East of Eden
John Steinbeck
If you google cigarroomofbooks you will find the bibliography to this review. It contains many metaphors that accent this book. Steinbeck challenges Hugo on that score.
At the core of Steinbeck's message is what differentiates us form animals is choice. Its about timshel. It root comes from the Bible in the story of Cain and Able. Timshel is about God blessing man with free will. In animals a wolf thou will choose. In humans, man may choose. There are a couple of prime characters who make a choice in marriage where virtue becomes yet a gain in a classic novel the center theme. Adam Trask represents `thou mayest. Adam Trask represents a character of blind virtue. Cathy, later Kate represents a monstrous life I `thou will'.
Adam begins his adult life going against his core character to be a sensitive creative person and obeying his father's orders by becoming a military man. After years of going against the grain in the military, he is discharged only to wonder lost, broke and homeless; the life of a Hobo across the country of the late 1800's. He needed to find himself. He climbs out of this abyss of life to take up his place in his brother's home in Connecticut. The living arrangements were doomed from the beginning as the two brothers though raised by the same military man, were total opposites.
In the course of Adam's sad beginning Cathy as she was called in the beginning of the book had also a dismal start. She and Adam were on a collision course. Steinbeck introduces her character in the following way. "I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies, some born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins.
And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but there is a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?"
Notice Steinbeck forms this thesis with question marks. He goes on to discuss the ramifications of monsters as follows. "Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may he be born without kindness or the potential of 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. Some times 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." This question I think captured the attention of millions who have read this book. So I now know I am not alone in dealing with such a monster. This book speaks to our humanity on the question of virtue and how only human beings are challenged with the choice to be virtuous or not. A dog is loyal to a cruel master. A woman can sell out her virtue to a man who has blessed her with mere material kindness.
While there are many sub-story lines in the book that raise the question of choice, Cathy who turns to a prostitute who becomes Kate the madam of a brothel is the thread that Steinbeck pulls through the book in an attempt to look at choice, virtue and a monster. Was Cathy born a monster? Or was she born into a monstrous world? Steinbeck is not real clear in answering the fist question, but I think he is saying that she was born a monster and therefore created a monstrous life for herself. To the second question her early life was not a bed of roses. She found herself in desperate situations making desperate choices. Early on she learned to utilize her female assets to raise her prospects in living comfort. Her choices through the book were not trivial or an act of survival, but rather brutal as an act of vengeance.
Through the twists and turns of revenge drama, Cathy finds herself left for dead at the hand of one of her victims on the side of the road. Her evil deeds had caught up with her. Adam Trask, who had really not found himself yet, discovers her and brings her home to nurture her back to life. In the course of his service he began to let pity paint her as a virtuous woman who met with a bad turn of fate. He blinded himself from her monstrous nature. He fell in love with her and married her. I know this mistake. She conceded to marriage as a temporary escape root to the legal situation she may have been facing. Marrying Adam and moving west to California was a new lease on life, at Adam's expense. There was no love in her heart. In fact on their wedding night, she bedded down with Adam, and then after he fell asleep she went into his brother's room, woke him up and bedded down with him too. I know women, one in particular capable of this, leading me to draw a conclusion as to why the book was popular. I sure wished I had read this book 20 years ago.
Cathy the prostitute on the lamb, rather than assume the loving environment of family and a good husband, shoots Adam in the shoulder and leaves him for dead as she heads not too far down the road and takes a job turning tricks in a brothel. This goes to Stienbeck's monster theory. Cathy now Kate, is back in her comfort zone of virtue-less deceit. She knows no other life. She cannot make a better choice, as it is foreign to her thinking. Eventually her high marks with the Madame of the brothel earn her the opportunity to murder her in a very discrete way. So now she, as Madame of the brothel has control of all the city leaders who have surrendered their virtue to her house. I am amazed at the result on society when virtue is surrendered.
She is in control of everything...until time's two edge sword cuts her to shreds. As it runs out on her where people discover her crimes, her deteriorating health makes life ... living painful. She like Anna Karenina commits suicide. So Steinbeck, like Tolstoy, leaves it for the reader to interpret their allegoric answer. If the higher being, human though it may be, is the sole domain of choice; did Kate...Anna with loss of virtue exercise choice, or were they monsters out of control? Both East of Edin and Anna Karenin ended with the husband completing his life in peace. Personally, after my twenty year dance with the devils daughter, I look forward to the same.
The distinct moral message from Steinbeck: Is presented in a two page dissertation by Steinbeck in Chapter 13: Here is an excerpt: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in Mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies n the lonely mind of man.
And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. My disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammer blows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, and drugged. It is sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
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 mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight for against: any religion or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand what a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is the one thing that can by inspection destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this and I 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.
In conjunction of the free mind Steinbeck brings in the dichotomy of Cain and Able. Cathy's twin sons, one by Adam and one by his brother, a double untundered construct all by itself that takes on the theme of Cain and Able from two perspectives. Yes Cathy had sex with both brothers in the same night. Neither ever knew of the other's pleasure. In the case of Adam and his brother; Adam is introverted and introspective. His brother is egotistical and reactive. Adam's brother was resentful and did not treat Adam kindly. He beat him once to near death out of jealousy. A parallel is drawn between Adam's sons. As obscure it may seem, there is a progression in the form of evolution of man away from violence.
Of Adam's sons the introspective brother finds a life in religion and love for a girl. He surrounds himself with aspects of society that are structured and safe. The other brother was a free thinking maverick, always testing the fringes of acceptable society. It was the maverick who found the courage to discover the truth about his prostitute mother Cathy. Steinbeck draws a colorful picture of the mind of children at a loss for their mother, and their discovery of her evilness. However, unlike his father's sibling rivalry situation, the maverick loved his socially bound brother and would do anything to protect him. Finally the legacy of Cain and Able is NOT carried forward.
In my view, children inherit their moral personification of character from their parents. God help them!!!! It's up to a parent to recognize their own flaws and eradicate them in front of their children. In absence of this too often found neglect of obligation, it is up to children to see the flaw and also make changes where the parent fails. This comes from free thinking; creating the space for children to grow up in a peaceful setting and giving them the confidence to believe in themselves...evolve the human spirit This goes to Steinbeck's opening statement: Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of man. Amidst my own mistakes in life I strive to meet the lofty goal of one spirit with my children and openly pursue the evolution of One spirit of souls with them. I do it privately; Steinbeck makes a profound statement for millions of readers.
If you google cigarroomofbooks you will find the bibliography to this review. It contains many metaphors that accent this book. Steinbeck challenges Hugo on that score.
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