Abandoned by Booklikes

And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the LORD.
And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground.
And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the LORD. And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the LORD had respect unto Abel and to his offering:
But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect.
And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell.
And the LORD said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen?
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.
And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him.
And the LORD said unto Cain, Where [is] Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: [Am] I my brother's keeper?
Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, [that] every one that findeth me shall slay me.
And the LORD said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the LORD set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him.
And Cain went out from the presence of the LORD, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

To understand this book, one would have to have read about Cain and Abel in the Bible. I have always been fascinated with this story when I used to go to Sunday school. Maybe because just like the character of Samuel Hamilton, I always thought that poor Cain who just wanted to be praised by the Lord like his brother, would not have done what he did unless he felt as if he were loved as well.

And I also believe that just like what the character of Lee says, to use what someone else does as an excuse to do harm to others is a weak and cowardly thing. This book really is about men overcoming their knee jerk need to cause harm or to sin onto someone else because of their pain of not being loved by their fathers.

I really can't point to one person as the main character in this book. We get an omnipotent narrator who we then find is an offspring of one of the characters in this book. It takes some time, but we find out that the narrator is a boy/man and is named John. I found out afterwards that the character of John is supposed to represent John Steinbeck himself.

Even though there were so many characters in East of Eden I could actually describe each and every one of them to you. That is how well John Steinbeck goes about setting up these characters and showing how these two families ended up becoming entwined with one another over the years.

The book starts right after the Civil War where we follow Cyrus Task after he returns home to Connecticut after the war. Cyrus first wife delivers their son Adam and after she passes away, Cyrus marries again and his second wife bears him a son named Charles. We find out about Adam and Charles's childhood and how though Charles is smarter, tougher, that for some reason Cyrus seems to love Adam more.

Then we go to the Hamilton family that lives in Salinas Valley, California. We then transition to the Hamilton family and find out about Samuel and Liza Hamilton and their 9 children. Though Samuel is rich in family and friends, he is poor. He has pie in the sky dreams and no matter what he does cannot seem to get ahead.

Other important characters in this book are Cathy Ames, Adam's two twin boys, Aron and Caleb (Cal), Lee, a manservant working for Adam, and Abra a childhood friend of Aron and Cal.

I can honestly say that no character besides the character of It in Stephen King's book, It, has scared me as much as Cathy Ames did in this book. Kudos to John Steinbeck for writing someone like this. I often have said that what is truly scary to me are books that show how horrible human beings can be to each other. I think in the end though that the character of Cathy seems to change slightly and that seemed to me to not be realistic. Everything up until then showed what a cold person she was, it just seemed out of character for her to all of a sudden do something that in the end could be considered a "good thing".

The character of Adam I found to be super frustrating from beginning to end. I went from sympathy, pity to finally annoyance with him by the end of the book. That said, I loved the discussions that he had with Samuel and Lee. The discussion the trio has about Cain and Abel and what does it mean in the Bible with regards to what happened to Cain were some of my favorite parts of this book. I loved the interpretation of Lee about how thou mayest (or timshel) means that it was up to Cain to be a better man, to overcome his own nature and be forgiven for what he had done. And that one cannot use the excuse of who your mother/father is for why you do the things that you do.

Cal ended up being my favorite character. He to a lesser extent is a more thoughtful and loving version of his Uncle Charles. To read about his struggle to not do horrible things because he was angry at his father's lack of affection made me sympathize with him in a way that I could not do with Adam.

Aron ended up bugging me in the same way that Adam did. Both of these men were dreamers and ended up ignoring anything that was bad or unpleasant. They both just did not see people for who they were and because of that, I think caused a lot of unnecessary pain to everyone that was around them.

The pacing of the book seems to be off here and there though. I think that is because some of the asides to the Hamilton family didn't really work everywhere. Everything with Samuel, Lee, and Adam I enjoyed. It just seemed at times when we went to explore some of the other Hamilton family members that the book started to feel a bit too long to me. For example, we spent a lot of time on Tom and Dessie Hamilton and I honestly think that there was no need to include them as much as Steinbeck did in this book. In the end there seemed to be an abundance of Hamiltons and other family members in this book. If they were not connected to the Trask family at all I found myself getting slightly bored with them.

The writing was excellent. The beginning of this book where Steinbeck describes Salinas Valley was beautiful. I felt as if I could see and smell everything that he was describing.

The ending leaves the reader with a sense of hope. Hope that even if we are not our parents favorite, or even if our parents do a horrible and awful thing, that we are still our own persons.