East of Eden

Steinbeck's biggest book

East of Eden is a novel by John Steinbeck, published in 1952. He wrote it in his fifties, after The Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men, and called it the book he had been practicing for all his life. He addressed it to his two young sons so they would know where they came from. It is long, about 600 pages, and is set in the Salinas Valley in California, where Steinbeck grew up, from the Civil War to the end of the First World War.

The book follows two families. The Hamiltons are based on Steinbeck's real mother's family. The narrator is an unnamed grandson of Samuel Hamilton, which is to say a version of Steinbeck himself, and he appears briefly as a small boy. The Trasks are invented. Their story carries the main plot.

The title comes from Genesis: after Cain kills his brother Abel, he goes to live in the land of Nod, east of Eden. The book retells the Cain and Abel story twice. In each generation, a father loves one son more, and the less-loved son struggles with jealousy and anger. Steinbeck also uses the letters C and A for his pairs: Cyrus and Alice, Charles and Adam, Cathy and Adam, Caleb and Aron.

The novel has four parts. Steinbeck often stops the story to talk directly about the valley, history and human nature.

Part One: the valley, the Hamiltons and the Trasks

The book opens with the valley itself: the bright Gabilan Mountains to the east, the dark Santa Lucias to the west, the river that floods and dries up, the rich floor and the poor hills.

Samuel Hamilton comes from Ireland with his small, fierce wife, Liza. He takes a dry farm in the hills, where the land gives little but stones. He is a blacksmith, a well digger, an inventor who never makes money from his patents, a midwife for the neighborhood and a reader of philosophy. They have nine children. He is the moral heart of the first half of the book.

In Connecticut, Cyrus Trask, a farmer, loses a leg in his first skirmish in the Civil War. He then invents a heroic military past so convincingly that he becomes an expert on armies and moves to Washington. His first wife kills herself when their son Adam is a baby. His second wife, Alice, bears him a son, Charles.

Cyrus loves Adam more and is harder on him. On his birthday, Charles gives him an expensive knife he worked to buy. Adam gives him a stray puppy. Cyrus loves the puppy and ignores the knife. Charles, mad with jealousy, beats Adam nearly to death and comes back with a hatchet to finish him. Adam hides. The scene is the first replay of Cain and Abel.

Cyrus forces Adam into the army, where he fights in the wars against the Plains Indians and comes to hate violence. Adam then wanders as a tramp, serves time on a chain gang in the South and escapes. When he comes home, Cyrus has died and left the brothers a fortune that may have been stolen from the government.

Part One: Cathy

Steinbeck then introduces Cathy Ames, whom he calls a monster: a person born, he says, without a conscience, as some are born without a hand. As a girl in Massachusetts she learns to use sex and lies to control people. She has two boys punished for a rape that did not happen. A teacher she seduces kills himself. At sixteen she sets fire to her parents' house, killing them, steals their money and leaves.

She becomes the mistress of Mr. Edwards, a man who runs brothels. When he realizes what she is, he beats her almost to death and leaves her on a road. She crawls to the nearest farm, which belongs to Adam and Charles Trask.

Adam nurses her and falls in love with her. Charles sees through her at once and tells Adam to send her away. Adam marries her. On their wedding night, Cathy gives Adam a sleeping drug and goes to Charles's bed.

Part Two: the ranch and the twins

Adam takes Cathy to the Salinas Valley and buys a large ranch near King City. He hires Samuel Hamilton to find water and dig wells, and plans a garden of Eden. Cathy is pregnant and does not want the child.

Adam's servant is Lee, a Chinese American man born in California. He speaks pidgin English because white people expect it, but in private he speaks perfect English and reads widely. Lee and Samuel become close friends.

Cathy gives birth to twin boys. Samuel delivers them, and she bites his hand. A week later, she tells Adam she is leaving. When he tries to stop her, she shoots him in the shoulder with his own gun and walks out. She goes to Salinas and takes work at a brothel run by a woman named Faye. She becomes Faye's favorite, then poisons her slowly and inherits the house. She runs it as Kate, and it becomes known for cruelty.

Adam, wounded inside more than out, falls into a numb state for more than a year. He will not even name his sons. Finally Samuel comes and knocks him down to wake him up.

Part Two: naming the twins

In a scene that the whole book returns to, Samuel, Lee and Adam read the Cain and Abel story aloud to choose names for the twins. They argue about why God rejected Cain's offering and what it means that every person carries Cain's line. Lee is troubled by one verse. In one English Bible, God tells Cain that he shall rule over sin, a promise. In another, God commands him: do thou rule over it, an order.

They name the boys Caleb and Aron. Lee stays to raise them, more a father to them in daily life than Adam is.

Part Three: Samuel's farewell and timshel

Years pass. Samuel's children grow up and scatter. Will becomes a successful businessman. Tom, the son most like Samuel, stays on the farm and struggles. Samuel grows old and tired, and his children arrange for him to stop working the farm.

Before he leaves, Samuel visits Adam one last time. Lee tells them what he has done about the verse. He took the question to a group of elderly Chinese scholars, who spent two years learning Hebrew to study it. They found the word timshel, which Lee translates as thou mayest. It is neither a promise nor an order. It is a choice. Lee calls it perhaps the most important word in the world, because it means that a person can choose to overcome sin. People are not fated to be good or evil.

Then Samuel tells Adam the truth he has kept back: Cathy is in Salinas running a whorehouse under the name Kate. He tells Adam that he must face her. Samuel goes home and soon dies.

After the funeral, Adam goes to Kate's brothel. She tries to wound and seduce him. She tells him the twins may be Charles's sons. Adam sees her clearly for the first time and is free of her. He goes home almost happy.

Part Four: Cal and Aron

Adam moves to Salinas so the boys can go to school. Aron is fair, gentle and loved by everyone. He falls for a girl named Abra Bacon and later turns to religion. Cal is dark, clever and watchful. He feels that his father loves Aron more and that something evil lives inside him. He lies awake at night and roams the town.

Adam invests most of his money in a plan to ship lettuce packed in ice to the East Coast by train. The train is delayed, the ice melts, and the lettuce rots. He loses most of his fortune.

Cal learns that his mother is alive and follows Kate. He visits her and sees what she is. He also sees that he is not her: he has a choice. Kate is aging, crippled by arthritis, frightened of being exposed.

To give his father back the lost money, Cal goes into business with Will Hamilton. With the United States entering the First World War, they buy beans cheaply and sell them for a large profit. Cal makes $15,000.