East Of Eden By John Steinbeck: An Analysis

Walter Cronkite, a famous American broadcast journalist, once said, “In seeking truth you have to get both sides of a story.” John Steinbeck, a famous American author, further proves this idea in his novel, East of Eden. The novel follows the lives of two very different families, the Hamiltons and the Trasks, in correlation to the history of the United States. Major ideas regarding the free will of an individual and predestined or chosen morals are continuously argued throughout the story. Critics, such as Peter Lisca in his article The Wide World of John Steinbeck, state that these contradictory messages along with a variety of other factors play into the “distracting” and “unintegrated” aspect of the members of the Hamilton family. He argues

In his article, Lisca makes quite the opposite statement by saying that “the Trasks and the Hamiltons pursue separate courses, and nothing results from their juxtaposition”. However, not only do the Trasks and Hamiltons pursue similar courses, but Lisca’s statement that “nothing” comes out of their comparison is simply wrong. One major aspect that became prevalent in both families was the importance of family relationships, and specifically the impact of paternal rejection. In the Trask family, we see a trend in each generation where one of the two boys is always getting significantly less attention and praise than the other. In the case of Adam and Charles, their father, Cyrus Trask, even deliberately expresses his increased love for Adam by saying, “Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it’s true. I love you better” (Steinbeck 28). Steinbeck creates this biblical allusion to illustrate the paternal rejection and the eventual impact it creates on each of the children. Unlike the Trasks, Steinbeck describes the Hamiltons as a united and loving family. However, a similar situation occurs in their family when the narrator states, “Of all his daughters Una was Samuel’s greatest joy (Steinbeck 275).” Providing the reader with a

The families similar courses that they pursued allowed for “a new kind of unity in East of Eden” (Lisca) and a better understanding of the major messages in the story. Additionally, the differences that they did have illustrated a broader context for the reader, and the failure by Steinbeck “to achieve fictional concentration” (Lisca) was simply a misunderstanding of Steinbeck’s ability to provide several different perspectives of a controversial topic, which allowed the readers to think about the concepts and formulate an opinion for themselves. The privilege of being given ‘both sides of a story’ not only sparks an intriguing discussion, but it also develops into an inarguably good