East of Eden

Time for a classic that I've always kind of ignored, because it's one of those americana classics we don't really pay much attention to over here. But I wanted a long read while I had free time between taking dips in the unusually cold sea this year so this made sense...

Before I start yapping about anything regarding the story, or the characters, I want to talk about the main concept of the novel, the core of the novel, the term people tattoo on themselves... because it's a mistranslation. So about less than halfway into the story a conversation gets brought up, about the Cain and Abel story in the bible. A discussion arises around a certain verse (Genesis 4:7) and it's discrepancies throughout the different translations of the bible. Specifically the sentence:

"And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him."

Sometimes it's translated as thou shall, sometimes as thou will. And yet, according to a book character (and therefore, Steinbeck himself) the original, hebrew version claims it's neither of these but rather thou mayest, and then we're told what the hebrew term for "thou mayest" is - "timshel", in that exact spelling. Here comes the issue... "timshel" or pronounced more correctly, "timshol", is the masculine gender, second person and future tense of the verb "to rule". Tl;dr "timshel" means "you(M) will rule". You can't separate the "you will" part from it as that's the form the verb is in and the prefix "ti" means nothing outside of that context, it's just a grammatical prefix. Future tense in hebrew has two uses, it can be used as a future tense, but also as an imperative, an order, similarily to english. The 10 commandments are also written in the same future tense form, and they're translated as "you will not.." in english. Now here's the thing... I'm not a biblical interpreter and it's totally possible "thou mayest rule" is actually a completely valid interpretation, I checked some tanakh translations in english and indeed they have the "thou mayest rule" line. I fully believe Steinbeck looked at the translations themselves and concluded that the hebrew counterpart must mean the same exact thing he saw in the translation, failing to account for the fact that grammatically hebrew and english do not build verbs in the same way. The failed linguist in me is very bothered by this. Why did he not fully research this to get it right, when it's the main core of the story!!!

On one of the many reddit threads talking about this a surprising amount of people are pushing against the OP for bringing it up and making excuses for Steinbeck. When hilariously enough someone brought up a letter exchange between Steinbeck and his editor, in which Steinbeck explicitly states that he doesn't agree with a rabbis opinion but this wasn't a matter of opinion, this was pure, cold, hard grammar!!!!!!!! Even funnier is that some people are making it seem as if OP is trying to gaslight them lmfao. Try using a translator people!!!! Had he just added one word to the iconic "thou mayest" line this would've been a total nonissue! But maybe it wouldn't have jibed as well with the core theme of the novel...

Now that we got that over with, I feel like I ran out of steam to talk about anything else! This was a good book, stylistically. I think everything important had been brought up to the surface in a timely manner, a lot of subtleties and small things said in passing to make you pay attention, and the flow was really good too. The jumping from family to family was good too, and I feel like nothing overstayed its welcome. I didn't read about it in detail but apparently it was meant as a half fictional biography of Steinbeck's family, where the Hamilton family was based on real relatives of Steinbeck's, and the Track family was completely fictional. Writing (half) fanfiction about your family is certainly one way to go about things!

Reading this I got heavily reminded of Stoner, because they're both written in the same time period. Both books created "groups" of characters that represent the old vs. new America and use them to represent difficulties and pleasures that come from both the rural and city life. Yet when I think of Stoner, I feel like that book invokes so much more melancholy and sadness, especially when it touches upon the theme of rural vs. city life. It must be the lack of californian sun... Stoner definitely felt less idealistic, yet at the same time more emotional, while EoE (I keep reading this abbreviation as End of Evangelion) feels more like a "book" if that makes sense. I refuse to elaborate muahaha.

The biggest important concept in this book is nature vs. nurture (besides the Cain and Abel thing). Are we determined to be the same as our predecessors, or are we the tailors of our own destinies? Can we overcome our impulses? Do perfect upbringings result in perfect children and do broken households result in broken children that are destined to sadness? This is where the "thou mayest" comes in, thou mayest rule over the cards you've been dealt with - but you don't have to, it's a choice. Your roots aren't the end all be all, as shown with the Hamiltons, who were brought up in a household that had the perfect mix of religiousness and conservativism in their mother Liza and questioning and inquisitiveness in their father Samuel, with lots of love and care from both of them, yet each one of the numerous children went in completely separate directions with various outcomes, whether they be prosperity, opportunism at the expense of others, suicide etc etc. More importantly it's brought up with Cal and Aron and them both struggling with the truth of who their mother was. This whole topic reminds me of a conversation I had with my friend since she became a teacher. We compared our school and kindergarten years and noticed how a lot of children seem to develop a specific personality at a very young age, and more often than not, they hardly change in their adulthood. We both made a mental note that we'd observe if her students will follow the same paths lmao.

And lastly, it wouldn't really be a cabbage review if I didn't take a moment to sperg about female characters. Yes it's an old book, no I don't care. Let's start with Liza. A stern, no-nonsense personality that is both extremely, deeply, religious (as women tend to be the ones to actually follow a religion to a t) and very practical, because her life isn't easy and she can't take it as such. In a way she's almost animalistic, not mourning in a way that's as human as Samuels, she deals with things and moves on because what else is there to do? Despite being deeply respected, despite being a pillar of the Hamilton family and holding it all together because Samuel was a man who didn't care about money, the impact of her death is not nearly as deep. It doesn't reverberate through the novel with ripples that reach the very last pages, it is resigned to a single sentence in the introduction of a chapter. She is in the background. I don't mean to wax poetic about how Steinbeck doesn't write good female characters. I actually think Liza is an amazing example of how families and other people saw mothers and wives. You hide things from them because they're too uppity and nagging, you speak well of them and love them, but they're never your intellectual equal, they're foolish and unchanging, they don't have time for pondering (of course they don't, she has to clothe, bathe and feed like 10 children). She is indeed Great, but also, not really a character, just an extension of her family...

Cathy... I think her character got better as the story went on. I'm generally tired of the "evil woman that is pure evil and because she is evil she is somehow tied to prostitution" trope that is very common in male lit, and I'd like to write more about her character in general but I feel like my review is already too long and I'm getting sleepy. One thing I'll say though, her blackmailing the whole town is based as fuck. It's insane how all the disgusting cheating men got to walk scot free and the story framed it as a good thing. It's the main thing I side-eyed in this novel, trying to justify disgusting and vile acts (such as rape or being a john) by saying it's okay because those men have some good in them too and it probably outweighs the bad they've done. Puke. The same thing happened with Lee and his mother... it was just bleak to read.

One more tiny thing that bothered me, for a story about choice, it's funny that the two stories about brothers mirror Cain and Abel and are more or less experiencing predetermined destinies imposed upon them by the author. Maybe it's too meta, but it's slightly ironic.