“Man is an animal who has to live in a lie in order to live at all.” (Ernst Becker, Escape from Evil). The two major themes of the East of Eden are, finding your identity and escaping evil, often argued through multiple articles. Evilness is something that some people do not escape, but in this novel evil is escaped by multiple characters.
The author of the East of Eden, John Ernst Steinbeck jr. was born in Salinas, California, USA to John Ernst Steinbeck sr. and Olivia Hamilton on February 27, 1902. Steinbeck came from a family of moderate means. His father tried several jobs to keep the family fed and his mother was a school teacher. Steinbeck grew up with three sisters and he was known for being shy, but smart. After graduating high school Steinbeck studied English at Stanford University. Coming from a middleclass family, he worked during college to help pay the expenses. He dropped in and out of the university. In 1925 Steinbeck completely dropped out of college and went to New York to establish himself as a freelance writer while working for a construction company.
A freelance writer is an author who is self-employed and writes for small companies. He soon failed as a free-lance writer and he returned to California. Steinbeck became widely known when he wrote his fifth book, Tortilla Flat, in 1953. After this novel he moved to more serious writing as in, Of Mice and Men and The Long Valley. Steinbeck married three times, he married his first spouse, Carol Henning, in 1930 and divorced in 1943. He then married his second wife, Gwndolyn Conger, in 1943 and divorced in 1948. Him and his last wife, Elain Anderson Steinbeck, married in 1950. Steinbeck died of congestive heart failure on December 20, 1968 in New York, New York, USA.
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John Steinbeck grew up with a love for the land in California and he portrayed the love in few of his novels. He depicted the harsh reality of the working class’s living condition in the time period he was writing about. Steinbeck was an author who only wrote fictional novels while using realistic characters and storylines. These writing techniques caused his novels to be considered “social novels”. Social novels are works of fiction that prevail social problems and dramatize them. Almost all Steinbeck’s novels had similar rural settings and themes including, solitude, love and loss, guilt, friendship and loyalty, and greed. Steinbeck expressed his writing as “experimental” and he intentionally used a documentary style for multiple of his books. According to Cliff Lewis, “Half of Steinbeck’s writing presents ethnic characters whose identity is in crisis because of the conflict between culture”, In the East of Eden Steinbeck uses a lot from his own life to write this novel. The narrator was never revealed, but the parents’ names were Olive Hamilton and Ernst Steinbeck. The characters lived in Salinas, California and this is very similar to Steinbeck’s life.
The East of Eden written by John Steinbeck is set in between the American civil war (1865) and World War I (1914). After the reconstruction from the civil war, the economy grew considerably and entered “The Second Industrial Revolution”. The visual map of the United States was transformed by unprecedent urbanization and rapid territorial expansion. The army removed the Native Americans from the west and Native Americans held the future for the United States. During this time Texas had annexed, the British retreated from the Oregon Country, the Treaty of Guadalupe – Hidalgo was signed, and then the United States territory expanded west, gold mines were growing, and the United States needed to reach parts from across the country, which caused a major need for railroads. The immigration from Europe at this time caused for high labor and the United States was awash in natural resources and supplies from the new territory, therefore the government promoted industrial and agriculture development. This caused a rapid industrial growth, telegraph lines were invented, new technology for agriculture, new transportation, new roads, railroads, canals, steamboats, and for the first time, goods were able to be shipped.
The East of Eden explains the hardships of a farmer’s family. Chapter one of the novel portrays the narrator’s senses of Salinas Valley, California and in the following chapter the narrator’s grandparents, Samuel Hamilton, Liza Hamilton, and their nine children, are introduced. The Hamiltons are a family from Ireland that is forced to live on land that is almost impossible to farm, due to this Samuel had to get multiple jobs. In chapter three Adam Trask is introduced and the story of his childhood is told. Adam was raised by his dad, Cyrus Trask, a civil war veteran who lost his leg and his step-mom after his mom committed suicide. He grew up competing with his younger half-brother, Charles, who had beaten up Adam and while he was recovering Cyrus told Adam to enlist into the military. Adam spent years not wanting to go back to his home farm with Charles, but he did and that’s when he met his wife, Cathy Ames. They moved to Salinas Valley, California and met Samuel and Liza.
Cathy becomes pregnant and she tries to abort the baby with a sewing needle while her husband was out looking for land because she did not want any ties with him. Chapter fourteen introduces the narrator’s mother, Olive Hamilton, she was a school teacher determined to get out of the rural lifestyle and live in the city. She soon married the owner of a flourmill, Ernst Steinbeck, and has four children. Cathy soon tells Adam that she is depressed and she is planning on leaving once the baby is born, but Adam stays persistent and tells her “You’ll love it once you get used to it and the baby is born” (page 173), but he was wrong. Once Cathy had the twin boys, Aron and Cal, and was rested, she attempted to leave and when Adam did not let her, she shot him in the shoulder. Adam tries to lie and tell the sheriff that the gunshot was an accident, but they knew it was a lie. The sheriffs soon find out that Cathy became a prostitute, but they hide the new information from Adam.
Samuel is struck with depression after the news of Una, his favorite daughter, dies. Samuel soon dies after. Adam grieves and goes to Cathy’s brothel and when he sees that she is no longer pretty and that she is a monster he is able to move on from her. Aron and Cal start to ask questions about their mother. Adam lies and says she is buried in her home town. Lee frowns upon this telling Adam “If they ever found out you’d lied to them about this, the true things would suffer. They wouldn’t believe anything.” (page 352) Adam then plans to go to Connecticut to visit his brother Charles with the twins for the first time since their falling out, but then receives a letter stating that Charles has passed away and left the money to Adam. He then decides to move to the city and puts the twins in school and they quickly prove they are smart. “In a short time the twins were not only let alone but got themselves a certain reputation for smartness.” (page 419). In chapter 37 Adam’s lettuce comes in rotten and the Trask family becomes the laughing stock of the town.
Cal becomes restless and starts going for walks at night. One night he finds out the truth of his mom and promises Adam that he will never tell Aron. Cal convinces Aron to graduate early and go to Stanford University. This makes Adam proud, and soon people start to realize Cathy poisoned the original owner of the brothel and then hired a convict, Joe, to kill the people that know. Soon Joe turns against her and plots a way to kill Cathy. Adam, being a veteran, is appointed to the draft board. Once Adam finds out that Cathy has passed away, he is advised to tell Aron the truth, but Aron has gone missing. The Trasks did not know that Aron went to fight in the war until they received a telegram stating Arons death. Abra, Arons fiance confesses her love for Cal and they wish to get married. Grieving Arons death Adam passed away, but before he died, Lee made Adam give Cal and Abra his blessing. Lee advises them to not make the same mistake as his parents.
The novel was a very well written novel for the time period. It has multiple genres including, romance, historical fiction, and domestic fiction, to fit multiple personalities. The novel depicts the harsh lifestyles at that time, but shows that the good-hearted win in the end. The theme of finding your identity as well as evilness is strong throughout the entire novel. Steinbeck showed that even the people one would think is their friend is truly the evil. The novel used wisdom and rules the present world should be using. The novel shows that the good-hearted are the people who struggled to get where they were. Steinbeck introduced the concept timshel, which is the choice between good and evil. The book unquestionably deserved the three awards it won and earned its spot on the AP reading list.
Throughout the East of Eden, the main character, Adam, has a struggle finding out where he belongs. Although most readers of this novel have argued that the main theme is the freedom to overcome evil, others believe the main theme is about the pain of paternal rejection. Paternal rejection comes up a lot in this novel, but the freedom to overcome evil explains the book. In this novel the relationships have an evil symbol in all of them. Even Cathy, she is “Almost inhumanly evil”. Evilness is overcome in many different ways throughout this novel. Some characters were their own evil and they had to struggle to overcome their own personality. Others were chased by evil and had to overcome those people and live their life.
Adam grew up in Charles shadow. Charles was always tougher than Adam. “Charles was a natural athlete, with instinctive timing and coordination and the competitor’s will to win over others, which makes success in the world.” (page 20) Charles liked the fact that he was better than Adam. When Adam would do something better than Charles, Charles would abuse Adam. Charles knew that Cyrus, their father, favored Adam a bit more. “Charles shouted. “I took six bits and I bought him a knife made in Germany…. Do you ever see him use it?” (page 29) This feeling of being unwanted caused Charles to beat Adam. Adam finally overcame the evilness of his brother by enlisting in the army and after his five years was up and he had to return to the farm that his brother now owned he had to escape the evilness again, but he did not realize that he married evil to get away from evil.
Adam married a woman named Cathy. He did not know her past because she never would tell anyone. Cathy killed her parents and cheated on Adam with his brother Charles. Adam was so stricken by her beauty that he did not bother to see her ugly personality. Adam wanted to leave his brothers farm to move to Salinas, California, so he forced her to go with him. Once they got to Salinas she tried to abort the twins without Adam knowing, but he soon realized her evilness when she left him to go run a brothel. Adam was able to get over her evilness when he witnesses her at the brothel. He then focused on being a better human for his sons and tried to get in contact with his brother.
Adams farm worker Lee is from China. Lee’s mother was raped and killed after he was born. Lee pretends that he does not speak fluent English, but Samuel Hamilton figured him out. Lee was never accepted by most of the people in the town, but he still stays positive and despite his rough childhood he still works to his best capability. Charles Trask was evil to himself. He was jealous of his dads and his half-brother’s relationship, so he caused trouble for himself by beating his brother which caused his dad to chase after him with a gun. Charles and Cathy slept with each other on the night that Adam and Cathy got married and caused his brother to hate him. When Charles realized he needed his brother is when he escaped his evil.
Aron Trask, Adams son, does not like evil and when he sees evil he runs to the church to hide from the sight of it. Aron was the naturally the sweet twin, the smart son and Cal was the bully, who never really fit in. Their relationship is similar to their fathers with their uncle. Cal was his own evil just like Charles was and Aron was the golden child. Abra Bacon was similar to Cathy as to being evil. Abra was able to manipulate others similar to the way Cathy did. Aron fell in love with her at a young age and she knew things about people to make them doubt themselves. She knew about Cathy, Arons mom and always questioned him about her. When Aron was killed in the war Abra ran to Cal and confessed that she did not love Aron, she actually loved Cal.
Samuel Hamilton came to America from Ireland. At first the family was treated with disrespect, so they worked hard to earn respect within their community. His wife made sure they were a sinless family so they could do so. Their nine children escaped evil through each other. The rest stayed proper until Una died. That is when the evil took over Samuel and caused his death. Tom Hamilton commits suicide to escape the evil of killing his sister. This was not the only character who did this. Mrs. Trask, Adam’s biological mother, killed herself after she received syphilis from her husband, Cyrus, after he slept with an African American prostitute during the Civil War. Cyrus soon remarried a young woman named Alice. To Alice, Cyrus was her evil. She decided that staying quiet and showing no emotions would be her best way to escape the evil in her home.
There are at least two concepts of evil, a narrow concept and a broad concept. The broad concept chooses the wrongful actions in people as in murder, affairs, theft, and etc. The problem for evil, is the problem of owning up to an act of evilness. Just like in the novel. Cathy kept running from her acts of evil and it caused her to be killed using her own game of manipulation. Charles who escaped his evilness and changed himself lived an almost peaceful life on the farm.
