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.