It is time to face this literary behemoth at last because my newsfeed is full of East of Eden related posts owing to the popularity of the new Netflix series. I'd meant to read it shortly after The Grapes of Wrath. A few years have lapsed but this is the prompt I need. Then I'll watch the series myself so this might be the perfect time after all. In this post, I'll discuss the first half of the book. Stay tuned for the second.
Warning: There may be a few mild spoilers, but I consider this more of a discussion than a review. And old classics are fair game anyway.
MY THOUGHTS:
The First Cain and Abel meet the Monster
This epic takes its key character, Adam Trask, from the cradle to the grave. His birth is shadowed by the American Civil War and his pending death by World War One.
We start with Adam's dad. Cyrus Trask is a blustering old peg-leg who lost his appendage during a small skirmish in the Civil War, the one and only taste of action he ever had. Yet he sets himself up as a tactical war genius with such polished rhetoric that everyone believes in him.
Cyrus has two young sons from two different wives. Adam, the elder, is sensitive and peaceful, and clearly Cyrus' favorite. He decides to send the boy off to military academy and make a soldier of him. Although the younger son, Charles, is clearly more athletic and coordinated, he has to stay home and work the farm. Neither boy is happy with his destiny, and Charles can't understand why his father's love is so elusive when he tries so hard.
Charles buys Cyrus a super-duper pocketknife which he never uses, while Adam gives him a mongrel pup that he adores. Poor Charles also gives himself a nasty scar in the center of his forehead in a farming accident. It's an iron-rust tattoo like a long fingermark and he feels self-conscious like a branded cow.
No prizes for figuring out which Biblical brother each Trask boy represents.
Okay, I've come across theories of why God rejected Cain's gift, including this possibility. The rudimentary sacrificial system that runs all through scripture was already being established, but Cain ignored the parameters and went his own way. Since it was supposed to be a blood sacrifice, he shouldn't have been put-out when his vegetarian offering didn't make the grade. Cain was getting course correction, not personal rejection. Yet the Genesis narrative certainly keeps motives murky and glosses over the incident.
As far as Steinbeck's story is concerned, there is no particular reason why this man chooses to favor one of his boys. What's more, the rejection of the gift seems synonymous with rejection of the giver. (Surely he could've found a use for that knife instead of dropping it into a drawer! I find it hard to fathom purely from a utilitarian perspective. Cyrus must've had methods that already worked for him sufficiently and been truly set in his ways.)
To thicken the plot like curdled milk is the Cathy Ames factor. This girl is labeled a monster in the very same sentence that introduces her. She is certainly one of the most cold-blooded, calculating female characters I've come across in classic literature. The further we read, the more evident her modus operandi becomes. Cathy coolly disposes of people who throw spanners in her plans, and these tend to be the same people who feel most affection for her.
'I believe there are monsters born in this world to human parents,' says our narrator. Rather than being born with a physical abnormality, Cathy has a perfect body (notwithstanding her animal sharp teeth) but entirely lacks empathy or conscience. In her defense, since she was born without human kindness, her atrocious crimes against others are not entirely her fault. You can't use what you don't have. Yet it behooves anyone to steer clear of her, because a female psychopath can utilize a beautiful face to its maximum effect.
Destiny is cruel. It has to be this girl who crosses paths with the two Trask boys, who still grapple with their already dysfunctional family background. Adam is unable to stand against her dangerous wiles. Like his Biblical namesake, he behaves as if he's born yesterday. She plays him like a big sucker.
And once Adam moves the pair of them to Salinas Valley, we meet Lee, Adam's Chinese servant who has a student's heart and considers the whole world a springboard for research. Lee shares an unfulfilled dream of mine, to open a little bookshop, and he drops the line which I consider encapsulates a major theme thus far. 'The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears.'
Thus far, I kept having serious misgivings for poor Adam, wondering in what manner that monster would chew him up and spit him out? Even though Adam misreads Cathy so thoroughly, she does put on her best behavior around him until her work is done. It wouldn't surprise me if he bears major existential crises and PTSD from his forced military background, and this girl is supposed to be the light of his life, making everything better. When the blow comes, he can't say Charles didn't warn him!
Although I was no fan of Charles when they were kids, I warmed to him when they grew up and his vulnerabilities kept showing. The disillusionment about the father he adored, his shyness around women, his crushing disappointment when his brother keeps delaying his homecoming, it's all weirdly endearing. How can I keep hold of my grudge when all this keeps eating away at the poor guy.
We're also introduced to Samuel Hamilton, an Irish handyman and inventor who lives on inhospitable, barren land with a dour, Presbyterian wife, and an interesting passel of kids. This whiskered gent practices water divination, midwifery, and spouts philosophy. He's an entertaining person to have around, but how does his grandson happen to be narrating this novel? Initially, that seems a bit random.
I love the dawning discovery that the members of the Hamilton family are Steinbeck's Easter eggs, true-life members of his own family. It comes out that he himself is the narrator (he's even addressed here and there as 'John' in his boyhood reminiscences) and his parents were Ernest Steinbeck and Olive Hamilton. What a genius move, to plant his own grandfather into the fictional Adam Trask's biblically themed mess as his warm-hearted friend and mentor. Samuel Hamilton is one of my favorite characters, but I have several.
So far I'm quite disturbed by this plot but also hooked.
Stick around for my discussion of the book's second half incorporating the second generation of Cains and Abels. I'd initially wondered how Steinbeck could possibly maintain the momentum when those twins grow up and take center stage. I'll finish with a teaser, he does it incredibly well!
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