Reviews with content warning for Medical content - East of Eden

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East of Eden by John Steinbeck

3 reviews

emilymean's review against another edition

challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

deeply moving. contrary to what a lot of reviews (especially at its time of release) seem to say, I found this to be a very nuanced character study with a complex approach to moral philosophy. belongs in the canon of great american novels

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clemrain's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

A story paced with characters, and yet none of them are neglected. The careful, slow developments of plot beside characters is rewarding from part to part. I felt like I was listening to a family member trace back a fascinating part of the family history. Or just town gossip told by a stranger.

The first three parts of the story were strong and I was eager to continue reading them. The fourth part is slow and, in my opinion, didn’t pay off well at a first glance. It’s because I just wanted to know the ending, and as it approached it just wasn’t what I wanted. However, I think in this book, that’s sort of the point.

The one major flaw of the story is

Cathy’s suicide. Just doesn’t line up with her character. She had too much ambition and plan. I’m not sure why the pressures and her son’s outburst could’ve led her to that.

The depth of the novel is fun to sit on and think about. I don’t see a strong agenda in the writing. Just a few different perspectives. At the end of the day, no matter what we believe we’re all just gonna die. Good point.

Maybe some takes in this books might be sour to some. Like comparing the church to brothels. But nothing felt too outrageous to me.

I’m not sure why every female character had to have her chest detailed so much. Nevertheless, those female characters are strong and complicated. And I enjoyed their writing. None of the female characters were too alike which sometimes is a huge problem in classics.

The biblical analogies are really strong. And I enjoyed the conversations characters had regarding them.

Overall, a long read but an accessible one.

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sherbertwells's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

“Every little boy thinks he invented sin. Virtue we think we learn, because we are told about it. But sin is our own designing” (326)

The quest for the Great American Novel has always been quixotic, but the victors are best identified by analyzing the many, many failures. The 20th century’s handful of successes (basically just The Great Gatsby, Invisible Man and Beloved) are particularly worthy of admiration because so many authors have tried and failed to rise to their challenge. And based on my own subjective and ornery understanding of literature, I think I can identify the mystery ingredient in the best attempts:

The Great American Novel presents its audience with something original and totally irreplaceable.

For all its talk of original sin, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is the opposite of original. It tilts valiantly at one of the oldest stories in the popular consciousness: the biblical fall of man and the murder of Abel by his brother.

“I think this old and terrible story is important because it is a chart of the soul—the secret, rejected guilty soul. Mr. Trask, you said you did not kill your brother and then you remembered something. I don’t want to know what it was, but was it very far apart from Cain and Abel?” (329)

The trials of the Trask family are characterized by the hard-edged masculinity of white American farmers and the daddy issues of mid-20th century modernist fiction. From Adam’s hopeless affection for a cold-hearted woman to Cal’s inferiority complex, the men in East of Eden are ready to scream their ISSUES to the sky. If wallowing in those emotions is your thing, this 700-page novel might be enjoyable. But James Dean⁠—Cal in the 1955 film adaptation—isn’t exactly my type.

East of Eden introduced me to the first literary character to share my sexual orientation. I knew that the label “asexual” is relatively new, but figured that if I read enough, I’d eventually meet someone like me. When I read that the character Cathy “had very little of the [sexual] impulse,” I felt the little shiver of excitement that I assume others feel when they see someone attractive. Then I read onward.

“What freedom men and women could have, were they not constantly tricked and trapped and enslaved and tortured by their sexuality! The only drawback in that freedom is that without it one would not be a human. One would be a monster” (93)

East of Eden is a horny book. In a vacuum, horny books are A-OK. But Steinbeck frames sexuality as the center of humanity’s fallenness, and the rest of the story suffers as a result.

The Trask family’s constant waffling between desire, envy and guilt doesn’t so much demonstrate a universal truth as it reveals a contemporary preoccupation. Catherine, the unfeeling shapeshifter provokes obsession wherever she goes, is the worst part of it. As a human woman with realistic emotions she is a failure. As a latter-day devil, she is ridiculously inadequate. Steinbeck’s whole system of morality is inadequate for the novel’s lofty goals.

East of Eden is not l relatable nor profound, but DULL. It doesn’t even feel particularly Biblical.

It feels like the Oscar-bait of another era.

Independent of this conflict, some glimmers of interest remain. Steinbeck’s self-insert narrator intersperses the trials of the Trask family with his own childhood anecdotes, which don’t wallow in masculine angst like the rest of the book. Although Cathy is the worst of East of Eden’s women, some minor figures are well-drawn. The best character is Lee, Adam Trask’s Chinese-American servant whose solid advice and selective performance of racial stereotypes highlights the messy relationship between Steinbeck, his characters and the American Dream™. He delivers probably the least-bad take on American Exceptionalism that I have ever read.

“Maybe it’s true that we are all descended from the restless, the nervous, the criminals, the arguers and the brawlers, but also the brave and independent and generous. If our ancestors had not been that, they would have stayed in their home plots in the other world and starved over the squeezed-out soil...We all have that heritage, no matter what old land our fathers left” (689)

This idea, perhaps, is the reason that the Great American Novel is still being written. It is why, despite every failure, authors like Steinbeck have the chutzpah to keep putting pen to paper. It is also why I have the unmitigated gall to dislike it and explain myself online.

For both of us, the quest continues.

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