The Hereditary Evil In East Of Eden

The presence of the evil inside the man seems to be one of the most excruciating things for us ever. Everybody knows that from the youth of his life. And the way of facing it tormented the human being more then every other thing in the world. Religions, philosophies, the arts, and any other positive intellectual activity we know, have tried to attenuate this dusky presence. The struggle between good and evil, we can say it, made us to be what we are today. Why intellectual? Because only the mind can bear the fight with the evil inside us; this is the weapon. If we loose it we are certainly overcome. In the thinking of the oriental holy parents of the Christianity, mind isnt only the weapon, but the field of the struggle too. Loosing this field, you have to get ready for loosing the soul. So it is a matter of surviving and salvation, a capital matter for every living person.

The literature, and, generally the culture, couldnt avoid the meet with these debates about the limits and the possibilities of the human race in relation with the aggression that the evil exerts upon us. And of course, Dostoievsky is maybe the most important example of an author who dedicated all his work and life in understanding as better as possible these things. In fact, he opened many and very important doors for the approach of this side of literature. His masterpiece appeared in 1880: The Brothers Karamazov. And this book showed us the best, until he, the terrifying dualistic fight in our inner. Other very lucid writers which dealt with this item in the XXth century literature: Camus, Sartre more sceptic these two-, W. Faulkner, ONeill, etc. John Steinbeck gave his best novel in 1939: The Grapes of Wrath. Here Peter B. High observed that Steinbeck is really telling the story of a great national tragedy through the experience of that one family.1 The Joads, a family of farmers. Like Dos Pasos, Steinbeck tried to illustrate national spirit in his books, and that in an honest way, with the good and the wrong that is to be finding there. Also, Peter B. High remarked at Steinbeck the use of naturalistic techniques and vision in order to reveal the destructive forces in the human inner: fear, sex, hunger, etc. 2 As we can see so far, John Steinbeck is driven of big ambitions: wanting to paint the national spirit he has the sense of the panoramic, and aiming subjects like the fear, the sexual lust and some other evils representatives, he really goes involved in the central problems of the human being. East of Eden appeared in 1952 and had big success at the reader public but less at criticism. It seems like the very obviously references at biblical myths werent well appreciated. Lets see it straight: James Joyces Ulysses has appeared for thirty years ago, in 1922. This novel has consecrated the type of the mythological modern novel. And here Joyce took a well thought distance of mythical sub layer, and that was the big secret in the reissue in a modern vision, in blackout, of the old myths. But still, Steinbeck has his importance, especially in the American literature. He had to continue a tradition: that religious discomposure that puritans have introduced it in the American literature, and which comes up in ONeills theatre, but before him at N. Hawthorne, H. Melville here in a polemical sense before the religious restrictions and hypocrisy -, and later in W. Faulkners novels and of course, in other works.

Like in The Grapes of Wrath, here in East of Eden a family is in the middle of the authors attention too. The Trasks represents the centre of the plot, even if the author is following the destiny of two other families: The Hamiltons and Cathy Ames family. These last two families, through their presence, minutely presented by author, give the measure of the idea of complexity of lifes relationships. Cyrus Trask had two wives that gave him, each of them, a boy: from the first one who, important to say in respect with the hereditary problem, killed herself loosing her mind came Adam, and from the second wife, the very young Alice: Charles. Cyrus had lost his foot in the first battle he participated in the Civil War; but still he remained with very big nostalgia and passion for military organisation. The organisation of his family it will be a military one, and Adam and Charles will find this on their own skins. This atmosphere really left trauma inside of Adam, of course, because of his spiritual delicacy. He is obliged of his father to go in the army in spite of the fact that Charles would be better for this, through his skills and through his will. It seems like Adam has to prepare, in hard conditions, to wage a specific battle. Everything in this book is about this battle. It is a personal and humanly fight but with cosmic reverberations. Thats why Steinbeck put this story of this huge and important humanly fight on the biblical background. It concerns everybody. We have here the exemplarity of the biblical myth of Cain and Abel: Charles envy Adam because he feels that their father is giving more amount to Adam there is that specific affair with the gift that was more welcome to Cyrus from Adam than from Charles. So the fratricide is seen as fundamental evil from the point of view of Christianity, fratricide is even when somebody is thinking bad about the other one, and of course, when somebody is hurting a person. And Charles is doing more than this when he hunts his brother with an axe in his hand. At Dostoievsky, upon this evil there is the one of the parricide - in The Brothers Karamazov. But here too, in Steinbecks novel, we find this motif: Kate Ames, who becomes Adams wife killed her natural parents and her, lets say adoptive mother in evils ground: the matron Faye. Adam had grown up when he decided to make a family and when he met Kate. Those problems with his brother Charles remained behind him. But unsolved - because Charles couldnt exceed the envy that grind him. So there, in their blood, something of this perpetuated.

Adam had two sons: Aron and Caleb. He thought they really were his son until the moment of his hardest confrontation: the one with his fugitive wife, who shot him then: Kate. But is too late for her to destroy him with this truth that the two boys are made with his brother Charles, because Adam really loves the boys. What Charles couldnt beat inside of him, he perpetuated in his sons Aron and Caleb. Moreover, Caleb did what Charles couldnt do: he killed his brother through his evil-full decision of telling him the truth about their mother, in whom, Aron through imagination invested all the energy of his sensitivity. And indirectly he killed his father too. Because Adam suffered a deadly shock when he found out about the death of his son in the First World War. In the end of the first novel the discussion between Lee, Samuel, and Adam, gives the reader the sensation that is absolutely impossible for human being to escape of the curse of Cain. 3 But Steinbeck shows faith in the possibility of salvation for humanity and of course in the power of love and honesty. Like this, the presence of these good, moral and strong characters, Lee, Samuel, and Abra, becomes providential. They are the allies of the main character when he looks to be exhausted in his fight, when he is dying and so beaten. Lee sends Caleb to his salvation, when this one is fidgeted of the suicide thought, to Abra, who loves him. Abra, in a similar scene like that where Kate is having fun with the despair of James Grew, her first victim, who ended through suicide, realise the danger of the situation of Caleb and she does what she has to do to save him. Still, the final word to say is the Adams one: he has to forgive everything his son did to his family, inclusive his own death. Adam, with his last breath gives the blessing to his adoptive son, to Caleb, ending like this his familys vicious chain of hate and envy. He contrived because he accepted the fight openly and consciously. Charles hid away or he didnt have the power and the gumption to do this. Adam dared and was helped to succeed. Of course, this novel is full of symbols. Starting with the suite of names, continuing with the exemplary situations and ending with the general conception, the foundation of this novel, everything is impregnated with biblical symbolism. We wont insist upon them because this particular and very important section of the interpretation upon Steinbecks novel should be done in another paper. But weve mentioned several times in this study about this aspects because we need to sustain the last idea:

Steinbecks novel has a concentric plot. In the middle is the individual with his own drama and challenges; then we have him surrounded of family, fact that carries a new vision about him and his problems and here the most important thing at all in this novel is the matter of heredity, this being the inalienable connection between individual and the generations before him and beyond him too; and above all these, everything is well anchored in the sacred clime from east of Eden in the Bible: And Cain went out of Gods Face and he lived in the land of Nod, at east of Eden4. Thus is done the mirroring of reality in myth. So we all are Cain and Abels progenies through the same and the essential existential problems that have been perpetuated and maybe even developed, until nowadays. And here we meet the very important idea of evil hereditary in general senses, for all mankind. Through this quoted passage Steinbeck is lifting to us the idea of the generality of some essential problems for mankind in every time and in every place, because we all have lived at east of Eden. But his message is full of faith in the possibility of salvation for east of Edens dwellers, through the weapons of Adam for instance: patience, courage, delicacy and love; or Samuel and Lees: loyalty, honesty, or Abras love and the contrition of Caleb. Steinbeck choose the method of parallelism between reality and present, in one side, and myth and ever, in the other side, because he wanted to show at universal scale the importance of fighting with ourselves, with what is destructive inside of anyone of us. The message of his novel has the three dimensions that Lee showed in relation with the word timshel: the behest of daring to be able to beat the evil, the promise of the fact that we are able to beat it, and the last one, which is depending only on us: we are free to be able or not to be able for winning our salvation as human beings. The last word for the character that has the name of the first man - Adam - was timshel.

Notes

1 2

Peter B. High An Outline of American Literature, Ed. Longman 2003, p. 163. Ibidem, supra. 3 John Steinbeck La rsrit de Eden, Ed. Miron, Bucureti, 1992, pp. 342 349. 4 Biblia sau Sfnta Scriptur, Editura Institutului Biblic i de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe Romne Bucureti, Facerea, cap. 4, vs. 16. Pasajul apare bineneles i n roman, la sfritul volumului 1, citit de ctre Samuel n Faa lui Adam i a lui Lee, op. cit., p. 343.