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East of Eden
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East of Eden (1952) (edit title/settings)

by John Steinbeck (Author) (edit contributors)

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Set in the rich farmland of California's Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families — the Trasks and the Hamiltons — whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Summary edit see section history

The novel spans multiple generations and brings together some of the most interesting characters ever written.

The novel begins with Adam and Charles Trask as children, competing for the love of their father. Just like in the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, the love of the father is... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

The novel spans multiple generations and brings together some of the most interesting characters ever written.

The novel begins with Adam and Charles Trask as children, competing for the love of their father. Just like in the Biblical tale of Cain and Abel, the love of the father is bestowed more on one son than on the other. As a result, Charles grows up loving and hating Adam. Adam travels the length and breadth of the country, in his army regiment and by himself as a tramp, while Charles is left home to run the family farm. Meanwhile, Catherine Ames - the chilling heroine of the book - grows up in another part of the country. She is a girl whom is missing something in her soul. That something results in her leaving her loving family and running away to become a woman of ill-repute. With the death of Adam and Charles' father, they inherit a large sum of money and tensions slowly run tighter between the two brothers. Cathy eventually becomes involved with Adam, resulting in the two of them leaving Charles for the Salinas Valley in California. There, Adam meets Samuel Hamilton, an Irish who also lives in Salinas with his large family. His jolly brevity and wisdom are felt throughout the book, even when he is not present. Influences and the secret relations of the minds of men are bared in nearly every way. Scandals, theft, death and mistrust give this novel its flavor and impact the characters in beautifully twisted ways. Through it all, the characters learn to better understand themselves and society East of Eden.

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Quotes edit see section history

  • “They say a clean cut heals soonest. There's nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can't see or hear or touch a man, it's best to let him go.”
    Lee
  • “A known enemy is less dangerous, less able to surprise.”
    Narrator; attributed to Cal (Caleb) Trask
  • “Don’t you see? . . . The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you 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.”
  • “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. . . . And just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?”
  • “We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending 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”
  • “My father said she was a strong woman, and I believe a strong woman may be stronger than a man, particularly if she happens to have love in her heart. I guess a loving woman is almost indestructable”
    Lee
  • “Cathy was a liar, but she did not lie the way most children do. Hers was no daydream lying, when the thing imagined is told and, to make it seem more real, told as real. That is just ordinary deviation from external reality. I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of the truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape. I suppose if that definition is strictly held to, then a writer of stories is a liar—if he is financially fortunate.”
    Narratior; in describing Cathy
  • “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.”
  • “You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.”
  • “You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.””
  • “Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.”
  • “When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics and even our religion, so that some Nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God.”
  • “We are capable of many things in all directions, of great virtues and great sins, and who in his mind has not probed the black water. Maybe we all have in us a secret pond where evil and ugly things germinate and grow”
  • “It would be observed if we did not understand both angels and devils since we invented them”
  • “The ways of sin are curious ... I guess if a man had to shuck off everything he had inside and out he'd manege to hide a few little sins somewhere for his own discomfort. They are the last thing we'll give up”
  • “Names are a great mystery. I've never known weather the name is molded by the child or the child changed to fit the name, but you can be sure of this when ever a human has a nick name it is a proof that the name given home was wrong”
  • “It's nice for a mediocre man to know that greatness must be the loneliest state in the world.”
  • “No story has power nor will it last unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us”
  • “people are interested only in themselves, if a story isn't about the hearer he won't listen. A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign isn't interesting, only the deeply personal and familiar.”
  • “An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times.There's a punishment for it”
  • “And I made a promise to myself that I would not consider enjoyment a sin. I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I've never been content to pass a stone without looking under it. And it is a black disappointment to me that I can never see the far side of the moon.”
    Samuel Hamilton
  • “Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!”
  • “In human affairs of danger and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.”
  • “And the books that came into the house, some of them secretly--well, Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.”
  • “And this was the gold from our mining: 'Thou mayest.' 'Thou mayest rule over sin.'”
    Lee
  • “"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 millions 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
  • “There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope--I hope he didn't suffer--and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is. And it is true that there were some people who, when their sorrow was beginning to lose its savor, gently edged it toward pride and felt increasingly important because of their loss.”
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  • 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 against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.
    Highlighted by 489 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 463 Kindle customers
  • 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.
    Highlighted by 422 Kindle customers
  • Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a 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 in the lonely mind of a man.
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  • You can boast about anything if it’s all you have. Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.
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  • In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.
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  • “That’s why I’m talking to you. You are one of the rare people who can separate your observation from your preconception. You see what is, where most people see what they expect.”
    Highlighted by 331 Kindle customers
  • And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.
    Highlighted by 318 Kindle customers
  • Time interval is a strange and contradictory matter in the mind. It would be reasonable to suppose that a routine time or an eventless time would seem interminable. It should be so, but it is not. It is the dull eventless times that have no duration whatever. A time splashed with interest, wounded with tragedy, crevassed with joy—that’s the time that seems long in the memory. And this is right when you think about it. Eventlessness has no posts to drape duration on. From nothing to nothing is no time at all.
    Highlighted by 225 Kindle customers
  • His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: “Timshel!”
    Highlighted by 129 Kindle customers
Show all 37 quotes from this book

First Sentence edit see section history

The Salinas Valley is in Northern California.

Glossary edit see section history

  • Timshel: Hebrew term meaning "thou mayest," which shows that men have the choice to dominate sin.

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 12 of 8 in Vrhunci stoletja. (publisher edition list)
This is book 133 of 200 in BBC 'Big Read' Top 200 Novels, 2003. (authoritative list)
This is book 27 of 37 in First Edition Library. (publisher edition list)
This is book 3 of 11 in Publishers Weekly Bestselling Novels In 1952. (authoritative list)
This is book 40 of 95 in The Art of Manliness' Essential Man’s Library. (authoritative list)
This is book 186 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2011). (authoritative list)
This book is in Steinbeck Essentials. (publisher edition list)
This is book 50 of 70 in Oprah's Book Club. (authoritative list)
This is book 172 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (June 2010). (authoritative list)
This is book 150 of 213 in Best English-Language Fiction of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)
This is book 183 of 194 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2010). (authoritative list)
This book is in Guardian 1000 Novels Everyone Must Read. (authoritative list)
This is book 189 of 195 in Shelfari Most Popular (December 2011). (authoritative list)
This book is in Steinbeck Centennial Editions. (publisher edition list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. John Steinbeck (Author)

Other Contributors:

  1. Paul Buckley (Designer) - Cover Designer
  2. Andrew Davidson (Cover Artist)
  3. Philippe Halsman (Photographer) - Author Photographer
  4. Juš Turk (Translator)
  5. Richard Poe (Narrator)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: The Viking Press
Country: United States
Publication Date: 1952
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 602

Awards edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

  • Library of Congress: PS3537.T3234 E3 2002
  • Dewey: 813'.5

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Reading Level: Adults

This novel contains themes of sexuality, violence and scheming which may not be suitable for children.

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

  • Wikipedia: Learn more about this book at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Movie Connections edit see section history

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