PRINTGet Book Smart: East of Eden
Courtesy of Penguin Classics
January 10, 2010 | 12:25 p.m. CST
Loaded with wealth, promiscuity, naiveté and death, John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is an early 20th-century soap opera. This fast-paced dark fiction, published in 1952, explores the familiar clash between good and evil, but it’s far from predictable.
Loosely based on the Biblical story of brothers Cain and Abel, East of Eden interweaves the stories of the Hamilton and Trask families. In Steinbeck style, the characters settle down where the author, himself, grew up — California’s fertile Salinas Valley.
Of the two families, the Trasks face the most problems. Two generations of brothers fight for their fathers’ love, and each brother is inherently either good or evil. Readers are introduced to a dizzying number of characters who are wrestling with their fates. Must the child of a conscienceless prostitute be destined for a life of dishonesty? And how can a sinful son win dear old Dad’s heart?
An unsettling plot winds down to one reassuring message: Humans can choose their own paths. Follow the twisted lives of Steinbeck’s polarized people to discover if good finds its way out of a thicket of evil.
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