Rethinking Genesis

After Oprah’s selection for her summer book club and subsequent proliferation and price-gouging on bookstore shelves, America has become reacquainted with John Steinbeck’s East of Eden (Viking Press, 1952). From its new republication cover on the centennial edition (published in 2002 by Penguin Books to commemorate what would have been Steinbeck’s 100th birthday) to Kelsey Graham’s Oprah appearance to discuss the novel, it has moved from the antiquated reading lists of high school English classes to the trendy domain of the pseudo-intelligentsia inspired by O! Magazine.

But whether Oprah is trivializing the literary classics is beside the point here. Virtually everyone is familiar with Steinbeck’s retelling of the Genesis story of Cain and Abel which traces the families of Adam Trask and Samuel Hamilton over the course of nearly two centuries and three generations. The Trasks hail from Connecticut where, after a fraternal rivalry for his father’s attention, Adam marries a woman of questionable origin and moves to Salinas, California. His wife’s departure after the birth of their twin sons leaves Adam in the valley to raise his boys amidst the Hamilton family, his Chinese servant Lee, and the unforgiving landscape of central California.

The 600-page novel is based on a mere sixteen verses of Genesis 4 and the parallels are obvious. Adam’s father, Cyrus, favors him over his brother, Charles. Adam, in turn, favors Aron over his twin, Cal. Both Charles and Cal attempt to bestow a rejected gift upon their fathers and, out of jealous pain, lash out at the preferred brother. The Biblical Abel is a shepherd while Aron aspires to be a reverend, a “shepherd of souls." Cal, like Cain, becomes a farmer. Charles and Adam’s wife both bear a mark on their foreheads.

While the Trask family is fictional and symbolic, the Hamiltons are an accurate autobiography of Steinbeck’s own family and includes anecdotes about Steinbeck’s mother, Olive, and his maternal grandfather, Samuel Hamilton. Steinbeck considered East of Eden the epic he was born to write and penned it largely for his own sons, Thom and John, to give them a sense of their heritage. Additionally, it was written to appease the people of Salinas who were angry at Steinbeck’s negative portrayal of area landowners in The Grapes of Wrath, which was published in 1939 and immediately banned in Kerns County, California.

His effectiveness in this is unclear. In spite of reaching the bestseller list within two months of publication, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962, and never going out of print in over 50 years, East of Eden has been the subject of much criticism (both moral and literary) and has been widely banned as “filthy and obscene."

The novel has a plain style, written in short, passive sentences, but the grandness of its scope and tone gives it the mythic feel of a Fairytale of Humanity. The Hamiltons may tell Steinbeck’s story, but the Trasks tell everyone’s story. And, frankly, this doesn’t work very well. Most of the time, the Hamiltons’ story is tangential and has little relevance to the Trasks’ story. The shifts between the two are jarring and the narration is confusing. Steinbeck himself is narrating, using the first person where the Hamiltons are concerned, but he frequently slips into unexplained omniscience, such as describing the thoughts of Cyrus’ first wife while she’s drowning herself.

The setting was familiar to Steinbeck who grew up in Salinas and based most of his writing there. Situated across the San Joaquin Valley, 110 miles south of San Francisco, the area contrasts a rich, fecund valley with dry, windy mountains. The area was settled in 1849 and became a trading center in 1872 when the railroad was built. It primarily produced beets and beans until 1921 when area farmers began growing lettuce successfully and shipping it east. The differences in the landscape reflect the moral vagaries found throughout the novel – the hardworking Hamiltons settle on rocky land and are poor; the troubled Trasks become wealthy from settling on fertile land.

Interpretation of the novel rests on the translation of the Hebrew word “timshol” (transcribed by Steinbeck as “timshel”), which means “thou mayest." In the Genesis context, it refers to God telling Cain that sin is lying in wait for him, but it is still possible for him to overcome it. Cain, of course, doesn’t, murders his brother, denies it, and is banished to the land of Nod – to the land east of Eden where the imperfect dwell.

In one of Steinbeck’s narrative doxologies (incidentally also the name of the Hamilton’s ill-tempered, physically defective horse), he explains that the story of Cain and Abel is the story of all human failings. We fear and avoid rejection. When we experience it, we feel pain and jealousy and lash out to harm others. We then experience guilt, while those we have hurt go on to perpetuate the cycle. It’s the tale as old and tragic as time itself. The hope lies in “timshol” – the human ability to choose good over evil and break the cycle. Presumably, humanity has inherited both Cain’s curse and his ability to redeem himself and, had Steinbeck ended there, the allegory would be obnoxiously heavy-handed.

Steinbeck’s further analysis of the Genesis story rests first in the distinction between Samuel Hamilton and Cyrus Trask – the two family patriarchs who begin the cycle. Samuel is a grounded, moral, and wise salt-of-the-earth benefactor. Cyrus is a shady character who abandons his pregnant wife, returns from the military with gonorrhea, lies about his experience in battle, and leaves his sons a legacy of ill-gotten money. Both Adam and Charles present Cyrus with a gift – Charles, a knife and Adam, a puppy. Cyrus accepts the puppy and rejects the knife for no discernible reason, beginning the cycle of favoritism, jealousy, and rivalry. Adam later accepts Aron’s religious devotion and rejects Cal’s offer of money gained farming beans. The paternal act of rejection is where Steinbeck first bypasses Biblical allegory for Biblical analysis – the root of evil is in God’s cruel and capricious favoritism of Abel.

Has God – progenitor of all mankind – then spawned this cycle of evil and violence? Or are we ruled by the principle of “timshol” – of moral choice? Steinbeck never provides a clear answer and, indeed, never intended to, saying later that he wrote the book to demonstrate how creativity is born in the place where good and evil meet.

On the one hand, we’re given Adam’s wife, Cathy Trask, as the epitome of the fatalistic evil borne of God’s cruelty. From the time she murders her parents as a child, Cathy leaves nothing but destruction in her wake. Steinbeck tells us she was “born a moral monster." The character was modeled after Steinbeck’s second wife, Gwyn Conger – a professional singer he married in 1943. She was frequently ill, drank heavily, and was unfaithful, resulting in their divorce in 1948 which, for a time, unraveled Steinbeck’s life. Likewise, Cathy destroys everyone who loves her, from Adam to her sons to the madam of the brothel she runs to after the twins are born. Her bizarre identification with Alice in Wonderland reflects her own twisted sense of separation from the social mores and her capacity for ruthless malice.

On the other hand, we’re given Cal as the linchpin character who is capable of choosing either good or evil. Cal is aware of the evil in himself and struggles mightily against it – sometimes failing and sometimes succeeding. Cal’s redemption lies in seeing himself as he really is and thus being able to choose outside his nature.

In between, we have Lee, the Chinese mentor and servant to first Samuel and later Adam. It’s Lee who explains, through his own family’s story, the moral ambiguity of the novel – that great beauty can arise from great evil and that the moral purity of God himself is tainted by setting off the cycle of rejection, pain, and retribution. At first glance, Lee is the stereotype of the “wise Chinaman," handing out advice to the white men like a solemn Mike Brady. But Steinbeck himself acknowledges the stereotype by giving Lee the ironic ability to speak perfect English with those who are willing to really see him. With those who can’t see past the stereotype, Lee speaks pidgin because it’s what they expect of him and the only way they are able to comprehend him.

The novel’s greatest strength is in retelling the Genesis story while turning it on its ear. It’s not as simple as a contrast between the “good, Abel” characters, represented by names beginning with A (Alice, Adam, Abra, Aron) versus the “bad, Cain” characters, represented by names beginning with C (Cyrus, Charles, Cathy, Cal). Charles, for whatever his flaws, tries to help Adam and protect him from Cathy. Adam and Aron, for whatever their virtues, are insensitive to and deeply hurt those around them. Adam rejects Cal and perpetuates the cycle. Aron flees to religiosity and abandons his family and the woman who loves him. All of which underscores this idea that those whom we assume are all good – like the God of Genesis – have the capacity for great harm, while those we assume are bad, such as Cain, have the capacity to rise above and surprise us.

And Steinbeck would have us believe that what we see is based on what we want to see – to our peril. To those unwilling to see Lee as anything but a coolie, he speaks pidgin. Adam suffers for seeing Cathy as a paragon of virtue and Aron suffers for refusing to believe that his father could lie. Similarly those who want to see the God of Genesis as the harbinger of all good and Cain as utterly tied to his evil act will not be able to see anything but what they wish to see. Meanwhile, we’re left to wonder if evil is fated or chosen.