Literature

«East of Eden», a story of souls, families and America

3 reading minutes

written by Loris S. Musumeci · August 18, 2020 · 0 comment

«East of Eden,» a story of souls, families, and America

Les bouquins du mardi - The retrospective - Loris S. Musumeci

A look back at a masterly work that holds its place among the masterpieces of twentieth-century literature.^th century. After his two other major works Of mice and men (1937) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), American author John Steinbeck returned to the literary scene in a big way with East of Eden in 1952, his most accomplished and complete novel, which won him the Noble Prize for Literature ten years later.

When Steinbeck sent the manuscript of this book to his publisher, Pascal Covici, he included a short note in which he compared this literary work to a piece of craftsmanship—a wooden box.

«Here is your box. I’ve put almost everything I have in it, and it’s still not full. Pain and passion are in there, the good days and the bad, the bad thoughts as well as the good, the pleasure of crafting and some despair, and the indescribable joy of creating.»

The box may not have been full; yet that does not prevent the novel from delving into the fullness of human reality. The lives of men, the lives of women, in all their complexity. The lives of sons, the lives of fathers, the lives of brothers in their tragedy, as it has always been. Virtuous feelings, the anguish of vice, the family legacy of suffering—but also that of simple joys—as well as the inevitability whose workings no one understands, all shape the characters who bring this story to life, set «East of Eden.».

Two families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks; three generations witnessing the changing world during the second half of the 19th century^th the 19th century and the dawn of the 20th^th from the 19th century through the Great War; and a place—the Salinas Valley in Northern California. The narrator is a descendant of the Hamilton family, to which Steinbeck himself was also related through his maternal grandfather. He recounts, in turn, the lives of the Hamiltons—from their emigration from Northern Ireland to the lands of California, tilled with dreams of a better future and the sweat of a hard but dignified present— and the life of Trask, from the physical and mental wounds of a military father who does everything for his sons—except manage to show them a little love.

And then the families meet, only to realize that despite the different paths they’ve taken, they are alike. Families are fueled by the best and worst in human nature. Steinbeck paints a portrait of two families, telling the story of America, telling the story of the human soul, all the way back to biblical times. Ever since Cain felt jealousy toward his brother Abel, ever since he killed him, ever since he went to live east of Eden—to try for a fresh start.

«Cain went away from the presence of the Lord and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden.» Gen. 4:16

God forgives, if repentance is sincere. In His image, the Trasks and the Hamiltons also strive to forgive, when it is still possible, when blood has not yet been shed. And even at that moment, when it is already «too late,» there remains a word, a glance that can save a damned soul from a life of damnation.