Mexican-American War In East Of Eden

Amputation. Starvation. Incineration. Wars cause an extensive amount of damage to everyone and everything that enters the long, pernicious battles. Examples of this can be shown within the novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck. Steinbeck tells the story of the Trask and the Hamilton family. As the reader progresses through this narrative, it is understood that both of these families contribute to the war effort in distinctive ways exhibited through personal endeavor. Furthermore, Steinbeck focuses on good vs. evil, represented through the good, Abel-like and the evil, Cain-like characters; determinism, shown through Cathy and the wickedness that possesses her; and timshel, introduced by Lee, the Chinese servant of Adam Trask, and symbolized by the free will of the characters. In addition to these various ideas, the narrative also comments on the wars that America participated in during the time frame in which East of

Steinbeck claims that the Mexican War only did two good things, one, “We got a lot of western land, damn near doubled our size...” and two, the land becomes a training ground for generals (Steinbeck 130). At the end of the Mexican-American War, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo calls for Mexico to “...transfer 500,000 square miles of Mexican territory to the U.S. in exchange for $15 million” (Wood). The U.S. gained western territory from the treaty, but the land did not double the size of America. Instead, the land that Mexico surrendered to the United States was approximately half of Mexico’s territory (Wood). When Steinbeck states that only two good things come from the war, it is evidently false. The Mexican-American War also provided the United States and Mexico with a new border, and with the new border came a new ethnic group (Wood). In closing, the reference to the Mexican-American War was both factually accurate and fallacious due to