“ ‘The nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.’ ”
–Lee, reading from Marcus Aurelius (563).
I’m not going to list all of my favorite quotes from East of Eden. I would mostly end up listing all the pages on which Samuel Hamilton speaks at length. An all-time great character among the literature I’ve read, to be sure. But I keep coming back to the above quote when thinking about inheritance and fate in this novel. I wonder how much a quote like this can compel a novelist to write. Maybe Steinbeck stumbled across this quote somewhere, and suddenly his direction for the novel became clear. The use of a predecessor in one’s work, especially a quote as spot-on as this, is a kind of inheritance all it’s own, don't you think?
What I would like to explore in this post instead of more quotes: the inversion of character/roles, self-indulgence, war, and the ending. No funny business. I’m diving in deep.
Empowered by Choice
The second half of Eden begins with Samuel’s acknowledgment of his mortality. Where once Samuel Hamilton embodied only the wise, fatherly figure of God, this onset of fate, coupled with the onset of truth brought on by the timshel revelation (306) stirs in Samuel the daring courage necessary to confront Adam. He proposes, “If I had a medicine that might cure you and also might kill you, should I give it to you? Inspect yourself, man,” (304). The medicine and poison in one is truth: the same truth offered to Eve by the serpent at the tree of knowledge in Genesis. Steinbeck has possessed his most endearing character with the most loathed spirit, but has done so out of necessity. Had Samuel not exposed Adam to the truth, he may have never recovered from his self-indulgent stupor.
And so the reader is put at odds. Does man require truth, even at the cost of their ideal Eden? Adam did. It is a poison that burrows deep, and this poison has not yet run its course. Samuel’s time had run its course, however, and this last act leaves the Hamiltons, Adam, and Lee reeling. It is as though as Samuel left, so did Eden, and now those left behind must cope by themselves in a world “shattered like a dish” (388).
For her second act, Cathy becomes a character actor of herself, ever more convinced of her misguided principles and increasingly saturated by the monster inside herself. That monster is clearly apple-green, as Steinbeck uses the color to describe her whenever the opportunity is there (314, 379-80, 382, etc). Green: the color of the fruit of knowledge, and of the serpent itself. Though God has left the valley, his counterpart has taken up residence, no longer disguised as an Eve. The monster has become fully realized. The cost of this transformation is her beauty: her teeth become sharpened and yellowed, she gains weight, and arthritis cripples her hands. Cathy tries to be satisfied with her new existence, having reached the summit of power and independence she always longed for, yet she often finds herself thinking of Adam, and later, of Cal and Aron. She welcomes their confrontations, eager to expose in them the ugliness that she so willingly owns up to, but these attempts to evidence her distrust of others always fall flat, leaving her confidence shaken for a time until she can shed the skin of this latest setback and return, greener than before. The existence of her sons continues to linger in her mind, however, and it comes to a head when, for reasons not altogether clear even to herself, she makes Aron her sole heir. It would seem that she has admitted defeat; that there is a kindness in her, or merely that the hole inside her could in fact be filled. This final act, her only act of kindness, is a concession not unlike Javier’s in Les Misérables: having acknowledged that her version of the truth is a lie, she cannot go on living.
The cases of Cal and Aron are curious. By that I mean that it is difficult to say, knowing how their paths end, why their lives are so divergent, not only from previous Cains and Abels, but from where it seemed Steinbeck would take the reader. There are things I have not yet been able to wrap my head entirely around (Adam’s rejection of Cal in light of all he has experienced with Charles and Cal; Aron’s self-imposed isolation, transformation, and incompletion), so if you’re reading this and you’ve read Eden, I’d love to pick your mind on these points!
For now, I’ll talk about what I do know. Aron is born with the looks of Cathy, the mentality of Adam, and the strength of Charles: seemingly all the strongest genes that could be inherited from the Trask family, making him the favorite of the brothers to succeed, and incidentally the favorite son of Adam. Cal is born with the look of Charles, the mentality and habits of Cathy (feeling inherently bad or incomplete, sticking his small hands in his pockets, etc.), and the weaknesses of Adam (constant inner struggle and vulnerability). Aron possesses a magnetism that attracts love, and Caleb inspires fear, even if unwarranted. Steinbeck has repeated the Cain and Abel reincarnation often enough now that it is not only the reader who knows to be wary; the characters distance themselves in the anticipation that Cal is tied by fate to misfortune. Cal’ name bears the dreaded “C,” further setting him up to fail, and he irrefutably does so, committing the act of Cain first to Abra by attempting to sever her ties to Aron (347), and later to Aron by revealing the truth about their mother.
Yet, having read the text, I am sure that you would contest that Cal is not merely another Cain. From the time he first recognizes his power to inflict pain on others, Cal prays to God, “let me be like Aron. Don’t make me mean,” (377). He feels instantaneous regret for having done wrong to Aron and Abra. He longs to undo the shameful cloud that looms over his family by making back the money Adam lost. This sacrifice would follow that of Cain and Charles before him in bribing for their father’s love, but Cal’s is subtlety different: though his intentions to please Adam are selfish, his intentions to lift the burden of shame from his brother are selfless. Abra comes to recognize the good in Cal: that he is conscious of the bad, his jealousy, aggression and loneliness, and fights them with his entire being.
Aron is another story. From his promising child, he grows up and grows out of the blessings of his heredity. He ceases to be enamored with Abra and becomes obsessed with the preservation of his purity. He latches tightly to the idea that sin is a thing to fear and to distance himself from, and in doing so he becomes a twisted human. Compare him to Cal, who obsesses over the nothingness inside him, yet comes off as the most complete character of all, fully aware of his sins and defects, but willing himself to be good. Aron wholeheartedly denies a part of his humanity, man’s ugly tendencies and truth, and in doing so, he matures into an incomplete person, much like his mother. Even more curious is Adam’s complete oversight of this: just as he did not see the true Cathy, Adam is ignorant of the true Aron. Perhaps his appearance reminds him of Cathy, and likewise blinds him. Just as Cathy clung tightly to her notions of absolute evil in the world, Aron so clings to absolute purity. It is not a surprise then that just as Cathy was unable to cope with reality, Aron “commits suicide” by escaping into the army and dying in the war.
It seems that the trajectories of the brothers’ paths from birth are reversed. For better or for worse, Cal successfully combated and overcame fate. Perhaps it was his fate all along, to walk in the Promised Land as the Caleb of the Bible does (461). Doing so, he believes, cost him his brother, but it was not directly his fault. Just as Adam required the poison of truth to live a real life, so did Aron.
Self-Indulgence, War, & a Cliffhanger
Steinbeck goes out of his way to chastise any character that falls prey to self-pity. “Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asks Adam point-blank. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” (293). Adam is the first and foremost to relish his own failure, but he is certainly not alone in his wallowing. If I thought hard enough about it and retraced the novel, I think a case could be made that every major male character (except Samuel perhaps) experiences a case of self-indulgence. A period of doubt that each refuses to move on from, instead comforting themselves with pity and blaming their outcomes on unluckiness, fate, and unfairness. They may even begin to rightfully blame themselves, only to indulge in this harsh reality further. So long as they do not act to rid themselves of their funk, Steinbeck remains unwilling to sympathize with their despair. Such self-indulgent despair leads Tom Hamilton to kill himself (407) and causes Aron to neglect Abra (473).
Steinbeck’s overt criticism of this behavior resonates with me. East of Eden is the first novel I’ve encountered to take such a strong stand on self-indulgence: a behavior that is highly prevalent in art. Depression and self-indulgence litter our art, and are glorified at times as a great source of inspiration to our most recognized artists. Steinbeck’s refusal to allow this behavior to go unchecked in his novel is a breath of fresh air, and one that much of our contemporary society could use. Every one of us self-indulges from time to time, but I feel that social media has made wallowing in one’s negative state of affairs even more common. It has become too easy to solicit pity; to publicly “play a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience” as Adam does (293). A great lesson in the value of perseverance, to be sure.
War comes and goes in the novel, as a familiar wind passing through. Cyrus’s revisionist history of his time at war sets an example to his sons of valor and honor. From this, Charles becomes an honest, dedicated man despite his flaws. “A soldier is the most holy of humans,” after all (24). Adam reluctantly becomes a soldier, albeit a nonviolent one. Perhaps his nonviolence is a rebellion against his father and brother; perhaps it is Steinbeck’s way of planting the seed of nonviolence in his family. Perhaps both, or maybe I’m all wrong. Whatever the case, as Adam goes AWOL, so does the place of war in the novel. One might forget, as I did for a time, that we ever spoke of war in the novel, until the later chapters begin to open with updates on World War I. Steinbeck brings the war to Salinas Valley through anecdotes and memories: memories shrouded in a backdrop of innocence, masking the guilt of unwitting participation, unwitting cruelty. We never read about any Great Enemy; instead, it is our neighbors and family that we confront with violence. “We had our own personal German,” writes the narrator of his childhood relationship to Mr. Fenchel (515). On the loss of life: “it was everybody’s brother,” foreshadowing the loss of Aron (481).
There is one of these intermissive war-updates that stood out to me during my read-through, and for good reason. Chapter 54, part 2, makes no mention of familiar characters, nor does it give us a perspective from the narrator. It is merely a report on the specifics of one attack. “The attack was a complete success,” wraps up the narrator (588). A complete success, and one that we are led to believe was the attack in which Aron was killed. That Steinbeck makes no indication at this point is not just for the sake of suspense: Steinbeck is juxtaposing victory in war, a thing to be celebrated, with the ominously death of a loved one. Here, Aron could be a statistic. Steinbeck might have added, “X casualties were lost,” but he does not do that either. When reporting on war, and when celebrating a victory, there is an elation that is entirely separate from the consequences of war. Only later do we mourn our losses. By taking this approach, Steinbeck exposes the triviality that war makes of life.
Is Eden an anti-war novel? I’m not so sure. I am inclined to say that it is a novel about personal choice, individual agency, the struggle to do good. It is a novel that values life, but not a novel of nonviolence. Steinbeck criticizes the costs of war indirectly, but never the merit or necessity of war. Perhaps to decide this question, one would have to stake a side in this argument: Does Aron commit suicide by joining the war effort? Or does he become an admirable character for it, having accepted life as it is, and so become a martyr for it? I don’t think the novel sides either way, which leads me to the ending.
Adam exclaims “Timshel!” to Cal, to Lee, and to the reader as he lies in bed, confronted by fate. Does he blame Cal? Be the answer ye or nay, does he forgive Cal for it? Does the cycle continue? Steinbeck seems content to leave leaves questions open ended. This ending could be the halfway point of a greater novel, and I’m okay with that. In the end, East of Eden isn’t about forgiveness, so for Adam to forgive Cal without hesitation would be too easy, too much of a cop out. Adam is gripping with the loss of Aron, and so he feels a dissonance inside himself. His favorite son is gone, but to embrace Cal would be dishonest, a betrayal of his true feelings. It must be that this struggle, with or without resolution, this choice that is the crux of the novel, is better left unresolved. I have mixed feelings about the ending as I interpret it, but I am glad for it ending this way. In short, is an ending worthy of such a masterful work, memorable and unrelenting in its message.
I’m currently reading The Stranger, and will follow that up with The Fall, both by Albert Camus. Very light reading, and looking forward to it! Perhaps I will take a French excursion and read some Sartre while I’m at it. I would like to come back to Steinbeck again soon, though.
-Kyle
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