East of Eden underscores the search for love and the means of obtaining self-importance by loved ones as the characters through the generations symbolically reenact the story of Cain and Abel. The author, John Steinbeck, successfully tells the story between the Trasks and the Hamiltons where the reader journeys into the families’ deep background and prepares for the dramatic and captivating storyline. In particular, the novel parallels to the Bible story in the book of Genesis where Steinbeck highlights enduring themes of good versus evil and the power to choose in life to convey the work’s meanings and morals. First published in 1952, the book received enormous popularity and acceptance with the general public in which many readers deemed …show more content…
Particularly, Aubrey describes how the East of Eden letters evidently show Steinbeck’s interest in the biblical Cain and Abel story that seem to form the foundation of his novel. Furthermore, Aubrey discusses Steinbeck’s title ideas for his novel that bears emphasis on jealousy and rivalry between siblings. In addition, he explains Steinbeck’s philosophy and thought process writing that opposites like good and evil “cannot exist without the other” (2). In Aubrey’s words, the opposites of the world like good and evil have a relentless attraction to one another, for example, Adam’s moral nature falls for a devil like woman. Farther along in the article, Aubrey points out Adam’s and Aron’s character flaws dismissing them as ignorance toward reality and blindness of perception. He states that their own personal fantasies clouded their mentalities and neglected the truth at hand whom he believes both deserve significant blame for their misguided actions. Like father, like son, according to Aubrey, both Adam’s idealization of Cathy and Aron’s idealization of Abra was their “one dimensional view of reality” (2). In his final closing paragraphs, Aubrey signifies Abra’s importance of representing “the strong female principle of good” (2) while living a life without illusions and