East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

the few things she could talk about to her father and mother were thin and pale and tired and mostly not even true. There Lee was different also. Abra wanted to tell Lee only true things even when she wasn’t quite sure what was true.

lonely set of rules which might have gone like this: 1. Don’t believe nobody. The bastards are after you. 2. Keep your mouth shut. Don’t stick your neck out. 3. Keep your ears open. When they make a slip, grab on to it and wait. 4. Everybody’s a son of a bitch and whatever you do they got it coming. 5. Go at everything roundabout. 6. Don’t never trust no dame about nothing. 7. Put your faith in dough. Everybody wants it. Everybody will sell out for it.

If he pulled something off, that was smart; if he failed, that was bad luck.

Joe had another pleasure he saved for times when he was alone, and he was not aware it was a pleasure. He indulged it now.

“It set him free,” said Lee. “It gave him the right to be a man, separate from every other man.” “That’s lonely.” “All great and precious things are lonely.”

“What is the word again?” “Timshel—thou mayest.”

and Abra—well, of Abra he made his immaculate dream and, having created her, fell in love with her. At night when his studying was over he went to his nightly letter to her as one goes to a scented bath. And as Abra became more radiant, more pure and beautiful, Aron took an increasing joy in a concept of his own wickedness. In a frenzy he poured joyous abjectness on paper to send to her, and he went to bed purified, as a man is after sexual love. He set down every evil thought he had and renounced it. The results were love letters that dripped with longing and by their high tone made Abra very uneasy. She could not know that Aron’s sexuality had taken a not unusual channel. He had made a mistake.

red to green and the long, stabbing probe of the headlight sheered the bend and blared on the station, men looked at their watches and said, “On time.” There was pride in it, and relief too. The split second has been growing more and more important to us. And as human activities become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth of a second will emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth, until one day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say, “Oh, the hell with it. What’s wrong with an hour?” But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.

Cal said, “There’s no money in farming.” “I don’t want much money. Just to get along.” “That’s not good enough for me,” said Cal. “I want a lot of money and I’m going to get it too.”

“Nervous?” “Yes.” “I don’t blame you. I would be too. It’s hard to give people things—I guess it’s harder to be given things, though.

I sit here wallowing in jealousy of my brother. Why not call things by their names?” He whispered hoarsely to himself. “Why not be honest? I know why my father loves Aron. It’s because he looks like her. My father never got over her. He may not know it, but it’s true. I wonder if he does know it. That makes me jealous of her too. Why don’t I take my money and go away? They wouldn’t miss me. In a little while they’d forget I ever existed—all except Lee. And I wonder whether Lee likes me. Maybe not.” He doubled his fists against his forehead. “Does Aron have to fight himself like this? I don’t think so, but how do I know?

“Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.” “Yes,” Lee said from the doorway, “and he deplored it.

“Maybe the knowledge is too great and maybe men are growing too small,” said Lee. “Maybe, kneeling down to atoms, they’re becoming atom-sized in their souls. Maybe a specialist is only a coward, afraid to look out of his little cage. And think what any specialist misses—the whole world over his fence.”

people don’t want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.”

Every man has a retirement picture in which he does those things he never had time to do—makes the journeys, reads the neglected books he always pretended to have read.

“He hasn’t been home for two nights. Where is he?” “How do I know?” said Cal. “Am I supposed to look after him?”

We’re overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers. We boast and are impressed. We’re

It was not uncommon for people to turn away from the war, some to fantasy and some to vice and some to crazy gaiety. Fortunetellers were in great demand, and saloons did a roaring business. But people also turned inward to their private joys and tragedies to escape the pervasive fear and despondency. Isn’t it strange that today we have forgotten this? We remember World War I as quick victory, with flags and bands, marching and horseplay and returning soldiers, fights in the barrooms with the goddam Limeys who thought they won the war. How quickly we forgot that in that winter Ludendorff could not be beaten and that many people were preparing in their minds and spirits for a lost war.

“When you’re a child you’re the center of everything. Everything happens for you. Other people? They’re only ghosts furnished for you to talk to. But when you grow up you take your place and you’re your own size and shape. Things go out of you to others and come in from other people. It’s worse, but it’s much better

“Can you hear me, Father? Can you understand me?” The eyes did not change or move. “I did it,” Cal cried. “I’m responsible for Aron’s death and for your sickness. I took him to Kate’s. I showed him his mother. That’s why he went away. I don’t want to do bad things—but I do them.”

“I thought I had inherited both the scars of the fire and the impurities which made the fire necessary—all inherited, I thought. All inherited. Do you feel that way?” “I think so,” said Cal. “I don’t know,” Abra said.