East of Eden

Chapters 5 through 11 continue to explore the issues of good versus evil, self-reliance versus helplessness, and toxic desires. The concept of self-reliance is important to the American psyche and to Steinbeck’s novel. Individuality marks the Hamilton children, an allusion to the singularity of the American dream. The Hamiltons are a family that sticks together but values each member’s unique talents and journeys. The Hamilton family embodies an ideal balance of hard work, ambition, and family. Although the Hamiltons don’t yet factor heavily into the novel’s overall narrative, Steinbeck uses them to present a juxtaposition to the Trasks and thereby emphasize the Trask family’s toxic nature.

Charles and Adam are alone yet together in a way that provides tension to both their lives. When Adam finally makes his way back to Connecticut, the brothers are hopeful that they’ll find company in one another. However, they find their differences too antagonistic and the close quarters too confining:

Two men alone are constantly on the verge of fighting, and they know it. Adam Trask had not been home long before the tensions began to build up. The brothers saw too much of each other and not enough of anyone else (99).

The issue isn’t necessarily that the two men are different and harbor resentment from their pasts but rather that without being able to engage with a larger community, they’re forced to turn on either one another or themselves. Their conflict captures the ethos of late 19th-century America: Cities were undergoing an industrial boom, but the countryside was still either unsettled or sparsely populated by people who toiled endlessly just to make it to the next day. Although American culture celebrates hard work and personal drive, these values can provide the foundation for unhappiness and a feeling of being stuck.

Because Adam and Charles serve as allegories for good and evil, Steinbeck forces them together to emphasize the push-and-pull nature of this dichotomy. Adam and Charles aren’t perfect allegories because Charles is often kind and certainly not as shockingly evil as Cathy. Meanwhile, Adam may have a gentler spirit, but he can be lazy and driftless so is not the paradigm for goodness. In Chapter 7, Steinbeck shifts their power dynamics to demonstrate the complexity of the issue of good versus evil. Charles is responsible and cares deeply for his brother, while Adam is flippant about his home and unknowingly takes advantage of Charles’s hard work and generosity. The farm is essentially Charles’s because he reaps and sows it, while Adam remains stuck in his half-baked goals. Cyrus’s death further complicates their dynamic, as Adam is relieved that his father is dead, while Charles mourns the loss of both his father and the relationship with Cyrus he never had but always wanted. Such an attitude makes Charles a more empathetic character. Here, Steinbeck distorts the allegory to Cain and Abel. In the Bible, Abel is full of love for his God, which is why he’s the favored one. However, in East of Eden, it’s the “Cain” figure (Charles) who proves to be full of gratitude for God’s land and respect for the Father.

The brothers’ conflict enables Cathy to easily take advantage of Adam. When Adam blindly takes her in and marries her, Steinbeck suggests that although he’s kind in extending care to Cathy, that “goodness” is also his blind spot, a weakness akin to the tragic hero in Greek mythology, in which the hero’s greatest strength (or hubris) is also his doom. Still, Steinbeck chooses to play with the dichotomy of good and evil by subverting the allegory of the two brothers. A farming accident leaves Charles with a dark scar on his forehead—an allusion to the scar of Cain, the curse of sinful men. While the scar is a reminder that Charles symbolizes Cain, Charles wants to be good—and often acts good in his adult life. In addition, Charles is an excellent farmer, which evokes an image of Eden.

The introduction of Cathy is crucial to tempering Charles’s characterization as Cain-like: While Steinbeck complicates the good-versus-evil juxtaposition in Adam and Charles, Cathy is truly devilish. The novel characterizes her as born so inherently bad that she lacks a moral compass—she has no ability to understand how abnormally evil she is. An expert manipulator, she seduces men for security and kills her own parents to be rid of them. In the face of this antagonist, Charles suddenly appears quite good. Charles knows that Cathy will ruin Adam’s life, and her arrival at their farm is an enormous disruption in the brothers’ relationship. Therefore, Cathy is a parallel to the serpent (Satan) who invades Eden (the Trask farm in Connecticut) and takes advantage of Adam, who in this allegory now acts as Eve eating from the forbidden Tree of Knowledge. Although Charles sleeps with Cathy, it seems that he does so with clarity about her depth of evil. Although she’s incapable of love or even basic sympathy, her attraction to Charles implies a certain respect or understanding. Their sexual connection connotes an acknowledgement between the two: Cathy sees Charles for who he is, and Charles sees Cathy for who she is.

The major question that Steinbeck explores in Part 1 is whether people are truly born evil and whether they can change. The narrative first presents Charles as having an evilness in him, yet he has many redeeming kindnesses in his character too, and he easily recognizes objective morality. This raises the question of whether Charles has grown out of an adolescent lack of anger control or whether his temper may flare up again.