East of Eden is immense and biblical in proportion, it is a massive achievement in storytelling and it’s definitely crept its way up to my favorite reading experiences in recent memory.
After reading White Teeth which explored family dynamics across multiple generations, I knew I had to read the reference for this type of storytelling. East of Eden explores the lives of the Trask family, starting from 2 brothers who suffer a complicated relationship between one another and occasionally giving us insights to other families and characters set in the backdrop of the Salinas Valley in California. Our story starts all the way back in the American Civil War and finishes in WW1, which gives us this epic and grandiose scale that almost made the book seem intimidating.
At its core however, despite the scale, it serves as a character study for the story of Cain and Abel which is one of humanity’s tales involving fratricide and more broadly, super messed up family dynamics! The novel uses the core of this story and applies it to sets of brothers throughout the story, studying how brothers react when one receives more love or validation from their father than the other. Steinbeck makes the interesting choice to have a selection of characters which are built from biblical archetypes, destined to showcase the Cain and Abel story in the Salinas Valley. As a contrast to those characters, he also added characters such as the Hamilton family which breathe a huge amount of soul and life into the story.
Through these characters, Steinbeck showcases and weaves the moral core and message of the book which is the Hebrew word Timshel. As we are all descendants of Cain who committed the great sin of murdering his brother, some versions of the Bible would have humanity doomed to repeat sin endlessly. In these versions, God punishes Cain for his murder and promises that he will conquer sin, “Thou shalt rule over him”, or he orders Cain to conquer sin “Do thou rule over him”. However, a character in the novel at some point discusses an alternate translation of the Bible, closer to the Hebrew texts which has God blessing Cain with a choice: “Thou mayest rule over him”. In this case, Cain has the choice to redeem himself despite the grave sin that he has committed. Steinbeck argues against the inherent inevitable nature of sin that humanity seems vowed to repeat, he argues that humanity has the ability to decide whether to be good or evil. Timshel means “thou mayest” and serves as a mantra and the moral centre of the book, providing characters the agency to choose whether to lean into evil or good.
Due to the generational nature of the storytelling, characters often find themselves fearful that they are destined to be sinful because their parents had been. They worry that their ancestry has determined whether they will turn out good or evil. These elements of predetermination are then confronted to the concept of Timshel, simply of free will. It was liberating to see these characters find agency and break the shackles of a pattern they had found themselves in. The rejected son does not have to succumb to sin. Just like it was entertaining to see some characters choosing actively to lean into extremes, such as personifying evil itself.
Despite some of the heavy handed themes, some characters embodying biblical allegories, the novel never stopped running at full speed despite its over 600 page count. The Salinas Valley is described with such love and appreciation that simply reading what could have been droning descriptions of meadows and flowers became enthralling as Steinbeck’s love for California shone through. It’s a story of redemption, the breaking of cycles but it’s also a story about immigrants settling in California, working to survive and building their lives. It’s a very human story and shines through its simplicity despite its grandiose scale.
It, simply put, was an excellent novel that I could not turn down.
by bernabeth