East of Eden
by John Steinbeck
At the core of Steinbeck’s message is what differentiates us
from animals is choice. We know that right? It's about
timshel. It's root comes from the Bible in
the story of Cain and Able. Timshel is
about God blessing man with free will.
But there is a slight distinction. In a wolf thou will choose.
In humans, they may choose. There are a couple of prime characters who
make a choice in marriage where virtue becomes yet a gain in a classic novel
the center theme. Adam Trask represents
‘thou mayest'. Adam Trask represents a character of blind virtue. Cathy, later Kate represents a monstrous life of ‘thou will’.
Adam begins his adult life going against his core character
to be a sensitive creative person and obeying his father’s orders by becoming a
military man. After years of going
against the grain in the military, he is discharged only to wonder lost, broke
and homeless; the life of a Hobo across the country of the late 1800’s. He needed to find himself. He climbs out of this abyss of life to take
up his place in his brother’s home in Connecticut. The living arrangements were doomed from the
beginning as the two brothers though raised by the same military man, were
total opposites.
In the course of Adam’s sad beginning Cathy as she was
called in the beginning of the book had also a dismal start. She and Adam were on a collision course.
Steinbeck introduces her character in the following way. “I
believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible,
with huge heads or tiny bodies, some born with no arms, no legs, some with
three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault as used
to be thought. Once they were considered
the visible punishments for concealed sins.
And just as there are
physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but there
is a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the
same process produce a malformed soul?”
Notice Steinbeck forms this thesis with question marks. He goes on to discuss the ramifications of
monsters as follows. “Monsters are variations from the accepted
normal to a greater or a less degree. As
a child may be born without an arm, so one may he be born without kindness or
the potential of conscience. A man who
loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the
lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him
strange. Having never had arms, he
cannot miss them. Some times when we are
little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to
suppose it is the same feeling birds have.
No to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal
to himself. To the inner monster it must
be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with
others. To a man born without a
conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must
not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm
is monstrous.” This question I think
captured the attention of millions who have read this book. So I now know I am not alone in dealing with such
a monster. This book speaks to our
humanity on the question of virtue and how only human beings are challenged
with the choice to be virtuous or not. A
dog is loyal to a cruel master. A woman
can sell out her virtue to a man who has blessed her with mere material kindness.
While there are many sub-story lines in the book that raise
the question of choice, Cathy who turns to a prostitute who becomes Kate the
madam of a brothel is the thread that Steinbeck pulls through the book in an
attempt to look at choice, virtue and a monster. Was Cathy born a monster? Or was she born
into a monstrous world? Steinbeck is not
real clear in answering the fist question, but I think he is saying that she
was born a monster and therefore created a monstrous life for herself. To the
second question her early life was not a bed of roses. She found herself in desperate situations
making desperate choices. Early on she
learned to utilize her female assets to raise her prospects in living
comfort. Her choices through the book were
not trivial or an act of survival, but rather brutal as an act of vengeance.
Through the twists and turns of revenge drama, Cathy finds
herself left for dead at the hand of one of her victims on the side of the
road. Her evil deeds had caught up with
her. Adam Trask, who had really not
found himself yet, discovers her and brings her home to nurture her back to
life. In the course of his service he
began to let pity paint her as a virtuous woman who met with a bad turn of
fate. He blinded himself from her
monstrous nature. He fell in love with
her and married her. I know this
mistake. She conceded to marriage as a
temporary escape root to the legal situation she may have been facing. Marrying Adam and moving west to California
was a new lease on life, at Adam’s expense.
There was no love in her heart.
In fact on their wedding night, she bedded down with Adam, and then
after he fell asleep she went into his brother’s room, woke him up and fucked
him too. I know women, one in particular
capable of this, leading me to draw a conclusion as to why the book was popular. I sure wished I had read this book 20 years
ago.
Cathy the prostitute on the lamb, rather than assume the
loving environment of family and a good husband, shoots Adam in the shoulder
and leaves him for dead as she heads not too far down the road and takes a job
turning tricks in a brothel. This goes to Stienbeck’s monster theory. Cathy now Kate, is back in her comfort zone
of virtue-less deceit. She knows no other life.
She cannot make a better choice, as it is foreign to her thinking. Eventually her high marks with the Madame of
the brothel earn her the opportunity to murder her in a very discrete way. So now she, as Madame of the brothel has
control of all the city leaders who have surrendered their virtue to her
house. I am amazed at the result on
society when virtue is surrendered.
She is in control of everything…until time’s two edge sword
cuts her to shreds. As it runs out on
her where people discover her crimes, her deteriorating health makes life …
living painful. She like Anna Karenina commits
suicide. So Steinbeck, like Tolstoy, leaves it for the reader to interpret
their allegoric answer. If the higher
being, human though it may be, is the sole domain of choice; did Kate…Anna with
loss of virtue exercise choice, or were they monsters out of control? Both East of Edin and Anna Karenin ended with
the husband completing his life in peace.
Personally, after my twenty year dance with the devils daughter, I look
forward to the same.
The distinct moral message from Steinbeck: Is presented in a two page dissertation by
Steinbeck in Chapter 13: Here is an
excerpt: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative
instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in
music, in art, in poetry, in Mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of
creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group
never invents anything. The preciousness
lies n the lonely mind of man.
And now the forces
marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination
on that preciousness, the mind of man.
My disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and
the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being
pursued, roped, blunted, and drugged. It
is sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe:
that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable
thing in the world. And this I would
fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes,
undirected. And this I must fight for
against: any religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand what a system built on a
pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing that can
by inspection destroy such a system.
Surely I can understand this and I hate it and I will fight against it
to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
In conjunction of the free mind Steinbeck brings in the
dichotomy of Cain and Able. Cathy’s twin
sons, one by Adam and one by his brother, a double untundered construct all by
itself that takes on the theme of Cain and Able from two perspectives. Yes Cathy had sex with both brothers in the
same night. Neither ever knew of the
other’s pleasure. In the case of Adam
and his brother; Adam is introverted and introspective. His brother is egotistical and reactive. Adam’s brother was resentful and did not
treat Adam kindly. He beat him once to
near death out of jealousy. A parallel
is drawn between Adam’s sons. As obscure it may seem, there is a progression in
the form of evolution of man away from violence.
Of Adam’s sons the introspective brother finds a life in
religion and love for a girl. He
surrounds himself with aspects of society that are structured and safe. The other brother was a free thinking
maverick, always testing the fringes of acceptable society. It was the maverick who found the courage to
discover the truth about his prostitute mother Cathy. Steinbeck draws a colorful picture of the
mind of children at a loss for their mother, and their discovery of her
evilness. However, unlike his father’s
sibling rivalry situation, the maverick loved his socially bound brother and
would do anything to protect him. Finally
the legacy of Cain and Able is NOT carried forward.
In my view, children inherit their moral personification of
character from their parents. God help
them!!!! It’s up to a parent to recognize their own flaws and eradicate them in
front of their children. In absence of
this too often found neglect of obligation, it is up to children to see the
flaw and also make changes where the parent fails. This comes from free thinking; creating the
space for children to grow up in a peaceful setting and giving them the
confidence to believe in themselves…evolve the human spirit This goes to Steinbeck’s opening
statement: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative
instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Amidst my own mistakes in life I strive
to meet the lofty goal of one spirit with my children and openly pursue the
evolution of One spirit of souls with them. I do it privately; Steinbeck makes
a profound statement for millions of readers.
Bibliography
Page 19: When a child first catches adults out – when it
first walks into his grave little head that adults do not have divine
intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, and
their sentences just – his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of
gods: they do not fall a little, they crash
and shatter or sink deeply into green muck.
It is a tedious job to build them up again, they never quite shine. And the child’s world is never quite whole
again. We are individuals and at the
same time exist at soul level in the spirit of One.
Page 34: It has
always seemed strange to me that it is usually men like Adam who have done the
soldiering. He did not like fighting to
start with, and far from learning to love it, as some men do, he felt
increasing revulsion for violence
Page 54: Time interval
is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a
routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no
duration whatever. A time splashed with
interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy – that’s the time that seems
long in memory. And this is right when
you think about it. Eventlessness has no
posts to drape duration on. From nothing
to nothing is no time at all.
Page 56: [Of Adam’s
character] he learned that when people are very poor they still have something
to give and the impulse to give it. He
developed a love for poor people he could not have conceived if he had not been
poor himself.
Page 69: [Of Adam’s
love for his father] “Maybe that’s the reason’ Adam said slowly, feeling his
way. “ Maybe if I had loved him I would have been jealous of him. You
were. Maybe-maybe love makes you
suspicious and doubting. Is it true that
when you love a woman you are never sure – never sure of her because you aren’t
sure of yourself?
Page 88: In all such local tragedies time works like
a damp brush on water color. The sharp
edges blur, the ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from the
many separated lines a solid gray emerges.
[a wonderful metaphor upon this story]
Within a month it was not necessary to hang someone, and within two
months nearly everybody discovered that there wasn’t any real evidence against
anyone. If it had not been for Cathy’s
murder, fire and robbery might have been a coincidence. Then it occurred that without Cathy’s body
you couldn’t prove anything though you thought she was dead. Cathy left a sent of sweetness behind her
My comment: I know very well a person of Cathy’s monstrous
character. It takes a monster to
leverage time in the cover of her manipulative deeds. It seems that when you lose virtue, you
discover deceit.
Page 130: Then a man
pours himself outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. And I guess a man’s importance in the world
can be measured by the quality and number of his glories. It is a lonely thing but it relates us to the
world. It is the mother of all creativeness,
and it sets each man separate from all other men.
Page : 131: Our species is the only creative species, and
it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of
man. Nothing was ever created by two
men. There are no good collaborations,
whether in music, in art, in poetry, in Mathematics, I philosophy. Once the
miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the
group never invents anything. The
preciousness lies n the lonely mind of man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group
have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of
man. My disparagement, by starvation, by
repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning,
the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, and drugged. It is sad suicidal course our species seems
to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the
individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of
the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight for against: any
religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand what a system built on a
pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing that can
by inspection destroy such a system.
Surely I can understand this and I hate it and I will fight against it
to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
Page 141: [metaphor] My wife is rumbling like round stones
in the surf.
Page 141: [metaphor] You’re right I do, and Liza says I do,
shepherd my words like rebellious sheep.
Page 144: [metaphor]
Well a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does
Page 149: [metaphor]I
went down and down until the wing tips of angles brushed my eyes.
Page 149: [metaphor] When
angered she had a terrible eye which could blanch the skin off a bad child as
if he were a boiled almond.
Page 157: [metaphor] If
Adam rested like a sleek fed cat on his land, Cathy was catlike too, She has the inhuman attribute of abandoning
what she could not get and of waiting for what she could get…and pounce.
Page 180: [metaphor] “I’m afraid we’ve done a bad service to
our dearies.: Samuel said. ‘Here she wanted to save it for a real tin-plate
surprise to her mother and we’ve leaked it like wheat from a mouse hole in a
sac.”
Page 183: [metaphor]
A woman gave a tooth to for a child. It was the law: And a woman was likely to have strange
tastes, some said for filth, and it was set down to the
Eve nature, still
under sentence for original sin.
It was if she had gone away and left a breathing doll to
conceal her absence.
Adam fluttered like a bewildered bee confused by too many
flowers.
Page 185: [metaphor]
And indeed they could see a horseman riding toward them at full gallop, but a
curious horseman who flopped about on his mount like a tied chicken.
Page 188: [metaphor] I’ve been so close to the details, I’ve
paid no attention to the clothing of the day.
Samuel said, “You stay close. That sounds like Adam playing true. He doesn’t know his wife probably couldn’t
hear God Himself beating a tattoo on the sky.”
Page 216: [metaphor] The were not pure, but they could make
something pretty fine of it within himself.
While churches, bringing the sweet smell of piety for the
soul, came prancing and farting like brewery horses in bock-beer time, the
sister evangelism, with release of joy for the body, crept in silently and
greyly, with its head bowed and face covered.
Page 239: In Human affairs of danger and delicacy sucessful
conclusion is sharply limited by hurry.
So often men trip by being in a rush.
If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should
inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as
desireable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the the
means. By this method he would not be
moved to false anxiety or hurry or fear.
Very few people learn this
Page 251: [metaphor] Samuel wrote to Joe, “ I would be
disappointed if you had not become an atheist, And I read pleasantly that you
have, in your age and wisdom, accepted agnosticism the way you’d take a cookie
on a full stomach.”
It worries her, her faith is a mountain and you, my son, haven’t
even got a shovel yet.”
Page 255: [metaphor] You turn it over the way a coon turns
over a wet rock…
Page 256: [metaphor]
and this thought went from evening star to the late dipper on the edge of first
light
I don’t understand you.
How could you? Adam Trask, a dog
wolf with a pair of cubs, a scrubby rooster with sweet paternity for a
fertilized egg! A dirty clod,
Page 264: [metaphor] “Two stories have haunted us and
followed us from our beginning.” Samuel said.
“ we carry them along with us like invisible tales – the story of
original sin and the story of Cain and Able.
I don’t understand either of them.”
Page 266: No story
has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and
true of us. What a great burden of guilt
men have!
Page 268: [Cain and
Able story] I think it is the best-known
story in the world because it is everybody’s story. I think it is the symbol story of the human
soul.
It is all there – the
start, the beginning. One child, refused
the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides secret guilt, and another steals so
that money will make him loved, and a third conquers the world – always the
guilt and re revenge and more guilt. The
human is the only guilty animal.
Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is
a chart of the soul – the secret, rejected, guilty soul.
Page 269: [metaphor]
Oh, I wonder how my Tom will think of this!
He’ll cradle it in the palm of his mind.
He’ll turn it like slow pork in his brain like a roast of pork before
the fire.
Page 274: [metaphor] But
she had the loveliest hands and feet.
Her ankles were as slender as grass and she moved like grass.
Page 280: [metaphor]
Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the
way a man rides white rapids in a canoe.
Page 284 [metaphor] I don’t think he’ do it said Will. ‘He’s stubborn like a mule and proud like a
horse. He’s got a pride like brass.”
Page 285: [metaphor]
He says himself that a thing about time doing the job dynamite can’t touch.”
Page 290: I have
wondered why it Is that some people are less affected and torn by the verities
of life and death than others. Una’s
death [metaphor] cut the earth from under Samuel’s feet and opened his defended
keep and let in old age. On the other hand Liza, who surely loved her family as
deeply as did her husband was not destroyed oe warped. Her life continued evenly, she felt sorrow,
but she survived it.
I think perhaps Liza accepted the world as she accepted the
Bible, with all its paradoxes and its reverses.
She did not like death as knew it existed, and when it came it did not
surprise her.
Page 291: She had no
love of places. A place was only a
resting place on the way the Heaven.
Page 293: “I know the
‘shoulds’ although I never do them, Adam.
I always know the ‘should.’. You
should try to find the new Cathy. You
should let the new Cathy kill the dream Cathy – let the two of them fight it
out. And you sitting by, should marry
you mind to the winner. That’s the second best should. The best would be to search out and find some
fresh new loveliness to cancel out the old.
Page 301: “Ah!” said Lee.
“I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am
well prepared. Any writing which has
influenced the thinking and lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are 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
predestination 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 still has the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through
and win.” Lee’s voice was a chant of
triumph.
Page 303: “Neither do
I,” said Lee. I take my two pipes in the
afternoon no more no less, like the elders.
And I feel that I am a man. And I
feel that a man is a very important thing – maybe more important that a
star. This is not theology. I have no bent towards gods. But I have a new love for that shiny
instrument, the human soul. It is a
lovely and unique thing of the universe.
It is attacked and never destroyed – because ‘Though mayest.”
Page 303:[metaphor]
He’s about as ugly a crow bait as I ever saw.
Page 306: [metaphor] Your mind is as facile as a young lamb
leaping in a daisy field
Page 321: Adam
shivered. He looked closely at her. Her
face and her laughter were childlike and innocent. He got up and poured himself another
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.”
My comment: I
suppose I book marked this for two reasons.
First I truly appreciate a guy reaching the bottom of a bottle trying to
figure out an evil wife. Second, I know
first hand that from evil comes jealousy, jealousy of those who can't overcome
evil.
Page 328: [of Sam
Hamilton, deceased] “Maybe both of us have a piece of him,” said Lee, Maybe
that is what immortality is.”
My comment: I first read this comment in a scientific
book by Hofstadter. The immortality of a
person lay in his thought, an energy that cannot be destroyed. I accept this concept and because I do, I see
it everywhere. Coincidence, I think
not? It’s the collective humanity coming
to the same conclusion in a timeless expression of what is.
Page 369: [metaphor]
He pinched a dollar until the eagle screamed.
Page 370: [metaphor] and
it was as restless as a setting hen scrounging into the nest.
Page 381: Adam said,
“I guess you can’t understand it. I
don’t much care. There are so many
things I don’t understand. I don’t
understand how you could shoot me and desert your sons. I don’t understand how you or anyone could
live like this.”
My comment: I suppose I bookmarked this because
metaphorically my wife shot me, though she didn’t literally shoot me, nor
abandon her children physically, she abandoned them spiritually. I think upon reading these words, I came to
appreciate that indeed my ex-wife is a monster and that I created an angel in
my image…by mistake. I now give full
stock to the phrase, things are themselves by themselves. It took me to make her what she was not. I paid dearly.
Page 382: “ 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 part of a human. 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 or feel it. That would
be horrible.
My comment: Through Steinbeck’s character and story, I
see clearly now my view of my ex-wife. I
think she is horrified. I pray that she
one day finds her peace. Kitty/Cathy and
Anna Karenina, found it through suicide.
How tragic. Neither sought
help. Neither did my ex-wife.
Page 385: [metaphor]
“something is the matter with Tom. He’s
moping around like a monument.”
Page 387: [metaphor] she carried excitement in her arms
Page 405: [metaphor] He shuffled possibilities like cards
Page
411: I believe that there is one story
in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us, so that we
live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught – in their lives, in their
thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, and 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 it
occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our
first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite
any changes we impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and
manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and
chips of his life will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well – or ill?
Page 415: [metaphor] There is nothing sadder to me than
associations held together by nothing but glue of postage stamps.
Page 441: Things do
not change with a change of scene. In Salinas, Cal had no more
friends than he had in King
City. Associates he had, and authority and some
admiration, but friends he did not have.
He lived alone and walked alone.
Page 442: I never
forget the time she shot him and ran away.
Plugged him in the shoulder and just run off. Well she wasn’t no good as a wife, but she’s
sure as hell a good whore.
My comment: I can really identify with this statement.
Page 444: “Cal” Adam
said, “I’ve thought about it for a great many hours and I still don’t know. She is a mystery. It seems to me that she not like other
people. There is something she
lacks. Kindness maybe, or conscience. You can only understand people if you feel
them in yourself. And I can’t feel
her. The moment I think about her my
feeling goes into darkness. I don’t know what she wanted or what she was
after. She was full of hatred, but I
don’t know why or toward what. It’s a mystery.
And her hatred wasn’t healthy. It
wasn’t angry. It was heartless. I don’t know that it is good to talk to you
like this.
My comment: I can really identify with this statement.
Page 449: [metaphor]
As the fear began to chill, resentment took its place. So might a trapped fox feel anger towards its
paw which held him to the trap.
Page
519: I was thinking about that time when
Sam Hamilton and you and I had a long discussion about a word, “said Adam. “What was that word?” “Now I see the word was timshel.” (a mans
choice between good and evil. “Timshel – and you said-“
“I said
that word carried a man’s greatness if he wanted to take advantage of it.
Page 530: There was
pride in it, and relief too. The split
second has been growing more and more important to us. And as human activities
become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth second will
emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth , until one
day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say “Oh the hell with it. What’s wrong with an hour?” But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with
small time units. One thing late or
early can disrupt everything around it and the disturbance runs outward in
bands like waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.
Page 532: [metaphor]
He felt let down and helpless, packed like a bird’s egg in cotton of his
father’s ambition
Page 538: [metaphor]
“Maybe knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small,” said
Lee. “Maybe, kneeling down to atoms,
they’re becoming atom- sized in their souls.
Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little
cage. And think what any specialist
misses- the whole world over his fence.
Page
542 [Lee’s advice to Cal] “He couldn’t help
it, Cal. That’s
his nature. It was the only way he
knew. He didn’t have any choice. But you have.
Don’t you hear me you have a choice.”
Page 545: [metaphor] Kate wasn’t thinking. Her mind drifted among impressions the way a
bat drifts and swoops in the evening.
