions the future, page 163 when he is able to truly see Lee, 168-169 when he finds water, pages 172-173 when he truly sees Cathy.
Adam as the first man:
“Look, Samuel, I mean to make a garden of my land. Remember my name is Adam. So far I’ve had no Eden, let alone been driven out” (169).
“But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story. We are Cain’s children” (Samuel Hamilton, 270).
This very powerfully nudges me to rethink the Cain and Abel narrative, since Cain is our parent. But…Seth. Did Steinbeck merely leave Seth out in order to leave more room for poetic truth?
Broader Biblical themes:
Death & Resurrection:
“It does take a time to get used to a new country. It’s like being born again and having to learn all over” (Adam, 175).
(About Cathy’s labor) “This is much more like a bitter, deadly combat than a birth” (Lee, 189).
Describing Adam after Cathy shoots him, “And if you ever saw death still breathing, there it was” (205).
“He’s a dead man unless you [Samuel, the prophet] can wake him up” (Lee, 255).
water (168-169)
the scar on the forehead of Charles and Cathy, which I’m referring to as the Mark of Cain, was mentioned once in relation to Charles (133), and then ten times in relation to Cathy (160, 172, 192, 199, 209, 212, 214, 224, 225, 234). Then on page 268 & 270, we are given the original Genesis account of the mark of Cain, followed by Samuel’s interpretation:
“Did you listen? Cain bore the mark not to destroy him but to save him. And there’s a curse called down on any man who shall kill him. It was a preserving mark.”
How does/will Cathy’s Mark of Cain save or preserve her?
Fatherhood was brought up on page 170 in relation to Cyrus, and how he was “maybe a great man” but how his son “couldn’t love him.” Then Adam becomes an absentee father…As Faye, the madam of the prostitute house Cathy joined, brings into the narrative a conversation about motherhood.
Evil/Monsterness:
Lots of evil descriptions of Cathy in this section (all the descriptions of her small tongue and her sharp teeth and snakes and biting…etc), and a sustained development on Steinbeck’s “theory of monsters” in chapter 17 (the center of Part Two). In this Part Two, the jury is out for me on how stable I feel Steinbeck’s position is on this. I begin to worry that he is proposing that “monsters” were created that way, and that they only see the world through a distorted lens and therefore…? Is he suggesting that therefore some people are not fully culpable for their evil actions? Which, if that is what he is proposing, is false. People are not created evil and damned. (Unless, perhaps, one were to subscribe to a strict Predestination view?) But, I’m wondering if Steinbeck is doing something more in this story by creating this not-real element, this “monster men” or “not human human” character. In engineering classes, I remember doing problems where forces on an object would be removed from the problem (forces that would have actually been present in real life) in order to allow the person computing to discover the true answer. Or, as another example, I remember experiments in chemistry lab when a condition would be created that could never possibly occur in real life, and because of this unrealistic scenario, because of some “hold” that was placed on a reaction, a truth of real reality would be exposed that you could not get to without that unrealistic constraint. Perhaps what Steinbeck is doing with his monster theory is a “chemistry hold.” Perhaps this making of a pure evil character, will expose some Truth we might not be able to see without it. Therefore, I’m accepting Steinbeck’s theory of monsters within the context of this book, and I’m watching to see what he shows me because of it.1
I would like to add two more themes I’m paying attention to, because of events in Part Two:
Power: I believe it was Cathy’s manipulative, calculated actions, which first fully exposed to me the way in which women gather power.
Appearance vs. Reality: On page 171 Samuel says, “I should give you Othello’s handkerchief,” which instantly started ringing bells in my head that Steinbeck is probably trying to call attention to when the appearance of something or someone does not match the reality of who they are. I was instantly rewarded when just a few sentences later, Samuel sees Cathy and says, “Even at this distance she looks beautiful.” Cathy is a prime example of when a person’s exterior belies their interior. Liza Hamilton is an alternate example of this. Small and dark, nevertheless Samuel says it will be good to bring Liza into Adam’s house after Cathy’s demonic labor because, “She’ll let some light into this cellar hole” (196).
A comparison between two passages: I think there could be a good comparison between Steinbeck’s description of the three phases of settlers (beginning of chapter 19, page 217) with his description of the three prostitute houses, Jenny’s, the Long Green, and Faye’s, on the row in Salinas (still the beginning of chapter 19, page 220). Which makes me wonder: what is he saying about the future of the country if the third phase (of prostitute houses) is taken over by power-grasping, money-hungry Cathy through murder?
A new country seems to follow a pattern. First come the openers, strong and brave and childlike. They can take care of themselves in a wilderness, but they are naive and helpless against men, and perhaps that is why they went out in the first place. When the rough edges are worn off of the new land, businessmen and lawyers come in to help with the development - to solve problems of ownership, usually by removing temptations themselves. And finally comes culture, which is entertainment, relaxation, transport out of the pain of living. (217)
How this book (published in 1952) is like other books; or, how this book is in conversation with other books:
“A man’s mind vagued up a little, for how can you remember the feel of pleasure or pain or chocking emotion? You can remember only that you had them” (129).
Reminds me of…
“You shall forget these things, toiling in the household,
You shall remember them, droning by the fire,
When age and forgetfulness sweeten memory
Only like a dream that has often been told
And often been changed in the telling. They will seem
unreal.
Human kind cannot bear very much reality”
(T. S. Eliot’s chorus in Murder in the Cathedral, published in 1935).“Her self was an island” (159).
Reminds me of…
“No man is an island,
Entire of itself;
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less,
As well as if a promontory were:
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were.
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee”
(John Donne, “No Man Is an Island,” published in 1624).“I don’t know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love” (165).
Reminds me of…
“I gave it all to Lord Darlington…You see, I trusted. I trusted in his Lordship’s wisdom. All those years I served him, I trusted I was doing something worthwhile” (Kazuo Ishiguro, The Remains of the Day, 243, published in 1989).“And it gave him a shivering to see her face change…It was like one magic-lantern slide taking the place of another” (192).
Reminds me of…
An 1846 letter from Dickens describing London as his magic-lantern.“There is something very attractive to men about a madam. She combines the brains of a businessman, the toughness of a prize fighter, the warmth of a companion, the humor of a tragedian” (219).
Reminds me of…
Rhett Butler’s need for Belle Watling, the madam in Atlanta, in Gone with the Wind, published 1936.
Almost finished, and to again do a Kelsie-thing, and list poignant passages:
“Sometimes a kind of glory lights up the mind of a man. It happens to nearly everyone. You can feel it growing or preparing like a fuse burning toward dynamite. It is a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves, of the forearms. The skin tastes the air, and every deep drawn breath is sweet. Its beginning has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world flows outside your eyes” (131).
Well, a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does.
(Samuel Hamilton, 145)
No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us.
(Lee, 268)
Last musing, and to end on a positive note: A lot of Part Two is dark, and so you may be wondering at this point, “why continue?” Words to a weary soul: stick with it. Remember the masks of tragedy and comedy.
Look at the shape of the mouths, and you understand the arc of a story. A tragic story arc begins low, reaches its highest in the middle, and finishes low. A comedic story, on the other hand, begins high, is at its lowest in the middle, and then ends high. It’s possible, since we’ve been going down from the start, that East of Eden is a comedy, not a tragedy, which means we are near the lowest part of the narrative.2 This does not mean everything will soon become butterflies and daisies, this is Steinbeck, after all. However, you may begin to feel “the why” of this book a little more as we work our way through Part Three (it’s potentially my favorite Part of the book!). So stick with it. To (kind of) quote Winston Churchill, a country song, and Dante, “When you’re going through Hell, keep on going, don’t stop now, if you’re scared don’t show it, you might get out, before the devil even knows you’re there.”
Next musings on East of Eden will be (here’s the schedule)3:
July 3 - Part Three (~130 pgs)
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 It
A Few Reminders
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Book lists from previous years can be found here.
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It’s a temptation to begin categorizing a book before one is done with it. In The Good Good, the Good Bad, the Bad Good, and the Bad Bad, I defined Pearce’s book categories. And in this Part Two of East of Eden, I began to have the sinking feeling that there may be some shaky philosophy/morality coming to us from Steinbeck. However, I know that it is crucial to wait until the end to pass judgements on the soundness of an author’s philosophical outlook. Everything can change with the last word of the book. Also, if you pick at a thread of shaky morality in the middle of a work, and pull on this thread now, you risk the whole tapestry unraveling. So I will leave this question here, as a thread resting in my palm, and not pull until the end. And it’s possible that the very next words he writes, or perhaps the last words, will stitch this seemingly loose thread into the whole tapestry, and it will show itself to have been woven by the hand of an expert.
Why did Steinbeck choose to write this book in only Four Parts? Shakespeare famously writes a five act play, giving himself a perfect middle. Why is the middle, third act, missing from Steinbeck? Or is it missing? Is it, perhaps, hidden? We’ll revisit the structure of this book in our final musing post.
If you’re looking for more insights to East of Eden and Steinbeck, Kelsie wants me to be sure to mention Journal of a Novel, which is Steinbeck’s letters to his editor as he wrote East of Eden.