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Saturday, October 23, 2010

East of Eden XIX -- chpt18:To Bury Secrets

Reading Questions Chapter 18.1


Chapter 18.2

  1. Didn't Grendel's Mother live at the bottom of a lake--hidden, you might say--and didn't come up until her monster son started causing all that trouble and got himself killed?  (I might be bending the facts a little there.)  And what is it about Pandora's Box?  What about the One Ring?  Endless examples there are of the trouble with burying something evil and powerful and dirty....
  2. To quote Obi-Wan Kenobi, "Who's the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him?"
Chapter 18.3

  1. What's the benefit of going through the motions?  It's not "real."
  2. Why won't Lee have his bookstore, now that Adam is alone?  And why does it seem to turn out that he "didn't want it much anyway"?

4 comments:

  1. Sorry, Internet has been down the last few days (AGAIN!--still is, but I'm at school). I like the bookstore question. I haven't fully thought this out, but I wonder if part of it may be that Lee knows that the bookstore is an unrealistic dream. It's something that he wants that he knows he can't ever really have. He looks at Adam, who also has a similar situation. Adam wants to believe that he can start a Salinas dynasty with Cathy, even though, clearly, she's never been interested in helping him do that. By trying to bring this unattainable goal into reality, he ruins himself. I think Lee might see a parallel there.

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  2. While I can't say what Lee sees, I can say what I see: I think Lee is a foil for Adam, not a counterpart. What will not work for Adam does not have a necessary parallel for Lee. So without just dishing it out, think about it this way: Lee's calling, or so he feels about it, is as servant. He has an aspiration for selling books, because of his hobby, but this conflicts with who he is, not because it's impossible, but because of current cirucmstances around him.

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  3. And James, your internet is terrible....

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  4. It is. It is infamous and the bane of the Washington-Maryland border.

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