California - East of Eden

"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?”  

There's no need to go into detail with how much of an international landmark the state of California is. Ranked as the fifth largest economy in the world, beating out the likes of the UK, France, and India, it's a destination that's known throughout the globe as one of the dominant economic and cultural hubs the United States.

A feature that seems to be underappreciated is how unique California's geography is compared to the rest of the United States. Almost the entire coast is lined by rugged mountain ranges and rolling hills that contrast with the gradually sloping coastal lines of most other states. For example, Cone Peak, one of the many located within California's Big Sur region, is only about 3.25 miles away from the coast as the crow flies but is over 5150 feet above sea level. It's these conditions that create the year round mild weather and temperature that California is known for, and this combined with the fertile valleys nestled between the coastal and central ranges of the state make for some of the nation's most productive agricultural hot spots.

One of these valleys would be the Salinas Valley. Bordered by the Gabilan Range to the east and the Santa Lucian Range to the west, it's referred to as "the Salad Bowl of the World" given the predominance of agricultural industry in the region. It would also become the setting for several novels by native author John Steinbeck, including Tortilla Flat and Of Mice and Men.

Where the Salinas Valley made its impact most on Steinbeck was its location. As mentioned above, the valley is bordered by the Gabilan and Santa Lucian ranges, both rugged landmarks that Steinbeck would describe as being vastly different. In the Gabilans, one could see mountains that were "light" and "full of sun and loveliness," while the Santa Lucians were "dark and brooding." The location of Salinas Valley thought of by Steinbeck as a neutral ground between good and evil, with its inhabitants stuck in a modern day Garden of Eden and between two forces that could alter their fates. It's for that reason that the Salinas Valley would be chosen as the setting of Steinbeck's most famous work and California's novel for this blog, East of Eden.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is an epic family saga about two generations of the Trask family. Both generations feature a set of brothers, whose lives and events would serve as a modern day allegory to the Bible story of Cain and Abel. There are of course multiple other characters, all with their own unique feature and plot lines. For the sake of containing the length of this blog post, only the key events involving the Trask family will be covered in much detail.

Before diving further into the characters of the book, it helps to understand or have a refresher of the events that were written about in Genesis.

Cain and Abel were the first sons of Adam and Eve, born outside of the Garden of Eden. Cain, a farmer, and Abel, a shepherd, both presented an offering to God. God would acknowledge Abel's offering but not Cain's, which would cause Cain to become jealous and angry over what he considered preferential treatment to Abel. Cain then brought Abel into a field, "rose against" him, and killed him. God, angry at what Cain had done, issued the following curse (from the King James version:)

"When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth."

Cain would then plead with God, saying that the burden would be too big to bear, that anyone who would find him would surely kill him due to this curse. God would place a mark on Cain to show the world that whoever would kill Cain would face God's vengeance sevenfold, giving Cain the protection he needed. Cain would then settle in the land of Nod, to the east of Eden.

The first generation of the Trask family, which the first part of the book focuses on, consists of brothers Adam and Charles and their Civil War veteran father Cyrus. The Trasks live on a farm in Connecticut, where Cyrus raises and disciplines his sons with a strict set of military exercises. Charles, the younger but stronger brother, aims to please his father in whatever way he can. He also has a violent streak; when Adam beats Charles in a game of horseshoes, the latter attacks him in a rage.

Tensions come to a peak when the brothers each give Cyrus a gift for his birthday. Charles gives Cyrus a pocket knife that he saved a considerable amount of money for, while Adam gives him a stray dog he found while wandering in the woods. Cyrus treats the knife with indifference, but is overjoyed with the dog. Charles later confronts Adam outside of the house, where he then attacks him once more. After knocking Adam to the ground, Charles goes so far as to retrieve an ax to kill his brother, but Adam is able to escape before Charles has a chance to carry out murder.

A series of events leads to Cyrus securing a job in the War Department in Washington and enlisting Adam into the army, while Charles stays behind to tend to the farm. He does the job well, but starts to live an aimless, joyless life. He writes frequently to Adam in hopes that he they can patch things up. He frequently prowls around the hotel in town, where a secret brothel is run out of the top floor. Eventually, Adam returns to the farm, and the two are able to start over.

Two other events cause the relationship between Adam and Charles to become strained, finally to the point of being severed permanently. The first is when they find out that their father has died and left them a large inheritance of $100,000. Charles is able to piece together that Cyrus had committed fraud against the War Department, which makes him see his inheritance as dirty money. Adam sees it as a gift to make up for their father's behavior and begins to fantasize about buying land in California, a place he had spent some time in after his stint the army. The second incident involves Adam taking care of and then marrying a woman named Cathy Ames, whose story is fleshed out parallel to the happenings of the Trask brothers. Charles, a disgrace and fallen man himself, is able to see past the facade that Cathy, who at this point is described by the narrator as being a monster from the day she was born, puts on around the naive and trusting Adam. When he tells Adam about Cathy's likely evil and sinister intentions, the two face yet another altercation. Adam and Cathy marry and then set out for California, never to see Charles again.

This first generation of Trask brothers parallel the story of Cain and Abel in a way that's almost on the nose, starting from the moment they give Cyrus gifts for his birthday. Charles, like Cain, gives Cyrus a tool that he toiled hard for while Adam, like Abel, gives an animal that he watched over. Adam, while he avoids being murdered in Charles's fit of rage, is sent to fight in the army and encounters several near death experiences. Charles is sentenced by Cyrus to stay behind and care for the farm, where he lives alone and lurks around town. There's even a moment where Charles is clearing a field of several large boulders and is smacked by a loose rock on the forehead, leaving a permanent mark behind. This scar would be a source for shame of Charles, much like the mark Cain bore.

The second generation of the Trask family begins when Cathy gives birth to twin boys. Finally freed from her pregnancy burden after a failed attempt at abortion, she leaves Adam in a grand way: she announces she's leaving, that Adam can't stop her, and then shoots him in the shoulder. She then runs off into the city, where she tricks a brothel madam into handing the business over to her. Cathy changes her name to Kate and spends the rest of the novel running a sadistic and debased empire.

Adam becomes distraught by Cathy's departure and goes without caring for his sons. This ends when Sam Hamilton, the man who helped Adam drill water wells on his land, and Lee, a Chinese house servant, encourage him to raise the boys in a loving home and protect them from knowing about the evil of their mother. The boys would be named Aron and Caleb, or Cal.

From a young age, the relationship between Aron and Cal mirrors that of Adam and Charles before them. Aron is passive, while Cal is boisterous and often bullies his brother. Unlike Adam and Charles, though, the two both have a good relationship with their father, who is set to make good on his promise to protect them from knowing about Cathy. He tells them that she died when they were young, and that she's buried back in Connecticut.

Adam receives news that Charles has died, and his fortune is split between Adam and Cathy. Cathy has no interest in the money, and Adam decides to invest his earnings by buying the local ice plant and putting $15,000 into an early form of a refrigerated railcar. The plan fails spectacularly, which makes the Trask family the brunt of jokes all over the city.

Ashamed by his family and annoyed with his brother's newfound since of piousness and superiority, Cal begins to feel aimless, much the same way Charles did before him. By pure coincidence, he discovers that Cathy, or Kate, is still alive and that she is actually his mother. She speculates that the two are a lot alike, which Cal denies.

While Aron is off at Stanford, Cal works with one of Sam Hamilton's sons to devise a scheme that will recover the money Adam lost in the refrigeration business. World War 1 has just started, and the scarcity of beans has caused the commodity to skyrocket. They're able to invest in the crop, and before long, Cal fully recovers the $15,000 his father lost and plans to give Adam the gift at Thanksgiving. Towards the end of this period, Aron returns from Stanford for the break, which leaves Adam overjoyed.

Much like what happened between Adam and Charles, the two boys have gifts for their father. One of them has returned home, the other has a handful of cash. Cal hands the father his money, and of course, Adam's reaction does not go as planned. He says that Cal will return the money, as it's clearly dirty and if not, was earned through exploitation. To make matters worse, Adam tells Cal that if he really wanted to please him, Cal needed to be more like his brother, who has actually given Adam pride in what he's done.

Things tumble out of control from here. Cal, in a fit of rage, takes Aron to see Cathy for himself. The news that his mother is not only alive but a morally depraved mistresses influences Aron to run away from home and enlist in the army. He would be killed during combat.

The news of Aron's death causes Adam to have a stroke, leaving him severely disabled. Cal, wracked with guilt, wanders all throughout the town. It's not until he's encouraged by his girlfriend and Lee that he returns to Adam and asks for forgiveness, which Adam grants him.

Cal's and Aron's connections to Cain and Abel are just as clear here as they were for Adam and Charles. Both boys strive to please their father, while only one is successful in doing so with the "gift" that he gives. Cal's reaction to this rejection leads to a series of events that eventually results in Aron's death. One moment even has Cal answer his father's question of where Aron is with "Am I supposed to look after him?", alluding to Cain's famous question of "Am I my brother's keeper?" when God asks him where Abel is. Aron's death leaves Cal with remorse and a sense of aimlessness, though his remorse is overcome with his father's forgiveness.

“Don’t you see? The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open.”

There's a scene that takes place between parts one and two of East of Eden that is really deserving of its own post separate from this one. Shortly after Sam Hamilton and Lee convince Adam to raise his then unnamed sons, the three have a conversation about the main source of the novel's allegories, the story of Cain and Abel. The topic of the conversation morphs into the broader ideas of mankind's struggle over evil, as well as our responsibility and capacity to do so. Lee, who had spent time analyzing and studying scripture with Jewish philosophers, explains to Adam and Samuel that different translations of the Bible show God giving Cain different instructions on handling his own sins.

As all versions of the story describe, Cain reacts to God's preference to Abel's gift with extreme anger. Prior to killing his brother, God approaches Cain and speaks to him about overcoming sin. Depending on which version of the Bible you read, God's words to Cain are either an order for him to overcome sin, a promise that he will, or, as Lee points out with the use of the Hebrew word "timshel," a reminder that he has the capacity to choose. Cain, of course, chooses to take the path of sin and receives an everlasting punishment from God because of it. At the same time, God grants Cain an act of mercy by marking him so no other harm can come before him. It's this compassion that somewhat foreshadows how a similar act of compassion would be given to those who have sinned, that being the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

East of Eden ties not only into the grander events of Cain and Abel but also into this choice of overcoming sin or falling to it. This is especially clear with the events following Cal's attempts at regifting Adam's lost money. He didn't have to seek revenge on Aron, but he chose to, and suffered the consequences because of it. The events that followed change him for the better, and it's when Adam forgives Cal on his sick bed that he's reminded that he has the choice to continue triumphing over his personal demons. There are other examples throughout the novel as well; even the setting of Salinas Valley, with its sunny mountains on one side and the gloomy mountains on the other, acts as a metaphor for constantly being between good and evil.

Red also has the capacity to choose, and sometimes chooses wrong.

"Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born?"

Like a lot of other things in East of Eden, there's a particular character that's deserving of her own post. This is, of course, referring to Cathy Ames. From the time she's introduced at the start of the novel, Cathy is clearly nothing but evil incarnate. As a young girl, she falsely accuses boys of attempting to molest her, and takes pleasure in watching them get whipped by their fathers as punishment. She locks her parents in their own home and sets fire to it, painstakingly staging her own murder to trick the town into believing she was gone forever. Her cruelty towards Adam and her twin boys becomes clear when she attempts to abort them on her own, and especially when she shoots Adam on her way out the door. Her sadism comes out in force when she tortures the brothel madam that even considers Cathy as her daughter, and then takes over to run the parlor with a new focus on tormenting "clients."

What's interesting to note here is that while one of the major themes of East of Eden involves that choice between good and evil, Steinbeck wanted to make sure you know that there's no desire or capacity to do good in Cathy. She's the embodiment of the serpent that tempted Eve, and the comparisons are quite literal on occasion. There's one scene where Cathy disturbs Samuel with the way she eats, using her front teeth to chew and flicking her tongue as she swallows. When Samuel helps deliver the twins, she bites him on the hand, which becomes severely infected. Maybe some people truly are just naturally evil.

Opposite of Cathy is Samuel, who for much of the novel is portrayed as a God character. He's a benefactor to the entire Salinas Valley, and keeps his family in debt because of it. After his death his family more or less falls apart, as practically all of his children succumb to their personal weaknesses in the same way the Biblical Adam and Eve did upon leaving the Garden of Eden. Lee, the Chinese house servant that lives with Adam to help raise the boys, acts as a connection between man and God when he mediates discussions between Samuel and Adam and later as a moral compass for Cal.

As Lee mentions during their discussion on Biblical interpretations, the battle between good and evil is one of mankind's oldest stories, if not the oldest. East of Eden captures that battle in a dynamic family setting, showing us how even when we're so far removed from Biblical times, our lives are just as dogged by rationalizing our actions and picking what we can hope is the morally correct choice. This is something that we all will live with from our first steps to our dying days. Hopefully our choices will always be the ones that not only avoid harm to others, but also to our own humanity.