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Symbols In East Of Eden By John Steinbeck

688 Words3 Pages

In John Steinbeck’s, East of Eden, there a few literary elements and themes that connect the overall storyline together. The one element that seems to be in every big plot twist is symbolism. Symbolism is the use of symbols to represent ideas or qualities. Steinbeck uses these symbols to carry an extra meaning, leading it to morph into an idea for an overall message that he is trying to claim. Through the use of symbolism, Steinbeck portrays the idea of how one’s constant battle with good and evil represents one’s path. From early on the narrator starts off and displays a major message of the story with a symbol, The Salinas Valley. The Salinas tie in with every character of the book, they represent each character’s struggle with good and evil. In the narrator’s awe of the valley he depicts the detail between each mountain that encloses the …show more content…

From her introduction to the story Cathy has always been painted as a monster and has always lived up to it. She represents evil and sins. Adam, a representation of innocence, comes across her and is sucked in into her sinful ways. Although he does not see her evilness, the characters around him immediately detect how off she is and realize the evil within. One of those characters is Samuel Hamilton. Samuel is a well respected man in the valley and from his first encounter with Cathy knew there was some evilness that lurks within her. While eating at Adam’s place, Samuel spots out how odd Cathy eats and the narrator states, “ Cathy was chewing a piece of meat, chewing with her front teeth. Samuel had never seen anyone chew that way before. And when she had swallowed, her little tongue flicked around her lips” (171). Samuel is comparing her to a snake, a corrupt one. By identifying her as a snake, he adds on to the villainous personality of Cathy. Indicating that in Adam’s life she is the evilness that will break him down. And in this situation, Adam is blindly

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Cathy In John Steinbeck's East Of Eden

508 Words | 3 Pages

Steinbeck describes Cathy from her early childhood. He writes that she was always a strange and fascinating child. She was born as an only child to the Ames family. She was always a liar, but not like many other children lie, her lies “were not innocent” and, unlike others, “she never forgot her lies” (East of Eden 98). She also at a very young age learnt the power of sexuality and there was one incident, when she is ten years old, in which she locks herself and ties herself in the barn with two fourteen year old boys.

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Steinbeck bases his novel, East of Eden, around the Biblical story of Cain and Abel. When Cyrus favors Adam 's birthday gift over Charles ', the jealous Charles nearly beats Adam to death. Similarly, the next generation of brothers, Cal and Aron, are doomed to the same fate and further follow the characteristics of the Cain and Abel fable. In their case, Adam rejects Cal’s birthday present of $15,000, and as a result, Cal kills Aron’s innocence through him showing Aron their mother, a prostitute. Ironically, when Adam first hears of the story of Cain and Abel, he feels outraged at God for favoring Abel at what appears to be at random.

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Inner turmoil is something that plagues nearly every character in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. The struggle to accept the evil within oneself and the nature of this evil within life itself is very troubling and confusing to many, especially Cal Trask and Lee. Cal struggles over the idea that his evil tendencies are pre determined-his destiny-despite his desire to change. Lee, however, believes that evil is not a predetermined path or an inheritance, but rather something that you can change through self-determination and by embodying the idea of timshel and that with this change, one is cleansed of sin and achieves a greater good that somebody who has never sinned. John Steinbeck develops the idea of predestination and timshel through the

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The book Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, uses symbolism to foreshadow the good and bad that will happen to the characters, and relate his characters to some larger, and more widely known people and ideas. Throughout this essay, it will become clear how and when Steinbeck uses symbolism. For example, the snake Lennie sees crossing the pond, “A water snake glided smoothly up the pool, twisting its periscope head from side to side; and it swam the length of the pool and came to the legs of a motionless heron that stood in the shadows.” Most of the time when you see a snake in literature, it foreshadows evil and troubles in the near future.

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1121 Words | 5 Pages

In this thesis, I tried to analyze the Biblical allusions in John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. The aim of this work was to prove that John Steinbeck used many Biblical allusions, notably the allusions referring to the Biblical story in the fourth chapter of the book Genesis, which is the Biblical story of Cain and Abel, to show the inseparability of the good and the evil and the importance of man’s free will in his life and in the case of overcoming the evil. I found out, that although the readers may acknowledge many similarities and the Biblical allusions in East of Eden, there are also many important differences which essentially outline the message of Steinbeck’s “Big Book”. The allusions begin from the title of the book, East of Eden and

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