“Young Adam was always an obedient child. Something in him shrank from violence, from contention, from the silent shrieking tensions that can rip at a house.”
In this blog on the later sections of East of Eden, I will show how Adam Trask’s early experiences of being mistreated by his brother and father contributed to his emotional weakness. I will also consider how Steinbeck stirs up the debate between the factors of heredity, upbringing, and free-choice in the affairs of human beings. Through much of the story, Steinbeck’s central character moves around in a weakened and wounded state, like a voiceless ghost. This portrayal was an interesting choice for an author who said in his East of Eden Journal (see previous Litchatte.com postings) that he wanted his characters to directly express his thinking.
Warning, this blog may be a spoiler alert for readers who have not completed the whole novel.
As an adult who has had little experience with women, Adam places ill-advised trust in the evil-intentioned anti-heroine, Cathy, when she shows up on brother Charles and Adam’s steps, bloodied and badly beaten for trying to take advantage of the owner of a whore house she had been working at. Before anyone feels sorry for her, we remember that she had previously killed her parents and made it look like she had died in the fire. Adam thinks Cathy is too weak to be sent away while his brother, Charles, is certain she will be a big problem in the future. “I’ll do the suffering, said Adam…You go and get help.” This statement should offer all the foreshadowing and irony that most attentive readers need to foretell Adam’s ominous future. Either he speaks little, or he speaks without consideration of the consequences. It is benevolent to be a good Samaritan to a seriously injured person who shows up on your doorstep, but it is folly to trust them to live in your house and plan your future life around them before doing a thorough background check.
“I’ll do the suffering, said Adam…You go and get help.”
Cathy gradually recovers and Adam has had so little experience with women that he cannot see her evil nature or ways. To accumulate enough money, she tricks Adam into agreeing to marry her. One night, she offers him tea, which is really a sleeping sedative. Isn’t this right out of a fairy tale? While he sleeps through the night, she seduces his brother. With this act, she has slept with both Adam and Charles; thus the father of Adam’s non-identical twins is in doubt for the rest of the story. However, the details naturally lead readers to assume that both the brothers are fathers to Adam’s twin boys.
Adam and Cathy leave Connecticut and head to California, where he intends to establish a new Eden with his wife. She is pregnant but tries to self-abort the pregnancy until the sheriff warns her not to try that again. It is obvious by this time, that Cathy is not the ideal Eve for Adam to establish his wished for Garden of Eden
After the twins are born, Samuel’s wife, Liza, tells him that she thinks “Cathy put a spell on Adam” because “he had not looked at his boys yet.” Samuel asks, “What kind of fool is this man?”
“Cathy put a spell on Adam” because “he had not looked at his boys yet.” Samuel asks, “What kind of fool is this man?”
Cathy wounds Adam in the shoulder with a .44 pistol and abandons him and the boys for the rest of their lives. After this traumatic event, Adam withdraws from being actively involved in life. He neglects and forgets to feed his infants until his servant, Lee, takes over their care, and is mostly involved in raising them through their teen years. For much of the rest of the story, Adam does not know that Cathy has gone back to work in a whore house in nearby Salinas. Adam also does not reveal the truth about how their mother left, even after the boys are old enough to question this. Lee warns Adam that this avoidance strategy might have dangerous consequences, but he ignores his advice.
For over a year after Cathy left, Lee and Samuel notice that Adam has been walking around his house “like a ghost.” Lee says to Samuel, “Adam is a dead man unless you can wake him up.”
“Adam is a dead man unless you can wake him up.”
To shock Adam, Samuel beats and chokes him in righteous anger as he informs him the truth about what his wife has been doing after she shot and left him. He also confronts Adam about being such a negligent father, who hasn’t even named his boys a year after their birth!. he scowls: “Their mother left them motherless and you have left them fatherless,…For a year you have lived with your heart draining and you’ve not even laid a number to your boys.”
Samuel scowled at Adam,, “Their mother left them motherless and you have left them fatherless…For a year you have lived with your heart draining and you’ve not even laid a number to your boys”
Adam goes to Salinas to confront Cathy in the whorehouse she now owns and tries to ask her why she left him and the boys. Through the heated dialogue, he gets beaten by her guards but leaves thinking her evil spell has been lifted from him. He is determined to try to be a better father to his teenage boys, but it is almost too late, as they don’t know how to respond to him.
Adam notices that Cal mistreats Aron in much the same way as his brother, Charles, mistreated him. He says to Cal, “I see you cheat him and fool him. Cal affirms, “Sometimes I hurt him for no reason at all.” But he doesn’t understand why he acts in such a violent manner any more than Charles understood why he beat Adam as a child. Aron is pure in his approach to life, but weak and defenseless, much like Adam was and still is. This characterization appears to reinforce the idea that Adam’s father (Cyrus), Cathy, Charles, and Adam have each been partially responsible for passing on an array of good and evil tendencies to Adam’s twins.
Adam accepts a position on the local draft board and must decide which sons will go to war and which won’t. He over-values Aron’s ambition to attend college and under-values Cal’s contributions to the family. This makes Cal very jealous. The themes of sibling rivalry run through the novel and are patterned after the Biblical jealousy seen in the Cain and Abel story. To address Cal’s jealousy and to help make up for his father’s monetary loss from a bad investment, Cal devises a scheme to make money by investing in beans at the onset of World War I. Cal’s scheme works so well, he earns $15,000. This would be worth about 2.5 million dollars today.
Cal plans to give these earnings to his father after Thanksgiving dinner. The backfires when Adam learns that his son earned the money by profiting off of farmers. He cannot accept taking this extravagant profits when he has been sending their sons to war, where some of them have been killed. Adam demands that Cal return the money to the farmers but Cal tells him that this would not be possible. Adam is furious and Cal becomes more than frustrated. Adam asks Cal why can’t he be more successful like Aron is. Cal’s jealousy is out of control. Aron has secretly decided not to return to Stanford because he has been lonely there. His future with his fiance, Abra, is also uncertain at that point. Adam, of course, is unaware and insensitive to what is going on with his sons because he is disconnected with himself and them.
Aron leaves the house to go for a walk and clear his mind and Cal chases after him. Cal has known the truth about their mother for a while but has kept it from Aron because he didn’t think his brother could handle it. As he catches up to Aron, he tells him the truth about their mother and inextricably beats him in a fit of rage and jealousy. Aron becomes so upset, he signs up for the army and leaves home the next morning before returning home or explaining his decision to his father. Like Adam left home to avoid dealing with a difficult situation there, his son, Aron does the same. Lee sees Aron as being a coward for running away from a tight spot. It’s a reader’s choice of how they should respond to Aron’s actions. What do you think? Through the feeling of guilt, Cal burns the money. Adam asks Cal the next day, where his brother is, He responds like the Cain by asking his father, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” Steinbeck leaves this question it open-ended. It was a good question to consider during our book discussion. What do you think?
“Am I my brother’s keeper?”
Although Adam was correct in rejecting Cal’s money, he should have, at least, praised and expressed some appreciation to his son for being concerned and interested in helping his father. Rather than rejecting Cal’s action outright, he might have suggested that the two of them work out a plan to put the money to work to help farmers or widows who lost their sons in the war.
When Adam is informed about Aron’s death in the war through a telegram, he becomes despondent and has a breakdown, which leads to the final deathbed scene. We see Adam there again as a near voiceless ghost-like being. Without much thinking, readers might tend to blame Cal alone for killing his brother. But if they also consider about what a neglectful and insensitive father Adam has been to both of his boys, this makes it also necessary to consider that he is just as responsible for Aron’s death as Cal. As Adam is gasping for his last breath, we realize that although he has gone through much of his life’s journey as a weak voiceless ghost, However, his last redeeming act offers his son still lives and has the possibility of passing on the best or worst of his traits to humanity. He struggles to offer a single word of forgiveness from the Bible (Timshel) to Cal and his now fiancé, Abra. This word signifies that Adam understands that it is Cal’s choice, and not the past, which will determine how he lives his life. It is ironic that Steinback chooses to finally enlighten and awaken Adam at his deathbed.
Steinbeck’s main point in East of Eden is that we have a choice to do good or bad in each important decision we make in our life. His novel affirms that he believes our actions are not entirely bound by our own previous deeds or by the bad decisions of others. This position is different from other writers, such as Victor Hugo (in Les Miserables) who emphasize that we are inextricably bound by our past history and genes and that the long-term consequences of these bonds make it difficult to alter our destined course. What do you think? Please write to me in the dialogue box below.
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