John Steinbeck--East of Eden

Where do you put your hands on a huge, sprawling novel like this in order to get a hold of the entirety of the thing? Oprah's favorite Steinbeck novel, East of Eden, covers some sixty years, the breadth of North America, and a host of characters, including three generations of one family and two of another. Whose novel is this? The most obvious answer to this question is that the book belongs to Adam Trask, the character whose life is covered in the most completeness and with whose death the narration ends. Yet Adam does not appear in the story, in Connecticut at that, until two chapters have passed by, focusing on the Hamiltons and the Salinas Valley of California.
Unlike many other stories, I believe that the "Whose story is it?" approach is wrong-headed when it comes to East of Eden. To ask this question of this novel would be like asking whose story is Genesis? Does Genesis belong to Adam? Noah? Abraham? Issac? Jacob? Joseph? Certainly Joseph can lay claim to a bigger share of chapters than any of the other patriarchs, but does that mean Genesis is his story? I don't choose Genesis lightly, of course, since Steinbeck draws heavily on the narratives of Genesis, especially the Cain and Abel story and the story of the Fall, in order to create his novel. The title comes from Genesis 3:24, in the aftermath of the Fall and the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. The ostensible main character is Adam. Two pairs of brothers, Charles and Adam Trask in the book's second generation and Cal and Aron Trask in the third, appear to mirror Cain and Abel. Steinbeck argues "I believe there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us . . . . Humans are caught . . . in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence."
East of Eden must not be read as a sort of allegory for the primeval history. Adam cannot, in such a reading, be simultaneously the original Adam and Abel. Adam Trask, I should add, does not die at the hand of his C-named brother, Charles, although Charles does attempt to kill Adam early on. The second C-brother, Cal does bring about the death of his brother, but he does so indirectly. And if we try to fit all the characters into a Genesis mold, what on earth are we to do with Cathy/Kate? She's a long way from Eve, and closer to the Serpent than any other character in the book.
This book, it has been suggested by some clever commentator, takes the form of a Midrash on the early chapters of Genesis. A Midrash is a form of peculiarly Jewish commentary on the Scripture, quite far removed from the typical Bible Commentary. The Midrash form, especially in its Aggadic or non-legal aspects, is composed of analogies, stories, folklore, and anecdotes. Many of Jesus' parables might be taken as Midrashim (the plural form of Midrash).
Clearly, Steinbeck finds special significance in a single word to be found in the Biblical text, the word rendered as "thou shalt rule over him [sin]" in the King James Version. He transliterates it as timshel and prefers a translation of "thou mayest." Since this word occupies a spot in the next to last sentence in the book and dominates two lengthy philosophical asides in the middle of the tale, I think a person can profitably focus on it to understand this novel.
In one way of thinking, every significant character in this novel is Cain and Abel at the same time. Some characters are more Abel-like, yet even they are hardly perfect. Adam, for example, is clearly to be seen as a more virtuous character than his brother Charles, yet he, like Cain, winds up "a restless wanderer on the earth" early in the story as he first re-enlists in the army and then delays in various ways his return home.
The more Cain-like characters are not without redeeming characteristics. Charles possesses more compunction regarding the source of their father's wealth than does Adam. Cal, except for his father's rejection, would not have led Aron to his death. Even the thoroughly evil Kate seems to have a dram of goodness or at least awareness of her evil nature when confronted with her son Aron. Why does Kate commit suicide? She has apparently seen through the attempts of her henchman Joe to mislead her. While she has cause to worry that her murder of Faye will be discovered all these years later, whatever threat stands against her remains several moves away. Her suicide seems motivated by something else, perhaps awareness of her own fallen nature.
In the end, I would argue that Steinbeck paints a world filled with people caught in a net of good and evil. All of us, he would suggest, have different measures of good and evil. Some of us, like Kate, possess mostly evil, while some, like Adam, possess mostly good. All of us, however, Steinbeck asserts, may opt to shift this balance. While we cannot utterly banish the good or the evil, we can shift the ratio and thus choose good versus evil.
A Christian reading of this novel, however, recognizes the insufficiency in Steinbeck's vision. True to a point--in fact true through and through--Steinbeck's view suggests that we can opt to do less evil and more good, but holds out no hope for the banishment of evil. Steinbeck's view leaves us with a variety of wandering, shiftless characters. Adam squanders a huge portion of his life as a result of his own foolishness. Aron dies. Cal despairs. Charles withdraws further and further into himself. Lee fails to launch into a life of his own. Kate harms everyone with whom she comes in contact, even spreading damage after her death.
Steinbeck's world, then, is a Christ-less world, a hopeless world. Although he got many things right in these pages, he left the one great thing unsaid. This, to my mind, makes all the difference.