Last time, we explored the characters and themes of this enlightening literary masterpiece, as well as provided a brief overview of what ties these concepts together. Today, I'll be offering some highlights from the book that represent Steinbeck's apex of descriptive writing. Hopefully, these also stick with you for the years to come and convince you to read through the whole journey if you haven't already!
Choosing only a handful of paragraphs for this type of exercise is an impossible task, for there is simply too much to choose from in such a complete and quintessential work. However, as we have done for past books on the site, we will look at just some of Steinbeck's incredible potential to appreciate the richness of the writing and open our minds to the world of ideas that he sets forth.
What I love about Steinbeck's writing is that he weaves his own voice throughout the plot and gradually eases into each character's actions through a type of preview. Here is an example of one that comes early in the book to model his style.
"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, 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. It is an aching kind of growing. Adam found his father out..."
How else to describe this process of realization that we all go through at some point, you ask yourself after reading this passage? Every word is selected precisely and skillfully, the clauses flow from one to the other, and the message is transcendent— applicable to every reader. Without using ostentatious phrases like "loss of innocence" or "revelation," Steinbeck portrays a moment in a human's life that creates a permanent change, and moves on to make a direct connection to one of his characters. Across the 600 pages of the book, this is a small detail, but it contributes to the reader's sense of attachment to the evolving, growing that we discussed in the last post.
For readers who seek to make parallels to the Bible with this work, they will not be disappointed.
"He drove his bar deep behind it and threw his whole weight back. The bar slipped and its upper end crashed against his forehead... There was a long torn welt on his forehead from hairline to a point between his eyebrows."
This happens to Charles, who represents Cain from the Bible in the beginning of the book. The key difference is that he fails to kill his brother, which opens up a plethora of possibilities that Steinbeck experiments with.
My favorite paragraph in the book comes shortly after, one that relates to some of my posts about time on the site. Every time I read this passage, I am overcome with emotion and wonder at the process which is presented to the reader: the visualization and solidification of an abstract process that has plagued the human mind throughout its history.
"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 the 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."
How about a direct connection to one of the characters? If you weren't convinced by my grandiose, vague description of Lee in the last post, here is a passage that represents exactly what I was hoping to form into words. Brace yourself for a small journey that may make you reconsider a widely overlooked profession that, while not practiced to the same extent today, can apply itself to a deeper meaning that we can use in our daily lives.
"I don’t know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is the refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a position of power, even of love. I can’t understand why more intelligent people don’t take it as a career—learn to do it well and reap its benefits. A good servant has absolute security, not because of his master’s kindness, but because of habit and indolence. It’s a hard thing for a man to change spices or lay out his own socks. He’ll keep a bad servant rather than change. But a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will. If I had wished I could have robbed, stripped, and beaten anyone I’ve worked for and come away with thanks. Finally, in my circumstances I am unprotected. My master will defend me, protect me. You have to work and worry. I work less and worry less. And I am a good servant. A bad one does no work and does no worrying, and he still is fed, clothed, and protected. I don’t know any profession where the field is so cluttered with incompetents and where excellence is so rare."
Not bad advice. Let's stick with Lee and move on to one of the most important passages in the book, one that I have still not wrapped my brain around. This novel begins with a relationship between two brothers that is, as I have already noted, compared to Cain and Abel. Steinbeck clearly had many thoughts about this story, and the beautiful thing is that he is upfront about his fascination.
Samuel Hamilton, Adam, and Lee are trying to decide on names for Adam's twins, and they begin discussing famous biblical passages. When Cain and Abel arise, they all approach it differently. Samuel cites his wife's theosophy of simply accepting the events in the Bible to argue that it should not be overanalyzed, while Adam can't come to a reasonable conclusion because he has still not recovered completely from a previous traumatic event. Lee is the key! Listen to this melody of reasoning, the activities of the mind laid out on the page (since Steinbeck clearly struggled with this story for quite some time before writing East of Eden).
“I think this 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. I’m feeling my way now—don’t jump on me if I’m not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt—and there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there—the start, the beginning. One child, refused the love he craves, kicks the cat and hides his secret guilt; and another steals so that money will make him loved; and a third conquers the world— and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. The human is the only guilty animal. Now wait! Therefore I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected, guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel?"
If there was only one chapter that you could read in East of Eden, it would have to be the short Chapter 34. In two pages worth of writing, Steinbeck hits at the core of our entire existence in a reflection that builds on multiple disciplines and ends with a resounding message about our species. You literally put the down in front of you and ask yourself whether what you just read is real or not, and if this is not the word of "God"— whatever that figure means for you— speaking to you. I have to include it in this post, and if there is one passage that you will read today, please make it this one and you will not regret it.
"A child may ask, “What is the world’s story about?” And a grown man or woman may wonder, “What way will the world go? How does it end and, while we’re at it, what’s the story about?”
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, in 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 that 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?
Herodotus, in the Persian War, tells a story of how Croesus, the richest and most-favored king of his time, asked Solon the Athenian a leading question. He would not have asked it if he had not been worried about the answer. “Who,” he asked, “is the luckiest person in the world?” He must have been eaten with doubt and hungry for reassurance. Solon told him of three lucky people in old times. And Croesus more than likely did not listen, so anxious was he about himself. And when Solon did not mention him, Croesus was forced to say, “Do you not consider me lucky?”
Solon did not hesitate in his answer. “How can I tell?” he said. “You aren’t dead yet.”
And this answer must have haunted Croesus dismally as his luck disappeared, and his wealth and his kingdom. And as he was being burned on a tall fire, he may have thought of it and perhaps wish he had not asked or not been answered.
And in our time, when a man dies–if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments–the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?–which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. Envies are gone, and the measuring stick is: “Was he loved or was he hated? Is his death felt as a loss or does a kind of joy come from it?”
I remember clearly the deaths of three men. One was the richest man of the century, who, having clawed his way to wealth through the souls and bodies of men, spent many years trying to buy back the love he had forfeited and by that process performed great service to the world and, perhaps, had much more than balanced the evils of his rise. I was on a ship when he died. The news was posted on the bulletin board, and nearly everyone received the news with pleasure. Several said, “Thank God that son of a bitch is dead.”
Then there was a man, smart as Satan, who lacking some perception of human dignity and knowing all to well every aspect of human weakness and wickedness, used his special knowledge to warp men, to buy men, to bribe and threaten and seduce until he found himself in a position of great power. He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self love. A bribed man can only hate his briber. When this man died the nation rang with praise and, just beneath, with gladness that he was dead.
There was a third man, who perhaps made many errors in performance but whose effective life was devoted to making men brave and dignified and good in a time when they were poor and frightened and when ugly forces were loose in the world to utilize their fears. This man was hated by the few. When he died the people burst into tears in the streets and their minds wailed, “What can we do now? How can we go on without him?”
In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."
There are a million other paragraphs that I could add to this post, but for the sake of reaching an end at some point, and not spoiling all of the treasures of such a valuable work, I will only add one more. We have just come off Memorial Day, where we remember all of the brave soldiers who sacrificed their lives in merciless, brutal wars for the patriotism of their country. We wonder nowadays how our world could even let such horrific activities come to pass, but our kind always keeps a violent side that is oriented towards brutality and slaughter. In some way or another we have not changed since our earliest forms, and we don't like to say it outright. Steinbeck makes this clear, and pries into the emotions that surround the tragic events of warfare.
"There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope—I hope he didn’t suffer —and what a forlorn and last choice hope that is. And it is true that there were some people who, when their sorrow was beginning to lose its savor, gently edged it toward pride and felt increasingly important because of their loss. Some of these even made a good thing of it after the war was over. That is only natural, just as it is natural for a man whose life function is the making of money to make money out of a war. No one blamed a man for that, but it was expected that he should invest a part of his loot in war bonds. We thought we invented all of it in Salinas, even the sorrow."
Thank you for reading this post and joining me on a journey through what I now believe to be the best book of ever written. This choice always changes as you read more, but for now, Steinbeck has stolen my heart, and I hope that you can see why through these thoughtful, reflective, flawless, and awe-inspiring passages.
11/14/20