East of Eden by John Steinbeck

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Finished September 3, 2026

So it’s probably no huge secret that I am not a Steinbeck fan. I started this when I was in a bad mood anyway and very soon I was actually pissed off:

I actually loved this one.

Yes, it’s still brutal and depressing and I will not reread it and was glad when it was over. But very early on in the novel I was thinking to myself, “You mean we could have been reading THIS the whole time? I hated everything else and you could write THIS?!”

So let’s get right to it. As a warning, this will likely be a long post because I pulled quite a few quotes. But it’s a long book (600 pages) so I feel like a long post is warranted.

Starting off:

Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without a conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighted, some gear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth.

I loved this not only because it reminded me of one of my favorite kdramas Hello Monster but because I love a genuinely evil villain. And I loved that he pretty much tells us that up front. Cathy is a horrible person. She has no conscience. She is not a product of her environment in that she’s been abused or unloved or any possible million other things. Externally, Cathy had no reason to be awful—she has no sad backstory, no misunderstandings, no “villain origin story.”

Something also amusing to me is that Cathy in Wuthering Heights was also awful in her own way and extremely manipulative. And for a moment I thought, “What is with all these Cathys—” but no sooner than I thought that than I remembered several Cathys in my own life who are all batshit, generally horrible people, non-judgmentally speaking.


This next quote seems really out of the blue compared to the first but the book is written in this interesting way (that would probably have annoyed me in any other book) where there are certain chapters/mini-chapters of Steinbeck kind of…lecturing? Going off on an essay? Just saying shit he wants to say whether it realllly fits context or not?

(I did read in his letters at the end where he explained this to his editor, that these pieces of the book are written for his sons. Well, the whole book was for his sons, but he planned these personal essays from the beginning, apparently.)

Anyway:

And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the ind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I can hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.

I like it.

Since I have so many (too many) quotes, I almost scrapped this but it still makes me laugh:

“He knows more about water than anybody around here. He’s a water witch and a well-digger too. He’ll tell you. He’s put down half the wells in this part of the valley.”

Why did I laugh? Because just hours before, I was hiking around, thinking about the fact we don’t have a well because the well-digger couldn’t find water and wanted to go deeper…because of course that’s more money. We said no. But I’ll always remember dad still believing there was water because the water witch said so. The well-digger was just a greedy bastard.

And I remember learning what a water witch is and I just thought that was the coolest thing.

Enough personal stuff. Now we’re getting to my favorite part/favorite person in the whole book: Lee. I do not have enough words for my love for Lee “the Chinaman.”

Talking (no longer in pidgin) to Samuel Hamilton:

“I think I can guess what your next question is.”

“What?”

“Why am I content to be a servant?”

“How in the world did you know?”

“It seemed to follow.”

“Do you resent the question?”

“Not from you. There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension. 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, an still he 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.”

Samuel leaned toward him, listening intently.

Lee went on, “It’s going to be a relief after that to go back to pidgin.”

I did wonder if Lee is actually Steinbeck’s mouthpiece. Here’s another long one, debating the Cain-Abel story with Adam Trask and Samuel Hamilton:

“I think this is the best-known story in the world because it’s 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? And what do you think of my Oriental patter, Mr. Hamilton? You know I am no more Oriental than you are.”

Samuel had leaned his elbows on the table and his hands covered his eyes and his forehead. “I want to think,” he said. “Damn you, I want to think. I’ll want to take this off alone where i can pick it apart and see. Maybe you’ve tumbled a world for me. And I don’t know what I can build in my world’s place.”

Lee said softly, “Couldn’t a world be built around accepted truth? Couldn’t some pains and insanities be rooted out if the causes were known?”

So I included this, long as it is, because this is really the whole book. About “generational trauma” but not just in family lines but for mankind as a whole. We see the Cain-Abel story repeated multiple times and in multiple ways over the course of East of Eden. It’s kind of fun, because as the reader you see it and go, “Ah! Here we go again!” (As a human, it’s maybe a bit more sad than fun, because you recognize it… “ah. here we go again…”)

This part also resonated with me personally in relation to some of the work I do, which involves drilling down to that “guilty” part of a person, that person living in perpetual fear of rejection, their entire M.O. compensating for feeling unloved.

I think Lee’s got it figured out.

…except maybe for the “the human is the only guilty animal” because I had a corgi that was guilty as hell. You’d see a mess and ask, “Did you do this?” and you’ve never seen a guiltier-acting dog in your life.

The next quote comes from Steinbeck’s more personal side of things, talking about his uncle Tom visiting. And about his sister Mary, who at the time, was hell bent on being a boy (and asked Tom, who she thought knew everything, how to do it):

“I wouldn’t like you to be a boy,” he said.

“Why not?”

“I like you as a girl.”

An idol was crashing in Mary’s temple. “You mean you like girls?”

“Yes, Mary, I like girls very much.”

A look of distaste crossed Mary’s face. If it were true, Tom was a fool. She put on her don’t-give-me-any-of-that-crap tone. “All right,” she said, “but how do I go about being a boy?”

Tom had a good ear. He knew he was reeling down in Mary’s estimation and he wanted her to love him and admire him. At the same time there was a fine steel wire of truthfulness in him that cut off the heads of fast-traveling lies. He looked at Mary’s hair, so light that it was almost white, and braided tight to be out of the way, and dirty at the end of the braid, for Mary wiped her hands on her braid before she made a difficult marble shot. Tom studied her cold and hostile eyes.

“I don’t think you really want to change.”

“I do.”

Tom was wrong—she really did.

“Well,” he said, “you can’t. And someday you’ll be glad.”

“I won’t be glad,” said Mary, and she turned to me and said with frigid contempt, “He doesn’t know!”

Tom winced and I shivered at the immensity of the criminal charge. Mary was braver and more ruthless than most. That’s why she won every marble in Salinas.

Tom said uneasily, “If your mother says it’s all right, I’ll order the oyster loaf this morning and pick it up tonight.”

“I don’t like oyster loaves,” said Mary, and stalked to our bedroom and slammed the door.

Tom looked ruefully after her. “She’s a girl all right,” he said.

The way I laughed.

And there’s this when Samuel visits Adam, who still hasn’t named the twins because he’s borderline catatonic after Cathy fucks him up (which…I have a lot to say about but will probably spare you):

“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as an audience.”

So good.

Okay, so, with the Cain-Abel theme we have “the answer” (which who else but Lee finds) and it lies in the phrase “Thou mayest.” I wasn’t going to include this next bit because it’s long, but since it might be the most important in the whole book, let’s do it:

“After two years we felt that we could approach your sixteen verses of the fourth chapter of Genesis. My old gentlemen felt that these words were very important too—’Thou shalt’ and ‘Do thou.’ And this was the gold from our mining: ‘Thou mayest.’ ‘Thou mayest rule over sin.’ The old gentlemen smiled and nodded and felt the years were well spent. It brought them out of their Chinese shells to, and right now they are studying Greek.”

Samuel said, “It’s a fantastic story. And I’ve tried to follow and maybe I’ve missed somewhere. Why is this word so important?”

Lee’s hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp. “Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can 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. That throws it right back at a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’—it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”

“Yes, I see. I do see. But you do not believe this is divine law. Why do you feel its importance?”

“Ah!” said Lee. “I’ve wanted to tell you this for a long time. I even anticipated your questions and I am well prepared. Any writing which has influenced the thinking and the lives of innumerable people is important. Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, ‘Do thou,’ and throw their weight into obedience. And there are million more who feel predestination in ‘Thou shalt.’ Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But ‘Thou mayest’! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” Lee’s voice was a chant of triumph.

Adam said, “Do you believe that, Lee?”

“Yes I do. Yes I do. It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself in the lap of deity, saying, ‘I couldn’t help it; the way was set.’ But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man. A cat has no choice, a bee must make honey. There is no godliness there. And do you know, those old gentlemen who were sliding gently down to death are too interested to die now?”

Adam said, “Do you mean these Chinese men believe the Old Testament?”

Lee said, “These old men believe a true story, and they know a true story when they hear it. They are critics of truth. They know that these sixteen verses are a history of humankind in any age or culture or race. They do not believe a man writes fifteen and three-quarter verses of truth and tells a lie with one verb. Confucius tells men how they should live to have good and successful lives. But this—this is a ladder to climb to the stars.” Lee’s eyes shone. “You can never lose that. It cuts the feet from under weakness and cowardliness and laziness.”

Adam said, “I don’t see how you could cook and raise the boys and take care of me and still do all this.”

“Neither do I,” said Lee. “But I take my two pipes in the afternoon, no more and no less, like the elders. And I feel that I am a man. And I feel that a man is a very important thing—maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.’”

That right there is the book. It’s great.

Now, on a lighter note, the twins (who did finally get named after a year, thanks to Samuel laying into Adam) grow up to age eleven-ish and meet Abra:

“I don’t believe you’re twins,” she said. “You don’t look alike.”

“We are too,” said Cal.

“We are too,” said Aron.

“Some twins don’t look alike,” Cal insisted.

“Lots of them don’t,” Aron said. “Lee told us how it is. If the lady has one egg, the twins look alike. If she has two eggs, they don’t.”

“We’re two eggs,” said Cal.

Abra smiled with the amusement at the myths of these country boys. “Eggs,” she said. “Ho! Eggs.” She didn’t say it loudly or harshly, but Lee’s theory tottered and swayed and then she brought it crashing down. “Which one of you is fried?” she asked. “And which one is poached?”

The boys exchanged uneasy glances. It was their first experience with the inexorable logic of women, which is overwhelming even, or perhaps especially, when it is wrong.

hahahaha
I thought Abra was a little shit at first (and really, she kind of was) but I guess she grew on me a bit. If Lee likes her then she can’t be all bad.

Okay, so back to Steinbeck family history and we have Dessie (who is dying and no one knows it except perhaps for her) who wants to move back to the ranch and live with her brother Tom. Brother Will is totally against it:

“I don’t want you to go.”

“Let me decide,” she said softly. “I’ve lost something. I want to try to find it again.”

“You’re talking foolish.”

She came around the table and put her arms around his neck. “Dear brother,” she said, “please let me decide.”

That part stuck out to me especially after the whole ‘thou mayest’ speech and the importance of choice. Whether for right or wrong, better or worse, Dessie is asking Will to let her choose. “Please let me decide.”

More Steinbeck essay:

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.

So, Cal and Aron grow up a bit and Lee thinks it’s finally time for him to quit being a servant and go and open his bookstore in San Francisco like he’s always wanted. The boys take it way better than Adam did:

“I wonder why he went away?” Cal asked.

“He’s talked about going before.”

“What do you supposed he’ll do without us?”

“I don’t know. I bet he comes back,” Aron said.

“How do you mean? Father said he was going to start a bookstore. That’s funny. A Chinese bookstore.”

“He’ll come back,” said Aron. “He’ll get lonesome for us. You’ll see.”

I snorted and thought, “he’s probably glad to be rid of you little shits” but no. Lee lasted like a month before he was back:

Adam said, “When do you think you’ll get around to telling me what happened to you?”

“Nothing happened to me,” said Lee. “I got lonesome. That’s all. Isn’t that enough?”

“How about your bookstore?”

“I don’t want a bookstore. I think I knew it before I got on the train, but I took all this time to make sure.”

“Then there’s your last dream gone.”

“Good riddance.” Lee seemed on the verge of hysteria. “Missy Tlask, Chinese boy sink gung get dlunk.”

Adam was alarmed. “What’s the matter with you anyway?”

Lee lifted the bottle to his lips and took a deep hot drink and panted the fumes out of his burning throat. “Adam,” he said, “I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I’ve never been so goddam lonesome in my life.”

…have I said that Lee is the best character? Even Adam finally fucking realized it:

A hissing sound came from the kitchen. Lee said, “The goddam giblets are boiling over,” and he bolted through the door.

Adam gazed after him affectionately. “What a good man! What a great friend!”

He is a good man and a great friend! And I am absolutely going to leave it at that and not taint this beautiful familial friendship with my fujoshi vision and I absolutely refuse to write East of Eden fanfic

From not-fanfic to heartbreak, I give you:

Adam asked, “Do you know where your brother is?”

“No, I don’t,” said Cal.

“Weren’t you with him at all?”

“No.”

“He hasn’t been home for two nights. Where is he?”

“How do I know?” said Cal. “Am I supposed to look after him?”

Which gave me goosebumps because now kick us back to Cain & Abel and Samuel reading the Bible:

“‘And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him. And the Lord said unto Cain, “Where is Abel thy brother?” And he said, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?”[…]’”

Seriously. So fun. I’m not even being sarcastic, I love shit like this.

Oh shit, more Lee, now talking to Cal, trying to fish this kid back from the brink:

He went on, “I had to find out my stupidities for myself. These were my stupidities: I thought the good are destroyed while the evil survive and prosper.

“I thought that once an angry and disgusted God poured molten fire from a crucible to destroy or purify his little handiwork of mud.

“I thought I had inherited both the scars of the fire and the impurities which made the fire necessary—all inherited, I thought. All inherited. Do you feel that way?”

“I think so,” said Cal.

“I don’t know,” Abra said.

Lee shook his head. “That isn’t good enough. That isn’t good enough thinking. Maybe—” And he was silent.

Cal felt the heat of the liquor in his stomach. “Maybe what, Lee?”

“Maybe you’ll come to know that every man in every generation is refired. Does a craftsman, even in his old age, lose his hunger to make a perfect cup—thin, strong, translucent?” He held his cup to the light. “All impurities burned out and ready for a glorious flux, and for that —more fire. And then either the slag heap, or, perhaps what no one in the world ever quite gives up, perfection.” He drained his cup and he said loudly, “Cal, listen to me. Can you think that whatever made us—would stop trying?”

LEE! SO GOOD!

:Okay, that is all I have for the novel itself. As you can tell, I loved the spirituality of it. Yeah, it was depressing as hell. There were a few personal quotes in there that ultimately felt too personal after all so I left them out. I loved the structure and the tale and the cycles of it all. The theme of choice. Because even though yes, Cal made a choice to deliberately harm his brother, Aron then made a choice to deliberately harm himself. Adam, an otherwise smart guy, knew mistakes and misconceptions his father had made with him and his own brother—knew that fear of rejection and craving their father’s love made his brother Charles (much of) the way he was. And yet Adam did the same damn thing with his boys! Which unfortunately is the most realistic, saddest thing.

Even Cathy, that evil bitch, was great in her fucked-up-ness.

And everyone—Cal, Charles, Abra, whoever—had their skin-crawling moments then would turn around and show they weren’t all bad. At any moment, they could choose.

Ugh, there’s more I could say—about Aron’s rigidity, about Aron and Adam making the same “mistake” in projecting the person they wanted to love, creating a perfect wife that was not the girl in front of them, about how those two rigid men in their absolute beliefs then, rather than bend, utterly broke… Too much to say!

So instead let me go to Steinbeck’s letters at the end where I found two of my favorite things, and yes they apply to me personally:

You know I am really stupid. For years I have looked for the perfect pencil. I have found very good ones but never the perfect one. And all the time it was not the pencils but me. A pencil that is all right some days is no good another day.

I’ve tried explaining this is why I have 10+ keyboards…

And perhaps the most relatable, enjoyable, wonderful thing in the entire book is in these letters to Steinbeck’s editor which technically aren’t even part of the book:

And you know of course that many times before I finish this book I shall hate it with a deadly hatred. I shall detest the day when I started it. It will seem the poorest piece of crap that was ever set down. This feeling will reach a fine peak on about the 500th page. Once I pass that I will continue to work in a state of shock. And when it is done I will be lost for a long time.

I laughed so hard.

Rating: I can’t believe I loved a Steinbeck novel, what the hell