John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation

Critic: Joseph Fontenrose

Source: John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation, Barnes & Noble, Inc., 1963, 150
p. Reproduced by permission
Criticism about: John (Ernst) Steinbeck (1902-1968), also known as: John Steinbeck, John
Ernst Steinbeck, Amnesia Glasscock

Year of Source Publication: 1963

Critical Essay Title: John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation

Critic Name: Joseph Fontenrose

Source Publication Title: John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation

Biography Link: Biographical/Critical Introduction to John Steinbeck

In the forties Steinbeck was clearly turning his principal interest from biology and sociology to
individual ethics. He was one of several writers whom the Second World War and its aftermath
made aware of the problem of evil. ... [In East of Eden, Steinbeck] completed

the transition; it is a lengthy treatment of man's capacity for both good and evil. In it Steinbeck
plainly announces ... that it is as a moralist that he wants to be taken, as Joseph

Wood Krutch expressed it [see excerpt above]. (p. 118)

[In 1947, Steinbeck] started work upon a book that he called Salinas Valley,

which would be the story of the Hamiltons, his mother's family. Early in the drafting he
introduced a fictitious second family, the Trasks, whose role expanded to the point of taking over
the novel; and in 1951 the title was changed to East of Eden. The finished novel is still two
stories, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, or rather three: the story of Cathy Ames is really a separate
strand that becomes entwined with the central Trask story in one phase only; thereafter it goes its
own way, a parallel strand that comes occasionally into important contact with the Trask strand.
The Hamilton story is a subordinate and independent strand that barely touches the other two: the
Hamiltons have almost nothing to do with Cathy and little to do with the Trasks. The Trask story
needs Cathy Ames, but not the Hamiltons, who can be dropped out without affecting the Trask
story at all.
[East of Eden ] has four Parts. In the first (1862 1900) the three stories are begun, and

the Trask and Cathy stories are developed until Adam Trask marries Cathy. Part Two (1900
1902) brings the Trasks and Hamiltons together in the Salinas Valley, ending with the

naming of Cathy's twins, after she has abandoned them and her husband and become a whore
(called Kate) in Salinas; and her story is carried to the point where by devious means she
acquired ownership of the brothel in which she worked. In Part Three (1911 12) the

Hamilton story moves forward on its own from the last days of Samuel Hamilton to its
conclusion in the deaths of Dessie and Tom Hamilton, while the Trask story marks time (Adam
Trask becomes half alive after ten years of spiritual coma), and Cathy is all but absent. Part Four
(1812 18) is the story of Adam Trask and his sons after they had moved from the Trask

ranch to Salinas; the parallel Cathy-Kate story ends with her suicide; and the Hamilton story is
touched upon only in Will Hamilton's role as Cal Trask's partner in a bean brokerage. The central
narrative throughout is the fictional biography of Adam Trask from his birth in the second year of
the Civil War until his death in the last year of World War I.... The design and magnitude of East
of Eden, and Steinbeck's own remarks about it, indicate that it was meant to be a climactic work,
his greatest achievement, for which every earlier book was practice. But few Steinbeck readers
will place it higher than The Grapes of Wrath ; the majority may see it as a second peak in his
career, but not nearly so high as the first. (pp. 118 19)

After ten years in the army and more years wandering across the country, Adam was living with
Charles on the Trask farm when Cathy Ames crawled to their door, terribly beaten by the
whoremaster Edwards. Adam fell in love with her while nursing her, and married her, obstinately
refusing to inquire into her past. Cathy was the sort of person who would put sleeping medicine
in Adam's tea on her wedding night so that she could enter Charles's bed; and she appears to have
been impregnated by both brothers, for she bore nonidentical twins, one of whom (Caleb) looked
like Charles and was like Charles in nature. Contrary to the Biblical story, it was Adam (Abel),
not Charles (Cain), who left the family land and went west to California, where the twins were
born and Cathy deserted him. There he became the first Adam who lost his Eden (a happy life
with Cathy and his children on excellent farm land in the Salinas Valley) and was father of Cain
(Caleb) and Abel (Aaron). Adam preferred his son Aaron (later spelled Aron), who in boyhood
raised Belgian hares (the herdsman role); the less likeable Caleb (Cal) wanted to be a farmer.
When he was seventeen, Cal, in partnership with Will Hamilton, contracted for bean crops to sell
to the British Purchasing Agency; he made $15,000 and gave it to his father, who had suffered
severe losses in a business venture. Adam cruelly refused Cal's gift on the ground that the money
was war profit, unfairly gained, and invidiously compared it to Aron's success in entering
Stanford one year early.... Cal got revenge by taking Aron to watch the circus at

Kate's whorehouse and revealing to him that Kate was their mother (Cal had discovered this
some time before). Aron, a pure boy who had intended to enter the Episcopal ministry, was
profoundly shocked, as Cal had expected, since the knowledge shattered Aron's unreal image of
an angelic mother who had died in his infancy. The very next morning Aron enlisted in the army,
soon was sent to France, and died in action. (p. 121)

Steinbeck, of course, puts more into the story than can be found in Genesis 4, which says nothing
about either brother's attitude towards Adam. The irony of the father's partiality in East of Eden
is that neither Adam nor Aron loved his father, whereas Charles loved [his father] Cyrus and Cal
loved Adam, and each tried hard to please his father. Again, Steinbeck introduces rivalry over a
woman into both generations of brothers, more obscurely in the first, since Charles disliked
Cathy; but he did admit her to his bed and left her half his fortune when he died. In the next
generation Abra, Aron's boyhood sweetheart, transferred her love to Cal after Aron's enlistment.
Steinbeck read a good deal about Genesis while writing East of Eden and probably came upon a
later Jewish legend (current before 300 A.D.) which elaborates the brief and bare scriptural
narrative; both Cain and Abel had a twin sister, each intended to become her twin's wife and so
ensure the survival of mankind. Abel's twin sister was so beautiful that Cain wanted her;
therefore he picked a quarrel with Abel, killed him, and married Abel's twin, that mysterious wife
of Cain who bore his son Enoch in the land of Nod (Genesis 4:17).

Furthermore, Steinbeck had to fuse Adam and Jehovah in one person, Cyrus Trask in the first
generation, Adam Trask in the second. Cathy is a fusion of Eve, the Eden serpent, and Cain's
wife the beating which the whoremaster gave her had left a scar on her forehead.

Steinbeck emphasizes her serpent nature by giving her a heartshaped face, an abnormally small
mouth, a little pointed tongue that sometimes flicked around her lips, small sharp teeth with the
canine teeth longer and more pointed than the others, tiny ears without lobes and pressed close to
her head, unblinking eyes, narrow hips. (p. 122)

The story of Cain and Abel, Lee said to Adam and Sam, is the symbol story of the

human soul, the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story.

The three men found the story perplexing when they first discussed it. Ten years later,

when they had gathered for the last time, Lee had cleared up the difficulties with the help of four
aged Chinese sages, who had studied Hebrew for just this purpose. They solved the problem of
Genesis 4:7, as given in the King James version, And unto thee shall be his desire, and

thou shalt rule over him, by translating the verb form timshol (not timshel as Steinbeck

has it) thou mayest rule instead of thou shalt rule ; and they

took sin as antecedent of the masculine pronouns. This, Lee said in triumph,

was the gold from our mining : the translation thou shalt rule

implies predestination; do thou rule, as in the American Standard version,

orders a man to master sin; but thou mayest rule gives a man a choice: he can

master sin if he wants to. `Thou mayest,' Lee said, might be the most

important word in the world, for that makes a man great,... for in his weakness

and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice.

This, then, is the message of East of Eden, a message that many can accept, even though those
who love true things must reject Lee's interpretation of Genesis 4:7. That verse

has an obviously corrupt text, and the sentence at issue appears to be out of place. For one thing,
the masculine pronouns cannot refer to sin, which translates a Hebrew feminine
noun. And timshol will not bear the meaning which Steinbeck puts upon it. He apparently read or
was told that the Hebrew imperfect tense, which indicates incomplete action at any time, is used
where English employs either the vivid future tense (will shall) or the potential would, should,
may, might); in either case the action is unfulfilled. If a translation as potential suited this verse, it
would be simply you would rule ; it cannot be a permissive may.

Steinbeck, furthermore, constantly translates timshol thou mayest,

dropping rule, as if the Hebrew form were simply an auxiliary. Many a sermon,

however, has drawn a fine meaning from a faulty translation of a corrupt text.

According to Lee, the story of Cain and Abel is important because it is a story of rejection, from
which all evil flows, since 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. Or as the author states it in a moralizing chapter ..., most of ... [men's]

vices are attempted short cuts to love. ... As Krutch has pointed out, for Steinbeck as

moralist good and evil are absolute and objective. We have come a long way, it seems, from Jim
Casy's doctrine in The Grapes of Wrath that There ain't no sin and there ain't no virtue.

There's just stuff people do, and from Doc Burton's refusal in In Dubious Battle

to put on the blinders of `good' and `bad,' because they would limit his vision

and destroy his objectivity. And it seems to me that Steinbeck has limited his vision in East of
Eden.
The reader is never clear about the relation of good to evil in this novel, for it is presented in four
inconsistent ways. (1) Good is opposed to evil.... Charles, Cathy, and Cal have bad traits opposed
to the good traits of Adam and Aron. In the thou mayest doctrine, evil can be

rejected and good chosen. (2) Good and evil are complementary. Lee thought that they might be
so balanced that if a man went too far either way an automatic slide restored the balance. Good
and evil are symbolized by the church and the whorehouse, which arrived in the Far

West simultaneously, and each intended to accomplish the same thing:... [to

take] a man out of his bleakness for a time. (3) Evil is the source of good and may even

be necessary to good. The evil Cathy, quite without intending it, set off the glory in

Adam. The wealth which Cyrus Trask acquired dishonestly was inherited by Adam

Trask, an honest man who used the money to rear and educate his sons.... (4) Good and evil are
relative terms. Lee said to Adam in that same speech, What your wife is doing is neither

good nor bad, although she was operating the most perverted and depraved brothel in

California. This seems to hark back to Casy's doctrine: Kate's activities were simply not nice.

Good is identified both with admirable individual qualities (philanthropy, kindness, generosity,
self-respect, courage, creativity) and with conventional moral goodness (sexual purity,
abstinence from carnal pleasures of any kind). Evil is identified with ignoble individual qualities
(meanness, cruelty, violent temper, avarice, hatefulness, selfishness), with criminal acts (murder,
arson, theft, embezzlement), and with carnal pleasures, particularly sex acts; and not only with
prostitution and perversions, but with sexual satisfaction in general. That is, the author appears to
accept Cal's label of bad for his adolescent desires and impulses, and of
 good for Aron's self-indulgent purity and abstinence, and to accept Abra's use

of good and bad when she says that Aron is too good for her,

that she herself is not good, and that she loves Cal because he isn't good. Of course, this is the
way that young people talk. But Cal and Abra are never allowed to reach a more enlightened
view of good and bad ; Steinbeck is using them to illustrate his

thesis: that there is good and bad in everyone, and that some bad is necessary (that is, it is good
to be bad); and he is understanding good and bad in their terms.

We should notice that in contrast to Steinbeck's treatment of sex in earlier novels, there is no
good or healthy or lusty sexual intercourse in East of Eden. It is always sordid, joyless,
depraved, or mercenary.... This is not at all like the old Steinbeck who celebrated sexuality. It
turns out that Steinbeck's view of good and evil is that of his mythical source: it is the Mosaic
view, which is to say a legal view; particular acts are good or bad, regardless of circumstances.
The earlier Steinbeck saw acts in context and evaluated them accordingly, if he evaluated them at
all, dismissing the religious conception of sin entirely. For a novel on good and

evil, East of Eden strangely lacks ethical insight. It is true, as I have pointed out, that its author
evaluates qualities as well as acts, but they remain abstract. Adam is honest and kind, we are
told; but these are negative virtues in him. In truth, virtue seems to be a function of lack of
energy: pernicious anemia may account for George Hamilton's sinless life, and Adam Trask was
passive, inert, non-resistant. The positive behavior of the good characters is at

best unpleasant. Aron is selfish, inconsiderate, unloving. Adam neglects his boys for twelve
years, never loves anybody except Cathy, and loves her blindly. His rejection of Cal's gift was
brutal, unfeeling, and this after he had begun a cordial relationship with his son. Did Steinbeck,
perhaps, intend to show that these good persons were not what others thought

them to be? Hardly. Lee, his spokesman, said about Adam, I think in him kindness and

conscience are so large that they are almost faults. They trip him up and hinder him.
Like Aron, he is too good; a man needs a little bad in him; you can be good if

you don't have to be perfect, said Lee. We come back to moral confusion, since good,

bad, and perfect are given conventional definitions,

never questioned. If Steinbeck had delved into a father's ambivalent feelings for his sons, his
awareness of favoring one son over the other, his fairness or unfairness to either son, and the
moral and spiritual problems arising from his relation to his sons, then East of Eden might have
been a great novel. As it is, we do not understand Adam's actions; in this novel we cannot resort
to saying that they just happened. (pp. 123 26)

Joseph Wood Krutch's favorable review ended with the questions: Does the fable really

carry the thesis; is the moral implicit in or merely imposed upon the story; has the author
recreated a myth or merely moralized a tale? He did not answer the questions. Our

answer must be, No. The moral is imposed upon the story, which is not a recreated

myth. A reader can enjoy East of Eden for its many fine passages of description and

many pages of skillful narrative; but the myth invoked does not adequately interpret the narrated
events. (pp. 126 27)

Source: Joseph Fontenrose, in his John Steinbeck: An Introduction and Interpretation, Barnes &
Noble, Inc., 1963, 150 p. Reproduced by permission.

Source Database: Contemporary Literary Criticism

PEN (Permanent Entry Number): CLC023DOC0798