Dear Pat,
You came upon me carving some kind of little figure out of wood and you said, "Why don't you make something for me."
I asked you what you wanted, and you said, "A box."
"What for?"
"To put things in."
"What things?"
"Whatever you have," you said.
Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts - the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation.
And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you.
And still the box is not full.
The book meanders through the lives of the Hamilton and Trask families as they move west to California and find their successes and failures there. The Trask family eventually becomes the main focus of the story, in particular Adam and his twin sons, Aron and Caleb (Cal). In a key chapter in the book, Adam, his servant Lee, and neighbor Samuel Hamilton sit around and try to decide on names for Adam's boys. (Adam's wife is no longer in the picture after shooting him and running away to become a prostitute. She is a psychopath and, well, just read the book.) They get to discussing the first brothers, Cain and Abel, and Lee, a Chinese servant, says that he has been studying this story and has found something illuminating. Timshel. It is the Hebrew word used in Genesis 4:7 where the Lord, speaking to Cain, says, "If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him." Timshel is used in that last phrase for shalt, "and thou shalt rule over him." Timshel means "thou mayest." What does it all mean? It means that a person is neither marked for a happy life nor condemned to one of misery, but that each person has the ability to choice how their life will be. Timshel plays itself out in the lives of Adam's two children, Aron and Cal.
Aron is the angel-face boy whom everyone adores, but wants life to occur only has he has dreamed it in his head - beautiful and perfect. Cal, on the other hand, is secretive, never letting people get close to him. He sees himself as the less-loved child and continually attempts to earn the love of his father and friends. However, he also harbors resentment against Aron and does what he can, with varying success, to collapse the walls of the world Aron has built up.
If you have not figured it out by now, this is a difficult book to give a quick summation to. In part because there is no apex of action; no culminating moment the whole book as led to, at least not in the way most books culminate. It is the story of a new land, a new town, new families. A coming of age for a family, a state, and a country. It is about the relationships between fathers and sons, brothers, mothers and sons. And it is beautiful.
This one is definitely on my list as a great American novel. The stories in it are universal and true for America. I am not sure how the book has impacted American society. Apparently, as I just learned while checking it out on Amazon, that it was an Oprah's Book Club pick, so there is that. I cannot say that it is a story echoed in other novels or movies, because East of Eden itself is a story retold from the Bible. A modern-day Cain and Abel. So maybe all stories since 1952 that reimagine Cain and Abel should also say they reimagined Aron and Cal. In any case, this book is a masterpiece and one Steinbeck had a right to be proud of. I look forward to reading more of his books to see how they measure up.
Great American Novel Challenge Booklist:
July 2009: Absalom, Absalom! - William Faulkner, publ. 1936
August 2009: Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry, publ. 1985
September 2009: Moby Dick - Herman Melville, publ. 1851
October 2009: For Whom the Bell Tolls - Ernest Hemingway, publ. 1940
November 2009: Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston, publ.1937
December 2009: The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath, publ. 1963
January 2010: Rabbit, Run - John Updike, publ. 1960
3 comments:
This sounds really good - I'll have to add it to my list! I've read Grapes of Wrath and Of Mice and Men but this sounds like another winner from Steinbeck!
I liked this book too. I think I liked it mostly because it reads like a family history of sorts. I love family histories! It's a good narrative with a family skeleton or two in the closet.
Yes, it definitely reads like a detailed family history, but in the best way imaginable.
After GANC is over, I hope to read Grapes of Wrath. I read The Pearl in middle school and all I can remember was the teacher stressing the symbolism, so the story was lost because every color, tree, flower and event was up for consideration as a symbol to something else.
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