So, I recently finished what I have been referring to as "the Bible, part two," or East of Eden by John Steinbeck. I bought the book two years ago at a farmers market with my ex-boyfriend, shortly before flying out to D.C. He would of course break up with me in D.C. over a long terrible FaceTime call. He returned my book, which I had left in his car, along with the plants he was babysitting for me while I was away.
Two years later, I am perched on a small velvet loveseat inside the adjunct seating area of my favorite coffee shop next to my partner, who has luckily not yet broken up with me. They are rereading my old copy of Slaughterhouse-Five from high school.
I would now more accurately describe East of Eden as a companion piece to the Old Testament, which is the one I most concern myself with anyway. It tracks the lineage of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, pillars of Salinas Valley. The narrator—who I believe is canonically John Steinbeck himself, and who even has a cameo as a small boy—describes, in intoxicatingly realistic detail, the inner lives and turmoils of various members of both families. He spends great time and care tracking the lives of Adam Trask, overcome by his inherent need to be good, and Samuel Hamilton, driven by his desire for creativity and knowledge. I am not going to spend too much time summarizing this book.
I lied. Okay so, the book is split into four parts, and each one I approached like a sumptuous meal, swallowing the sections hungrily and taking long pauses between readings to fully digest what I had consumed.
I think I finished the first two-thirds of the book last May. I remember because I brought it up on numerous dates, and I only open myself up for dating in the late spring. At that point, the key word that latched onto me was timshel, which Steinbeck translates from Hebrew to “thou mayest.” It’s the idea that each person is blessed with free will, to overcome their sin or revel in it.
“Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice.”
Growing up I was always told to strive for perfection my whole life. I nearly let that desire drive me insane, up a wall, and off a cliff. Many years and various therapy sessions later, I have found a good balance. I have dedicated my life to working for non-profits, which is its own can of worms, but I’ve made peace with the fact that I can’t fix everything.
Still, the call of perfection rings in my ear, especially with the current state of affairs. At one point, I proclaimed, with some jest, that the only way I would be ready to settle down and feel safe having children was if I killed the devil. So clearly I am in a great place! This all goes to say that the weight of choosing good over evil sits heavy with me, as I’m sure it does for others.
Back to the book. Adam Trask had a brother, Charles, and can be seen for my purposes as symbols of good and evil. At some point, it’s implied that Charles slept with Adam’s wife, and as a result, she gave birth to a set of twin boys, Cal and Aaron. Aaron, much like his father, has an aversion to evil and tries his best to be a morally just person, even to the point of driving himself sick on multiple occasions. His foil, Cal, is seen as dark and sardonic. Unlike his uncle [father?] Charles, he wants to do good. He craves affection, love, and acceptance; it’s just something he struggles with. This also may be due in part to the fact that his mother is a sociopath, so that’s in the soup too.
Now, long story short (and yes, it’s a long story—about 600 pages), Cal reaches his absolute breaking point in his lifelong battle to not give in to his inner darkness. And then Lee...how do I even describe Lee? Lee is the Trask family’s housekeeper, essentially a mother figure in the boys' lives, and a caretaker to Adam in his older years—a dear friend and advisor. Lee begs Adam to say his sons name, and wash Cal clean of sinful afflictions. Instead, with his last breath, Adam says timshel. And that is how the book ends. Cut to me on the loveseat in the coffee shop, fully crying.
In that moment, Adam, did free Cal—freed him from a life of suffering in the name of perfection. He told him to keep fighting. It may not come easy, but we can all choose to be good—without letting the desire for perfection consume and destroy us.
I think what I loved about this book is that it reinforces a personal revelation of mine—that there is no such thing as progress. Bear with me while I get a bit pessimistic, but I truly have not seen, on a large cosmic scale, a change in the human narrative of the constant tug-of-war between good and evil. While there is innovation and a larger growth toward comfort and convenience, to me, this is not truly progress. The struggles that some privileged groups no longer have to bear have either been shifted elsewhere or transformed into something new.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s not over! The Trask family did not become less evil over time—the blood of Charles and Adam runs through their lineage and imparts their dispositions onto their offspring. But each individual has a choice. They can choose to be better—or worse, for that matter. As long as they choose—this is what’s key. The trials and tribulations are what make us human, constantly being tested and forged in the fire in hopes of some ideal outcome, some perfect form. It is the hammering of our malleable souls that gives life its purpose, not the end result.
This sums up my thoughts on the end of the book. I had many other notes and ideas rattling around in my head at one point, but I did not write them down, so I do not remember! Hence the impetus of this post. I think this is, to date, my favorite book, and it will be for some time. I cannot wait to revisit it at different points in my life and see what new insights and interpretations I glean from the text.
Thanks for listening!