Reviews with content warning for Violence - East of Eden

I don’t fully know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, and to be honest I don’t know how to feel now that it’s over. This is the kind of story where a hundred people could read it and take away a hundred different interpretations and lessons. Steinbeck really explores the essence of being a person in so many different ways, from what is “good” or “evil” to how love and affection can change them. Lee is the best character.

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bg_oseman_fan's review against another edition

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emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

This book is an example of how some books that are classics are classic because they speak as much to the here and now as they did when they were first published. Steinbeck does more than tell a story, he creates modern parables. The characters are both three dimensions and archetypes, which was really fascinating to read. I enjoyed the unflinching look into morality and choice. A great book that’s worth the effort to engage with it.

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lite_academic's review against another edition

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To say that East of Eden is the worst book I’ve even had the misfortune to pick up would be a huge understatement. I truly despise this book! It may be my first hard DNF in a very long time. This book had such a profound negative impact on me that it took me down the road to a reading slump, a journaling slump, and caused me to sour on a Patreon book club I was genuinely excited about being a part of. I have no words for how truly heinous this work is or for how nasty it made me feel.

I thought maybe I could finish it by hate reading my way through it. I even tried the audiobook version. Nope! No can do! I don’t think I’ve ever picked up a work of fiction that so deeply hates me for what I am—a woman.

East of Eden is mildly entertaining in a way that a soap opera, no matter how bad, is entertaining. In many ways, I have far fewer impressions of East of Eden than I do about its author. I don’t know if I have ever read a work by an author whom I would come to regard as irreparably broken in a way that repulses me. Is this leprosy of the soul contagious? Can I catch it if I read one more page? Can his brokenness and his inner poverty reach for me from beyond the grave and, like some contagion, turn me into a soul-cripple? Make me become incapable of empathizing with or of picturing a unique inner world within any human being who is unlike myself? Can I be blunter? I think I can! Margaret Mitchell did a better job writing African American characters than Steinbeck does writing women and people of color—the bar is in literal Hell!

To excuse Steinbeck’s rampant racism, sexism and his inability to see even a shred of humanity in anyone who is not a straight white male, is to engage in an act of willful amnesia. A turbulent marriage does not excuse him. In some ways, his personal history makes this book so, so much worse. What are we to make of a book written by a father and dedicated to his sons where the main (and I suspect only) villain is a parenticidal young woman who, as a side-hustle, prostitutes herself for fun since before puberty and whose motives are nothing more than to be evil for evil’s sake? Oh, and how can we forget, this young woman is based . . . ON THE MOTHER OF STEINBECK’S TWO SONS! As Aveline so aptly put it in Dragon Age II, some people are just born broken. Steinbeck clearly agreed with that wisdom (see below). Now, if only someone had given him a mirror . . .

Oh, I know, I know, those were “different times.” That appears to be the excuse most often repeated on behalf of Steinbeck. I’m sorry, but that is not and cannot be good enough.

In 1812, Leo Tolstoy finished War and Peace.

In 1826, James Fenimore Cooper completed The Last of the Mohicans.

In 1831, Victor Hugo gifted the world The Hunchback of Norte-Dame.

None of these examples are perfect. None of these men were unproblematic. However, their portrayals of women, persons of color, and persons with disabilities are nuanced. Are these works still tinged with prejudice? Yes! However, there is an effort to be kind, to be compassionate, and to present complex characters with turbulent inner worlds. Where these works and the men who authored them fall short, they genuinely deserve the concession of “they were a product of their times.” Does Steinbeck? I think you know what my answer will be.

In 1952, over 100 years after my last example, Steinbeck vomited up East of Eden.

Here are some “gems” from Part 1:

“First there were Indians, an inferior breed without energy, inventiveness, or culture, a people that lived on grubs and grasshoppers, and shellfish, too lazy to hunt or fish.”

“While he was carving his beechwood leg and hobbling about on a crutch, he contracted a particularly virulent dose of the clap from a Negro girl who whistled at him from under a pile of lumber and charged him ten cents.”

[After Adam Trask’s first wife catches gonorrhea from him, she commits suicide. THIS is how that’s described.] “And then, dressed in a secretly made shroud, she went out on a moonlight night and drowned herself in a pond so shallow that she had to get down on her knees in the mud and hold her head under water. . . . [S]he was thinking with some irritation of how her white lawn shroud would have mud down the front when they pulled her out in the morning. And it did.”

“He was a vigorous man and needed the body of a woman, and that too cost money – unless you were married to it.”

“I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought.”

Then there’s the excuse that East of Eden is meant to be allegorical. Sure! Does that make it good? No! There are plenty of allegorical works that are thoughtful and well-written. Fifth Business by Robertson Davies comes to mind. Not only is it an allegorical novel heavily steeped in Roman-Catholic symbolism, but it is also a biting criticism of rural Canada at the turn of the 20th century and of the prosperity gospel that began to emerge in the 1920s. It is, by far, my favorite allegorical work from the 20th century. Many others are near and dear to my heart. Lord of the Flies by William Golding, The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka, Animal Farm by George Orwell, Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann – I have been very lucky to have high school and university instructors who did an amazing job with helping us make sense of these novels. I’ve sought out a few on my own too. That’s how I’ve found His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman and Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko. I’m sure there were others, but these two stick out to me at the moment. What I can say for certain is that East of Eden isn’t just on this list of modern allegorical works I cherish—it’s not getting near the list.

I got a couple of chapters into Part II of East of Eden and had to stop after the sanctimonious description of how right and good it is to force a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term. I live in the United States, which means that for the past year I had to live in the aftermath of Supreme Court’s Decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization. While I and my loved ones have not been personally impacted, many women and many families have been, and my heart breaks for them. I was on a plane traveling for work when I tried getting past these chapters in East of Eden, and at some point I had to decide that I simply could not continue. I turned off the audiobook and I have not revisited it or the hard copy I bought for the book club. Sometimes, it’s okay to quit.

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nolemdaer's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.25

This novel is beautiful (as Lee would put it, maybe “a dreadful kind of beauty”) and only increased my respect for Steinbeck as an author, but it also sent me into a stewing slump about ingrained narratives of misogyny and lowkey might have put me down for the several days I was reading it, so take from that what you will. I’d say its power is undeniable, although, of course, this doesn’t mean it’s perfect or even a favorite. The writing is compelling and penetrating and often gorgeously wrought, and the discussion of theme and central messaging becomes epic in scope and truly moving. The climax of Part Two where Adam names his boys was my favorite scene and absolutely incredible because it did just that: presented and discussed the themes of cyclical fate, choice, and goodness and sin via interesting characters (ie. mostly Lee) with real emotional stakes and, of course, beautiful writing.

When writing a multigenerational Biblical allusion epic, individual characterization has to be streamlined somewhat, and there’s certainly plenty of straightforward narrated information about what characters are like and what their motivations are. It made me wonder about the tell-not-show axiom, and I still can’t figure out why the “telling” in books of this quality (although accompanied by plenty of action and dialogue on behalf of the characters to demonstrate their behaviors and motivations) don’t come across as contrived. I guess it’s not necessarily telling if we’re informed of a character’s interiority, but I haven’t worked through my thoughts on where the lines are drawn. Either way, I found many of the main characters interesting enough, although personally Cal was the most compelling and his lessons the central ones of the narrative. Cathy and Adam were near-caricatures (and lowkey came off as clumsy); Samuel was fantastic and saved from being Dumbledore by his well-written quirks and genuine heart; the minor characters moving in and out the story were sometimes engaging and usually fleshed out. Lee was outstanding — and I find it very funny that Steinbeck managed to do diaspora lit before it was cool — and while his character leaned a little far into magical Asian, he was grounded into the story with his own motivations and dreams enough not to make him just a trope.

Almost every chapter, even when sliding off into tangents about the Hamilton clan or returning to Cathy or discussing war, was undergirded by Steinbeck’s writing and managed to be — even if the derailment was a little frustrating — usually poignant. The only chapters I disliked were those focused on random men (sheriffs or war boards or businessmen), but even those had their place in the narrative and in creating a full world of people wherein the main characters were situated.

Where the grand messaging of the book ultimately fails for me is that men’s treatment of women comes across as incidental to their morality. My central takeaway was the fact of good and sin existing in every person (or in this story, every man) and the power of choice and rejecting outside determination of which sides you can follow. However, we’re shown quite a lot of bad in quite a lot of men (usually toward women) and not a lot of good — although Steinbeck frequently tries to point out that there is good in men, usually as an indictment of Cathy, who apparently “only sees the bad.” In this vein, Steinbeck provides countless very grim examples of men’s cruelty and weakness (the tarred and feathered Pole; Lee’s mother; Mr. Edwards) and doesn't present us with examples of human kindness and strength that go beyond common decency, especially not on the part of any man. I don’t know what good Cathy is supposed to see men or women nor why her actions are supposed to be crueler and worse than, say, those of Mr. Edwards. I don't think a personal thematic disagreement is by itself a complete comment on a story’s quality, but while the story reached epic heights of moving philosophy, its foundational outlook wasn't successful for me, at least when it was communicated through interaction with Cathy’s character.

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calco's review against another edition

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emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

A sweeping American epic that takes timeless human stories and struggles and weaves them into a complex tapestry of hope, loss, and love. Steinbeck manages to capture the mindset of late 19th century America, dealing with the consequences of manifest destiny, a civil war, and climbing immigration rates, using ancient and modern perspective to show that while the human struggle for survival is constant and not within our power to change, our perspective and actions are always in our power to change. “Thou mayest”, we always have a choice.

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drpeeper's review against another edition

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challenging emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.75

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