Freewill In East Of Eden By John Steinbeck

East of Eden Rough Draft

In the novel, East of Eden John Steinbeck explores the idea of “timshel”, freewill through a reading of Genesis chapter four, the story of Cain and Abel, Steinbeck effectively uses the idea of freewill to demonstrate that people are not bound by their environment, but by their choices.

In East of Eden Salinas, was the Eden. John Steinbeck centered most of his works around the Salinas Valley. In 1930 John Steinbeck had married his first wife Carrol and moved to a summer cottage where he wrote about lone ranchers and farmers who failed to live their lives to the fullest. This is when Steinbeck got his first idea for East of Eden. He really started writing it at the end of World War II. John Steinbeck had said that he

Adam in the bible blindly ate the apple from Eve without thinking of the consequences he would have to face. Cathy represents original sin and the “author [Steinbeck] conceives of Cathy as predetermined to evil” (Owens). Cathy makes horrible decisions all the time because she is pure evilness. The unreliableness of her character represents the chattiness of evil itself. Steinbeck dedicates a whole chapter to describing Cathy as a monster and a gives a physical description of a serpent to describe her. Cathy came from a loving and good home. This background could symbolize God’s fatherly love to his children, but God gives them “timshel”, free will to sin on their own. Cathy came from this loving home but it had no impact on her choices because she is evil. Cal and Aron symbolize Cain and Abel. They represent Cain and Abel because of their tale of jealousy and need to be loved by their father. Cal and Aron are considerably opposite from each other. Steinbeck contrasts them saying “Cal was growing up dark-skinned, dark-haired…No one liked Cal very much and yet everyone was touched with fear of him and through fear with respect” and “Aron drew love from every side. He seemed shy and delicate. His pink-and-white skin, golden hair, and wide-set blue eyes caught attention” (Steinbeck). Steinbeck uses first letters of their names even set their fate in the novel. Steinbeck creates

Steinbeck uses the dichotomy of good and evil, which are used to determine whether or not people's environments affect their choices. Steinbeck sets up this binary opposition when he describes the setting of Salinas. He describes the “Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness “and described the Saint Lucius as “dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous” (Steinbeck). The diction is juxtaposed: light and dark, gay and brooding, loveliness and dangerous, because “Here, the dualism is introduced which will quickly become the structural center of the novel, and…responding to that landscape: the developing consciousness of the artist” (Owens). The two sets of mountains are used to show that Eden would be the east mountains because of their innocent nature and sin would be on the other side. Steinbeck creates this dichotomy of the good and the evil lands to explore determinism, “What Steinbeck is suggesting in the opening paragraphs is the way in which this sense of opposed absolutes rises from deep within man, represents something profound and inevitable in human consciousness” (Owens). Steinbeck explains that humans naturally create these dichotomies in their own lives. This description of the setting foreshadows future characterizations, and how the characters will or will not allow their environment to affect their