East of Eden

by John Steinbeck

To a criminal, honesty is foolish.

Oh, strawberries don’t taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

Nobody knows why you go to a picnic to be uncomfortable when it is so easy and pleasant to eat at home.

we’ll crucify him head down over a privy.

He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.

Morning seems to come

earlier every year I live.”

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

Many years of overwork and interrupted sleep had made him a little vague and preoccupied.

glories. Everyone gets well if he waits around.”

How could we think about anything without knowing what he thought about it? What would the spring be like, or Christmas, or rain? There couldn’t be a Christmas.

She felt sorrow but she survived it.

Perhaps it takes these two kinds to make a good marriage, riveted with several kinds of strengths.

She would find something to do in Heaven. There must be something to take up one’s time—some clouds to darn, some weary wings to rub with liniment. Maybe the collars of the robes needed turning now and then, and when you come right down to it, she couldn’t believe that even in Heaven there would not be cobwebs in some corner to be knocked down with a cloth-covered broom.

“Do you take pride in your hurt?” Samuel asked. “Does it make you seem large and tragic?” “I don’t know.”

His mind turned sluggishly in the pattern of Adam and almost wearily took up a thought he had hoped was finished. He said at last, “You have never let her go.”

But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always

attacked and never destroyed—because ‘Thou mayest.’

“Yes, it meant something.” Then he said, “Mr. Trask, do you think the thoughts of people suddenly become important at a given age? Do you have sharper feelings or clearer thoughts now than when you were ten? Do you see as well, hear as well, taste as vitally?”

“It’s one of the great fallacies, it seems to me,” said Lee, “that time gives much of anything but years and sadness to a man.” “And memory.” “Yes, memory. Without that, time would be unarmed against us. What did you want to talk to me about?”

“Dear Lord,” he said, “let me be like Aron. Don’t make me mean. I don’t want to be. If you will let

everybody like me, why, I’ll give you anything in the world, and if I haven’t got it, why, I’ll go for to get it. I don’t want to be mean. I don’t want to be lonely. For Jesus’ sake, Amen.” Slow warm tears were running down his cheeks. His muscles were tight and he fought against making any crying sound or sniffle.

You just have to wait around long enough and it will come.

“I’m glad I came,” she said, and she thought in desolation how brittle he was now and how easy to shatter, and how she would have to protect him.

And his name was called, shrilly in his ears. His mind walked in to face the accusers: Vanity, which charged him with being ill dressed and dirty and vulgar; and Lust, slipping him the money for his whoring; Dishonesty, to make him pretend to talent and thought he did not have; Laziness and Gluttony arm in arm. Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He

dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love. Samuel spoke softly but his voice filled the room. “Be good, be pure, be great, be Tom Hamilton.” Tom ignored his father. He said, “I’m busy greeting my friends,” and he nodded to Discourtesy and Ugliness and Unfilial Conduct and Unkempt Fingernails. Then he started with Vanity again. The Gray One shouldered up in front. It was too late to stall with baby sins. This Gray One was Murder. Tom’s hand felt the chill of the glass and saw the pearly liquid

It would be lonely there for a stranger.

And here interpolated—it’s so hard to remember how you die or when. An eyebrow raised or a whisper—they may be it; or a night mottled with splashed light until powder-driven lead finds your secret and lets out the fluid in you.

He remembered that his mother had a strong distaste for suicide, feeling that it combined three things of which she strongly disapproved—bad manners, cowardice, and sin.

“My father, I’m sorry. I can’t help it. You overestimated me. You were wrong. I wish I could justify the love and

the pride you squandered on me. Maybe you could figure a way out, but I can’t. I cannot live. I’ve killed Dessie and I want to sleep.”

He clothed his motives in the names of virtue, and I have wondered whether he ever knew that no gift will

ever buy back a man’s love when you have removed his self-love. A bribed man can only hate his briber.

In uncertainty I am certain

that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must const...

immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as noth...

I don’t want them to be sad. I hope I’m not so small-souled as to take satisfaction in being missed.”

“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. They say a clean cut heals soonest. There’s nothing sadder to me than associations held together by nothing but the glue of postage stamps. If you can’t see or hear or touch a man, it’s best to let him go.”

“I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I’ve never been so goddam lonesome in my life.”

When he was quite small Cal had discovered a secret. If he moved very quietly to where his father was sitting and if he leaned very lightly against his father’s knee, Adam’s hand would rise automatically and his fingers would caress Cal’s shoulder. It is probable that Adam did not even know he did it, but the caress brought such a raging flood of

emotion to the boy that he saved this special joy and used it only when he needed it. It was a magic to be depended upon. It was the ceremonial symbol of a dogged adoration.

“You’ve got the other too. Listen to me! You wouldn’t even be wondering if you didn’t have it. Don’t you dare take the lazy way. It’s too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry. Don’t let me catch you doing it! Now—look close at me so you will remember. Whatever you do, it will be you who do it—not your mother.” “Do you believe that, Lee?” “Yes, I believe it, and you’d better believe it or I’ll break every bone in your body.” After Cal had gone Lee went back to his chair. He thought ruefully, I wonder what happened to my Oriental repose?

“I don’t believe it,” Cal said weakly, but the warmth, the closeness, was so delicious that he clung to it. He breathed shallowly so that the warmth might not be disturbed.

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one.

“Cal’s trying to find himself,” said Lee. “I guess this personal hide-and-seek is not unusual. And some people are ‘it’ all their lives—hopelessly ‘it’.”

We thought we invented all of it in Salinas, even the sorrow.

“All great and precious things are lonely.” “What is the word again?” “Timshel—thou mayest.”