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East of Eden

John Steinbeck

Start date: September 1, 2025

Finish date: December 31, 2025

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Jun 21, 2021 J. Sebastian rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: english-classics

East of Eden ~ John Steinbeck
This is a long story, not as long as The Count of Monte Cristo, but more importantly it is a beautifully written story, not just written in clear and easy-to-understand language, but beautifully written, so that it never feels long. The surface level of the text, page by page, is as simple as the calm surface of pure crystal-clear water, but the writing is deep: the turmoil of deep, powerful and swirling currents is soon felt. Hinting at this depth, the narrator begi East of Eden ~ John Steinbeck
This is a long story, not as long as The Count of Monte Cristo, but more importantly it is a beautifully written story, not just written in clear and easy-to-understand language, but beautifully written, so that it never feels long. The surface level of the text, page by page, is as simple as the calm surface of pure crystal-clear water, but the writing is deep: the turmoil of deep, powerful and swirling currents is soon felt. Hinting at this depth, the narrator begins the novel with a description of the country where the story will take place; he reaches back in time to a memory of his father, and this slices down through geological layers, restoring us all––momentarily––to the forests of an antediluvian past to which our feet are still rooted:

The floor of the Salinas Valley, between the ranges and below the foothills, is level because this valley used to be the bottom of a hundred-mile inlet from the sea. The river mouth at Moss Landing was centuries ago the entrance to this long inland water. Once, fifty miles down the valley, my father bored a well. The drill came up first with topsoil and then with gravel and then with white sea sand full of shells and even pieces of whalebone. There were twenty feet of sand and then black earth again, and even a piece of redwood, that imperishable wood that does not rot. Before the inland sea the valley must have been a forest. And those things had happened right under our feet. And it seemed to me sometimes at night that I could feel both the sea and the redwood forest before it. (pg. 4)

He goes on in the very next sentence to describe the blossoming flowers of the spring in such an explosion of beautiful language that it brought me to tears. Notice the simplicity and innocence of the beautiful language, which is very much like the simplicity and innocence of flowers:

On the wide level acres of the valley the topsoil lay deep and fertile. It required only a rich winter of rain to make it break forth in grass and flowers. The spring flowers in a wet year were unbelievable. The whole valley floor, and the foothills too, would be carpeted with lupins and poppies. Once a woman told me that colored flowers would seem more bright if you added a few white flowers to give the colors definition. Every petal of blue lupin is edged with white, so that a field of lupins is more blue than you can imagine. And mixed with these were splashes of California poppies. These too are of a burning color––not orange, not gold, but if pure gold were liquid and could raise a cream, that golden cream might be like the color of the poppies. When their season was over the yellow mustard came up and grew to a great height. When my grandfather came into the valley the mustard was so tall that a man on horseback showed only his head above the yellow flowers…. (pg. 4)

The story is said to be “a retelling” of the fall of man and the story of Cain and Abel, but this is no simple retelling. Readers are likely to remember the story of Cain and Abel as a small episode from the much larger Biblical history of man; it is a small passage, taken from a very big book. The story of Cain and Abel, however, is a central theme in East of Eden, because here, in the world after the fall, though men descend from Seth, there is no human being immune to the potential for evil. Perhaps there is even a tendency towards evil, as though the mark of Cain were still upon many of us. Steinbeck, or rather, his characters, mine the earth of that story, discover therein, and bring to light the whole key to the problem of human nature, to our ongoing struggle with good and evil, to our longing to be accepted by our father no matter how miserable we have become, and to be welcomed home. It can all be condensed into a single Hebrew word: timshel!

The human drama involves much sadness, and the horribleness of human nature is on display in the book; there is even a character that succeeds in reaching the limits of evil, but there is also the glorious beauty of the human soul striving towards goodness, rooted to the earth for a time, and more beautiful than any of the flowers.

Beautiful, John Steinbeck! Simply beautiful!
Beautiful gift that you have left for humanity in East of Eden ...more

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Jan 19, 2015 Josh Caporale rated it it was amazing

This is a clear reason why John Steinbeck is one of the great American authors of the 20th century. This story is important for literature, let alone American literature.

Here is my review: http://caponomics.blogspot.com/2015/0...

Here is a discussion we had about this novel on Literary Gladiators: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_z_e... ...more

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Jan 29, 2025 Wave rated it it was amazing

I thought this was one of the very best. I never read anything by him and everyone said it’s a masterpiece. I loved it, I read it within a week I think and couldn’t stop. I loved reading about generational trauma.

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