East of Eden Good verse Evil and Everything in Between

    Who is good and who is evil? Who gets to determine which you are and who is to say that a person can not be both. East of Eden centers around the struggle between the battle of good and evil. There is a clear distinction between Charles and then Adam. Charles seem to have evil inside of them. Charles attacks Adam when he does better than him and when he is favorites by Cyrus. It is not Adam's fault yet Charles lashes out against him. Charles is seen as evil because of how badly he beats up Adam. However, Charles is not evil but simply misunderstood. He grows up in a household with a detached father and mother and knows nothing about affection. He is not given an example of it growing up so he knows nothing about it; he is only exposed to his father's tough love. He lashes out against Adam because he is jealous and angry. Adam is seen as the saint and the good character because he does not have the same actions as Charles and act in the same manner. However, it is only because he is the favorite son and is naive to the favoritism so he does not experience the same jealousy as Charles. Who is to say that if Charles was the favorite and Adam was not that Adam would not have those same feelings and take them out on Charles just as he did.I believe that every person has good and bad in them which they choose to express is their choice. For example, Cathy and Samuel are two very separate people. Cathy is seen as the epitamy of evil especially after she abandons her children after they are a month old and goes to work as a whore. She leaves a comfortable home, children, and attentive husband and the reader will think that Cathy is mad for doing this and question her reason for it. They will most likely assume that it is because she is evil. However, what if it was because she was scared to settle down and that she is running from something that is not presented in the text. Perhaps she is misunderstood and does not want to conform to the womanly duties that society requires her to participate in, and the only way she can live in control of her live is to work in the brothel. The reader must also see that Cathy waited a full month before she left her newborns. This could be that maybe Cathy did care for them and wanted to make sure that they would be okay and able to live, and she also shoots Adam in the shoulder and not in the head and could have surely killed him but did not. Maybe this is due to the fact that she does have feelings for Adam and does not want to hurt him. Samuel is the "poster boy" for goodness. He is even describes as "neat" and "clean". Showing that he is untainted. He even has his flaws though. He sneaks behind his wife's back and drinks alcohol when he knows it would upset her if she knew. He is not 100% good because no person can be realistically. So, there is no pure form of good and evil but simply places in between that may lean closer to one side than the other.

East of Eden Part Two Continued

From your reading of Chapter 14-about Olive Hamilton, Steinbeck's mother- do you think it is wildly intrusice and inappropriate, as some cirtics have claimed? Or, is the chapter consistent with other interjections throughout the book and with Steinbeck's ambition to write a novel for his son in an unrestricted style?
               The chapter about Olive Hamilton is not inappropriate as some critics have said it is. It is a section in there where he tells a story he remembers as a child. The whole chapter reveals how much Steinbeck admires and loves his mother as there are no negative comments made about her. "Olive was brave"(pg. 151). He wants to show how good of a mother and woman she is. The chapter is dedicated to praising her. One must rember that the novel is being written for his children and not for everyone else.If the chapter writtern Olive is deemed innapropriate then the chapters about the rest of the family are also.Thedives into the inner workinggs of the family and reveals each person's characteritics and flaws. It is just another chapter where the reader can compare, Olive, and affectionate wholesome mother, to Cathy, a money hiungry and selfish person, and see how Cahty is evil and Olive is good.

Part Two concludes with an evocation of BiblicalStoriesof Aaron who did not make it to the Promise Land, and Caleb and Joshua who did. Is ther a Moses figure in the book thus far whose vision leads the characters out of their spiritual wilderness?
      It is clear that Samuel is a Moses figure. He assists Adam in finding his way out of his own wilderness of sorrow. He also rears all of his children in the right direction. Lee even comfortable enough around him to speak properly; he realizes that Samuel is different upon meeitng him and is an honest man. He even reads the Cain and Abel story becauuse he is good and bringe goodness out in those around him. He is able to show that God protected Cain and did not allow him not to be killed and protected him. God gave him a chance to be good.

Both Mr. Edwards, the whoremaster in Part One, and Faye, the brothel madam, fall in love with Cathy. The narrator says that Cathy "was a mistress of technique which is the basis of a good wrestling-that of letting your opponetnt do the heavy work toward his own defeat,, or of guiding his strength toward his weakness." How is this so, with respect to Mr. Edwards and Faye? How does Cathy play them? Does she play Adam the same way?
              Cathy allows Mr. Edwards to fall in love with her. She makes him spend countless of amounts of money on her, and wears him physically and mentally down by keeping him wondering about her whereabout during the day. "His nerves went"(pg. 94) and he had weight loss and was stressed "it nearly kille him"(pg. 94). Here it is shown that because of Cathy never being straightforward or honest to Mr. Edwards he became stressed out and was unable to keep up with her. She is lettin him do "the heavy work towards his own deafeat". With Faye Cathy portrayed an innocent persona in which she took to Faye and made her believe that she could be the daugher Faye always dreamed of. "Faye, the essence of motherness, began to think of Kate as her daughter"(pg. 223). Faye desires to recreate the family that she lost in her troubled past and she is eager to take Cathy in as her own. However, she does not realize her mistake and it leads to her death. Cathy used Faye's weakness, wanting a daughter, and used it against her and easily manipulated and decieved her.

East of Eden Part Two

In Chapter 13, Steinbeck celebrates "the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected." Both Adam and Faye create and harbor a childlike image of Cathy to their peril. They fall prey to their own creation. What traits do these two characters share? And what are some of these dangers inherent in "freedom of the mind"?

             Adam and Faye both desire to fill a void inside of themselves and attempt to use Cathy to fill it. Adam comes home from the war unable to settle himself and stay in one place due to his haunting past. That is until he meets Cathy and marries her. He moves once more trying to leave his past behind him and start new with Cathy and begin a family together. His mind allows his to create the illusion of happiness and wholesomeness with Cathy because he wants it to be there so bad that he fabricates it. Cathy even bluntly tells Adam that "(she) didn't want to come here. I am not going to stay here. As soon as I can I will go away"(pg. 175). He even allows himself to think that Cathy will not leave him even when she tells him so herself. He is blinded by his love for her and thinks that he will be able to get her to stay with him. Meanwhile, Faye sees Cathy as the daughter she never had and sees her as an opportunity to create a small family that she does not have. She even takes Cathy in and asks her to be her daughter. Faye is haunted by a past that she ran away from many years ago, and begins to create a new one for herself with Cathy. She even suggests that they run away and move to Europe and start over. Here it shows how Faye wants to settle down with Cathy and start all over just as Adam tried. Faye also like Adam has a deep need to care for people. She has her whorehouse where she brings in girls who are running from something and shelters them and so she sees Cathy as another person she can devote her time to. Adam cares for people during the war to soothe himself from all of the death and he too sees Cathy as another person he can take care of.

Regarding Cathy, the narrator says: “Who knows but that she tried to tell someone or everyone what she was like, and could not for the lack of a common language.” Both Lee and Samuel know upon meeting her “what she is like”. So does Charles. What qualities in Cathy are transparent to those that care to notice?

                 Samuel noticed Cathy’s eyes when he first met her. He noted that “the eyes were flat and the mouth with its small up-curve at the corners was carven”(pg 173). Instead of Cathy having emotion in her eyes she just simply looked spaced out and as if she was not there. When they are sitting down eating he also describes “chewing with her front teeth…and when she swallowed, her little tongue flicked around her lips”(173). During her birth both Lee and Samuel noted that there was something animal like with Cathy. They  all also notice the scar on her forehead and see it as something ominous. Although, Samuel and Lee both see something foreign in Cathy Charles recognizes something familiar in her and knows that she is no good. They all notice her animal like features and see that there is something foreign and not human like in her. Her scar on her forehead also brings about suspicion especially how it changes colors.

Is Adam's despondence after Cathy leaves him authentic greif? Or does he get masochistic pleasure from it, as Samuel suggests? What does it say about Adam that he, too, rejects his infant sons for more than a year, ignoring them, not bothering even to name them? If Adam is an "A" charactwe, and thus "good" is that convincing? Appealing?

          Adam's response to Cathy leaving him is a "pity party". He sits and feels bad about himseld and thinks only of negative thoughts. He neglects his children, following in his father's footsteps, because he sees them as a reminder of his loss and a punishment instead of seeing them as a blessing. He wants to wallow and drown in his sorrow rather than starting over and overcoming his pain. It is more laziness than anything; he does not want to fight and mend his broken heart and take care of his children which is why Lee takes over. It is virtually imposstoible for a person to be all good. The reader can tell that he still is a good person and he just hit a bump in the road. When he is compared to Cathy the reader can definitely tell that Adam is good. Ultimamitely able to snap out of his funk and take care of his repsonsibilites and thus proving that he is good.

East of Eden Part One Continued

Is Cathy doomed by nature to be who she is, or does she have a choice? Cathy is introduced as a monster in Chapter 8; in Chapter 12 she's described slightly differently. Steinbeck seems to be assessing her character as he writes the book. Why might Steinbeck be asking the reader to assess Cathy carefully? How might Cathy Ames be an Eve-like figure? Or is she like Lilith  a demon created from filth, who according to some Jewish myths, was Adam's first wife? What role does human sexuality play in the lives of the character? How is Adam's good nature and inability to see through Cathy a weakness? If Adam is an " A" character and therefore "good", is he also an admirable character? Do you, as a reader, like all that he does?

                    Cathy has a choice to be who she is just as every person does in life She makes her own decisions and even thinks them through before she makes them. She is seen as completely cold-hearted in the beginning of the novel and that trend continues as the novel goes on. The reader should look at Cathy closely to try and see where her evil branches from and see how she can easily manipulate her way into people's lives. Cathy is not an Eve like figure because she was tricked into eating the apple by Satan, Cathy was not tricked into being evil and causing destruction. She made her own conscious decisions. She would be seen more as Lilith because they both fight to be in control. Lilith ends up fleeing from Adam when they cannot agree on anything. At the beginning of the relationship Cathy does not want to go to California but Adam does so they do, and she later leaves Adam after bearing his children when she can not kill them herself. Lilith is also known for infecting children and harming them. They both after leaving their spouses go on to seduce and have sexual relations with various men. They use their sexuality to get what they want in life and use their good looks to deceive people and get their way. Adam is unable to see through Cathy's surface beauty and see her evil, and that is his weakness. He is blinded by her beauty and his need to take care of someone just the way he did during his service in the  military. It becomes his weakness because he allows Cathy to use him and sets himself up for failure. His goodness is to be admired however he nativity and ignorance are not. It makes the reader pity Adam and desire for him to realize Cathy's true nature. I do not like all that he does. I feel as though he rushed into the marriage and does not truly know the real Cathy and that he should have gotten to know her before he made the decision to marry her based on pure infatuatin and lonliness.