East of Eden BONUS -- Mumford and Sons: "TIMSHEL"

I am new to Mumford and Sons.  I have an old friend to thank for posting this on FB.  I put it here for it's poignant pertinence to the book, East of Eden.  Thanks, Allen.

East of Eden LV -- chpt55: THE END

I've written about 30 questions for this final entry, but they're all redundant; if you've made it this far, you've answered them all already.  Here are three:

1. Describe Cal's guilt (a deliberately ambiguous usage), and in the context of his family and family's history.
2. Discuss the role of the idea of "the sins of the fathers shall be visited upon the heads of the children," especially considering the contextual fact of God as a father.
3. Is Caleb free?

East of Eden LIV -- chpt54: LATE AZALEAS

Happiness blooms late as the azaleas in the Trask residence and the tardy spring.  Interesting that as the inhabitants of the Salinas Valley find their superstitious way into blaming the war for the uncommon seasonality, so the Trasks' happiness might be considered late, though happy it is, and--well--is this happiness in spite of or because of the war?

Does the ultimately required resolution of the book's conflict depend on Aron's mortality (not morality, thank goodness)?

***

I think it's hilarious that both Cal and Abra ask, one after the other, Adam and Lee to come and join them on the picnic.  I wonder if for the maybe the first time in his life Adam catches on and claims necessary business at the ice house.  Lee, who's becoming both softer and more acerbic in his old age, just tells Cal he's a moron and refuses.

the very reason I wouldn't mind
living in California

East of Eden LIII -- chpt53: LOVE&TIMSHEL

Lee is quite the little homemaker.  His awaiting Abra reminds me a lot of my mother awaiting the return home of a loved one after a long time away, only Lee, quite unlike my mother, receives for the first time in his life a display of affection.  And "awaiting" is such a passive word.  My mom and Lee are anything but passive (speaking physically, at least; Lee's moral passivity still bothers me sometimes).

As Adam is progressively sickening, Lee's love radiates further and absorbs all his employer's ills, and Lee advances from his position of helpmeet (already an advancement from hired servant) to caregiver.  Why does he do it?  You might say that he does do it and doesn't do it because it's his job.  It is no longer because of his status as family employee that he tends Adam, the boys, and, as much as he is able, Abra, but because it is his job as a loved one--as a member of the family.  I believe that in this chapter, Lee has truly realized his ambition to have this family as his own.

Need additional evidence, watch how Lee speaks with Cal.  Watch how he observes Cal, Adam, Aron, and Abra.  There is so much tenderness and love in this man.  And though he might prefer it otherwise, he is utterly incapable of solving this family's troubles.  Not because he is not the father--the blood father.  Not because he is only the servant.  But because he is only a man.  I think this is a fascinating point, especially as I participate--as tenderly, lovingly, and attentively as I can--in my own family.  I can't solve my family's troubles, though I crave that ability.  This is the very definition of impotence; while in the context of this book and, I believe, in the context of real life, there is only One with any power--potency--at all.  What we can do--Lee, my wife and me together, Adam, Cal, my kids, whoever--is work with the situations we've got--to choose to do so--and choose to work on them together.  So we do have some power--some very limited (though not at all limiting, as this power has the thrust to elevate us into eternity) power--and that is in the choosing.

Think about it: How often can you hurdle a problem, once that problem's arisen?  How often do you have to slog through its mire?

Of course, there is a measure of difficulties we can avoid by simply making the correct anticipatory choices.  That's timshel.  What else is timshel is that very choosing that I mentioned just sentences ago to deal with your lot lovingly, tenderly, attentively.

Like Lee.  Like Cal and Abra.  Like me, hopefully, and my wife.  And we can only pray that those Arons and Adams out there might do the same--that and do all we can to teach and show and love.

East of Eden LII -- chpt52: DISILLUSIONED, an active state of being

The fantasies of childhood are gone for Abra.  They've been gone--they may have never existed--for Cal.  Adam is broken.  Lee fusses about like a chicken.  Aron is off to war.  Amazing how this boy, so like his mother in fundamentals, is so like his father in practice; but how might the war benefit Aron where it never did for Adam?

What needs to happen before it could even be possible for Abra to love Aron again?

East of Eden LI -- chpt51: "Am I supposed to look after [my brother]?"

Reading Questions
chapter 51.1

1. What part of Adam is it that cries, "Oh, my poor darling!"?  What does this lens into the man show us?
2. What are the two comforts for Lee taken from the little stolen book?
3. I have books that I've "stolen," much like Lee stole this book from Sam'l Hamilton.  What is the advantage to the thief from the quality of the acquisition that is theft?  How might the theft be justified, as my theft, like Lee's, is indeed known to the former owner?

chapter 51.2

1. It is impossible, not to mention irrational, for an author to plug a movie, author, song, or other artist without a specific purpose--metaphoric, allusionary, or something along those lines.  My favorite author for such plugs is Salinger, Cather in the Rye being the most significant, and maybe the best, example.  Here, Cal is remembering leaving Kate's and his singing of the words, "There's a rose that grows in no man's land and 'tis wonderful to see--"  Obviously there's a significance to it.  Is it had by just this line, or do you require the entire lyric (complete words at end of post)?
2. The benefit of burning the bills, like Lee's reading of Marcus Aurelius, is two-fold.  What are the benefits?
3. "Caleb whose suffering should have its own Homer."  (Hmm.  Doesn't it?  What is the ultimate conflict and its incarnation in this epic?)
4. Of the characters, Adam, Lee, Aron, Cal, Cathy, which is the most realistic--or, at least, the closest to a human average?
5. "In the old lands they say of us that we go from barbarism to decadence without an intervening culture."  Is there a practical difference between the two?

THE ROSE OF NO MAN'S LAND

(Jack Caddigan / James A. Brennan)

William Thomas - 1916

Henry Burr - 1918

Charles Hart - 1919

Hugh Donovan (a.k.a. Charles Harrison) - 1919

I've seen some beautiful flowers

Grow in life's garden fair

I've spent some wonderful hours

Lost in their fragrance rare

But I have found another

Wondrous beyond compare....

There's a rose that grows in no-man's land

And it's wonderful to see

Though its sprayed with tears, it will live for years

In my garden of memory

It's the one red rose the soldier knows

It's the work of the Master's hand

'Neath the War's great curse stands a Red Cross nurse

She's the rose of no-man's land

Out in the heavenly splendour

Down to the trail of woe

God in his mercy has sent her

Fearing the World below

We call her Rose of Heaven

We've longed to love her so....

There's a rose that grows in no-man's land

And it's wonderful to see

Though its sprayed with tears, it will live for years

In my garden of memory

It's the one red rose the soldier knows

It's the work of the Master's hand

'Neath the War's great curse stands a Red Cross nurse

She's the rose of no-man's land 

East of Eden L -- chpt50: ALICE IN EVIL-LAND, LOST THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Reading Questions
Chapter 50.1

by John Tenniel

1. Maybe Cathy could read when she was five, but she clearly missed the boat on what those words meant.  How is she like--short answer--and how is she really almost completely different than Alice in Wonderland?  (Obviously, this one's for those who've read AND UNDERSTOOD the Alice books.)
2. How does this misinterpretation shed light on her evil--and, I'm going to pursue it still, her humanity (I believe less and less that she is indeed so inhuman and without justification as we and others have claimed)?  After all, what else in the universe does to itself what she does at the end of this section?
3. Take a look at the very last sentence of the section;" and she had never been."  Not, "as if."  Unfortunately, it's just not true.  I think we're meant to hope so.  What legacy does she leave behind?  And regardless of how Aron responds to the news of the will (if he ever gets it), has Cathy won?  What will determine her victory?

chapter 50.2

1. I hate to ask it, but is all this death a cop-out--a great steamroller ending?  Is this whole book thing turning all Grady-Tripp on ol' Steinbeck?  (Sorry -- for anyone following along who hasn't read Wonder Boys, Grady Tripp is a fictional creative writing professor who's working on a mammoth book with absolutely no aim to it, and which just goes and goes and goes--and goes nowhere.)

East of Eden XLIX -- chpt49: MURDER

Reading Questions
Chapter 49.2

1. As I said for the previous chapter, trouble is brewing.  Though Cal may not recognize it, why is he all the more justified in being nervous because of Aron's disinterest in returning to college?
2. Why is giving a gift hard, but getting a gift harder?
3. What triggers Cal's shame after Aron's request to move back dinner--something between Aron taking his day, and the jealousy?
4. What evidence does Cal have against himself to indicate an enjoyment for this kind of self-inflicted torment?
5. Is it possible for Cal to give Adam the money and expect nothing--to give it lightly?
6. Why is Cal letting Aron buy the wine?  While I think he intends one reason, and a beneficent one, there is a darker motivation (think rabbits) present as well.

Chapter 49.3

1. Why does Cal want--or need--the others to see the giving of his gift?
2. This seems like stretching a metaphor to breaking point and shooting well beyond the author's potentially verifiable intentions, but let's do it anyway: what might be the allegory of Lee's turkey?
3. What is deplorable, for Lee or Sam, about one man only possessing only one tiny wedge of the world, but having it entirely?  "...a specialist is only a coward."  If this is what Adam wants for Aron, what is Lee doing, intentionally or not, by this phrase?
4. Aside from Scrooge and other misers, how is it that nobody wants money?
5. "I hope he lives to a hundred." // "How do you know he's not a hundred now?"  --  It's almost as if Steinbeck is a prophet anticipating Yoda....
6. Is Cal wrong to give the gift at this moment?  What is the inherent trouble--and kicking back to Lee's statement above--with gift-giving, especially extravagant gifts?
7. Why is the gift repellent to Adam, and in a way that Cal couldn't have ever predicted?
8. One more time: What is Aron's gift to his father?  (And how does this seem to defy even the definition of "gift"?)
9. Why does Cal try to make the tears come?  Why are tears preferable to Cal?
10. How is it that Cal has a choice but Adam did not?

East of Eden XLVIII -- chpt48: **sneeze**

As a reader  you can generally tell when events are winding up--when the author's pushing things slowly toward the cliff.  Though you can't see it, but it's there.  The sensation is a little like knowing a sneeze is on its way, though perhaps you don't know how strong it will turn out or if it will fizzle to nothing (so disappointing!).  If you look closely at the writing, you can even identify the specific symptoms in the narration indicating the coming sneeze--itchy sinuses, watery eyes, sudden and involuntary snuffling up from your gut....  Here in chapter 48, I think we can begin to point out that, yes, we are about to sneeze--or East of Eden is.  How do we know?

When else has Cathy made such consistent appearances?  When else has she been so rattled for more than a paragraph at a time?  When else has someone worked directly against her?  When else has she remained so consistently agitated?

Better yet--if a mighty climax you desire--Aron's home from college, Cal's under-appreciated, and Thanksgiving is coming when Adam plans, though indirectly and with typical oblivion, to shunt Cain--I mean Cal.

Storm's a'brewin'!

Reading Questions

1. Why does Joe feel as though maybe somebody's come in to root through his stuff?  What's the devil over shoulder on about?
2. Is Joe's instinct against Cathy is correct, is someone--a higher power--assisting him, or is he just bumbling and lucky (unless it all turns to pot!)?
3. Is Cathy a "soup carrier?"
4. What's in the capsule in her necklace?
5. Why is she inquisitive after the goings-on of the funeral?

East of Eden XLVII -- chpt47: WHO IS TO BLAME?

Reading Questions
Chapter 47.1

1. I've noticed a version of Adam's sternness for "excuse and borderline disability" in myself and my teaching.  Though he is weak, though he hates the war and feels he's condemning the boys he sends off, why won't he accept the excuse (which is the same reason he wouldn't be able to hold back his boys)?

Chapter 47.2

1. There's an interesting question here, which could be answered pertly, tritely, but whose answer could be much more revelatory: If God puts together two boys in a family--Cain and Abel, Charles and Adam, Cal and Aron--and one of them kills the other, even if perhaps there was reasonable doubt that they'd live well together and build each other up, is God responsible?
2. "All great and precious things are lonely."  (I don't think I agree--or I do agree, but with exceptions.)

Chapter 47.3

1. Twice now, unless I'm missing one, Cain has remained in "Eden" and Abel has left the garden for the weedy world beyond--war and college.  What is Steinbeck saying by this, as it is not the only reversal from the Bible story?
2. Could Aron live on and work the farm?  It isn't a question regarding Cal.  Yes, he could.  But here we see the greatest similarity between Aron and Adam.  What is it?  (And if Aron has such distinct similarities to both his parents, what is there about Cal that is at similar to his father, if it is Adam at all, as we see clearly what his similarities are to Cathy?)

East of Eden XLVI -- chpt46: HYPOCRISY, STUPIDITY, and SHAME

Chapter 46 is another one of Steinbeck's periodic inserts, and division from the central plots, that mark the story's presence in time, place, and--extrapolation of both--American history.  He opens, as he often does, with a reference to the land and local agriculture, and points out that the superstitious farmers--such a superstitious nature typical of agricultural communities throughout human history--blame the war on the year's irregular rain.  After all, two extreme irregularities must be connected, else they wouldn't occur simultaneously!

There are three items in this chapter that are likely important to, or at least indicative of, our overall story: the cruel treatment of the local German-American (a cruelty and hypocrisy typical of any inter-cultural conflict--can you think of any more modern examples?), the shame of the narrator and his sister at their joining in the communal abuse of the man, and the stupidity and tunnel-vision evident in the final sentence: "We thought we invented all of it [, a community's experience by its participation in a war] in Salinas, even the sorrow."

These three points all match one of the overall issues of the book.  What is it?  How do our main characters exemplify so much of these same hypocrisies, stupidities, and shames?  Also, and definitely more importantly, however, do they transcend them?

East of Eden XLV -- chpt45: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

There's not a lot in the way of brain-busting philosophy, metaphor, analogy, or anything else, at least for the sheer size of this chapter.  Mostly it's just a plot device, and inasmuch as it is a plot device, I can't help but show what it makes me think of.  As you watch the opening credits of Catch Me If You Can, imagine how it would look if it took place just thirty or forty years earlier, and with the thug, Joe, in place of Hanks' character, and the old bag, Ethel, in for DiCaprio.

1. In part 4, there's a pair of paragraphs in which Cathy thinks about Aron.  By this paragraph, what are the similarities--perhaps unthinkable before and now possible for her articulation--between them?  It's easy to think that if indeed the two boys have two fathers that Cal is the son of Charles.  What if it were the other way around simply for particular traits being perhaps triggered differently?  Justify this possibility, based on Aron's traits and what we remember of Charles (regardless of what she says in the third paragraph of the grouping).
2. Every once in a while there's a revelation of humanity from Cathy.  Why doesn't she want Aron to know who she is?

East of Eden XLIV -- chpt44: HUMANS JUST SMELL BAD SOMETIMES

Reading Questions
Chapter 44.1

1. What's the clear difference between Aron's situation, in which he is creating the girl he loves to be something other than what she is, and his father's situation, when he did the same thing?
2. Those around him seem to believe that Aron needs to be pulled from the clouds.  There's one sure-fire way to do it, albeit extreme and likely to result in permanent damage.  Is there another way?  Remember, in order to maintain parallels Steinbeck may very well need to kill Abel, and Cain's probably gotta have something to do with it, whether it's a literal of figurative killing.  Regardless, why might a partial killing just not do?
3. Why doesn't Lee want tell Abra the truth (and how does she trick him) the way he told Cal?  He knows she can handle it.  What is his cowardice (and a cowardice perhaps redoubled for his giving in to her wiles)?
4. There's a sense in Lee already telling him what will happen regarding Cal's gift.  He can talk to Cal and Cal will listen, yet he doesn't say anything more than he "hopes."

Chapter 44.2

1. "You'r crazy," said Cal.  "Aron will knock that out you." // "Do you think he will?" // "Why, sure," said Cal.  "He's got to."  

East of Eden XLIII -- chpt43: ABEL'S SACRIFICE

Reading Questions
Chapter 43.1

1. Two chapters ago, we saw Cal's sacrifice to his father; now we see Aron's, and while we later see Aron's typically teenager "he wouldn't understand," why is it really that he doesn't want to tell his father?  Additionally, compare Aron's feelings for his father with Adam's feelings for his father (or Charles's for that matter).  There's an interestingly mirrored parallel there.
2. Is lack of ambition, like Lee's, a blessing or a curse?  (Consider this in and out of context.)  In Lee's case, how does it perfectly serve him as arbiter for this odd family?

Chapter 43.2

1. Would knowing Mary Magdalene were his mother make it any easier for Aron to forgive her?  What should this reveal to him about his ambition for the Cloth, and why will he not--at least not now--recognize such a revelation?

Chapter 43.3

1. Interestingly, Cal's "sacrifice" is as vegetable as was Cain's.  How might Aron's be indeed considered the animal sacrifice of the Old Testament, especially considering Abel's sacrifice was of the firstlings and of the fat, or the best, thereof?
2. Why does Lee keep bringing up von Clausewitz?
3. Aron is guilty of the greatest misconception of all of humanity, regarding the color of grass and fences.  I'm surprised Lee doesn't spend more than a sentence pointing this out, instead he opens up a pontificating #10 can of the extremes of youth.  Why doesn't he know--or chooses to ignore that--this won't do a lick of good?

East of Eden XLII -- chpt42: THE GREAT WAR STRIKES THE SALINAS VALLEY

James Smith has kindly consented to offer his warring expertise to the benefit of this particular chapter, and I am grateful.  All I know about war is what I read in novels.

Counter-arguments notwithstanding, World War I was the most horrific war in world history.  What made the war so ghastly was combination of two things: one, the centuries-old tradition of lining up large armies of soldiers fairly directly against each other; and two, new technology.  Planes and tanks were used for the first time in World War I, and deadly poisonous gases produced a brutal type of mass murder with minimal effort or second thought for the human consequences.  Meanwhile, the soldiers themselves would spend months, at an enormous cost of human lives, fighting in trenches in deplorable conditions.

The war started with the political murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in the Balkans, an act that, while controversial, should never have precipitated such a war that would kill over nine million soldiers.  However, there were so many secret alliances at the time, and each declaration of war triggered another, that within less than a month, a regional conflict had quickly escalated into a horrible pan-European war.  From 1914-1916, the United States stayed out of the bloody conflict (in fact, President Wilson was famously reelected because, “he kept us out of the war”), but after the Germans torpedoed the RMS Lustiania, a British ship with over 1000 Americans on board, popular anger at Germany finally led the Americans into the conflict, which they would decisively swing in favor of the Allies, namely the United Kingdom, France, and Russia—although Russia would drop out by the end, due to the Bolshevik Revolution.

The war finally came to an end with an Armistice on the 11^th hour of the 11^th day of the 11^th month of 1918 (now Veterans’ Day, or Remembrance Day), when Germans, dissatisfied with the progress of the war, started a general strike, freezing the German economy, took power, and negotiated with the Allies.  The Allies imposed extremely harsh conditions upon Germany, which many blame for the eventual start of World War II, and, in fact, Germany’s debt was so great, that they did not pay it off until earlier THIS YEAR, officially ending the First World War.

Reading Questions

Chapter 42 

1. “A war always comes to someone else.”  Is this still the way people think about war?  Has anything, perhaps television and news coverage, changed the way war becomes real for us?  What difference does it make if the war comes to you or to someone else? 
2. “One American was worth ten, or twenty foreigners in a fight.”  One of the themes of East of Eden seems to be delusion.  Adam is deluded into thinking that Cathy loves him and will be his faithful wife.  In turn, Cathy is deluded into thinking that she is so much smarter than everyone else that she can easily manipulate them.  How is this another example of delusion?  What does Steinbeck seem to say about its effects?  Does he offer any solution to the problem? 
3. “Pershing’s expedition.”  This refers to General John Pershing’s expedition into Mexico in 1916 and early 1917 in order to retaliate for Mexican Pancho Villa’s attacks on American border towns.  Although Pershing claimed the mission to be a success publicly, it was widely acknowledged as a disaster and an embarrassment to American forces. 
4. “Liberty Belles.”  This was a mass movement of women who helped raise support for the war effort.  Afterward, their effort and patriotism would help earn women the right to vote.
5. Notice how much more pessimistic the tone becomes as the chapter continues.  Is the Great War another example of a god that has come crashing down?
6. Will was right on the beans.  What does it say that he and Cal have to profit on other people’s misery?
7. “No Man’s Land.”  This term was first coined during World War I.  It was used to describe the land between the trenches on each side, in other words, the land that, “no man,” controlled, and over which they fought. 
8. “Hello, central, give me Heaven.”  “Hello Central,” is actual a key phrase in a book I just read, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court by Mark Twain.  It dates back to the advent of the telephone when people had to call through a central operator before connecting to anyone, thus the phrase, “Hello, Central.” 
9. “I guess we were like a tough but inexperienced little boy who gets punched in the nose in the first flurry and it hurts and we wished it was over.”  Consider how Aron always cries but then, and somehow for the tears, fights stronger than all competition.  Is it possible he's being compared to America?

soliciting: STICK A BRICK

"Screaming Old Man," by David Connelly;
other two by Connie Podleski

Need an idea?  Once upon a time, BRICKS were thematized by the book we were reading in class.  I've got a whole mountain of 'em themed upon Voltaire's Candide, of all things (see example below).  So why not check again the list of titles we've compiled for posts on East of Eden?  Any one of them would make a pretty thick brick.

Here are all the East of Eden chapters to date:

(Send new bricks HERE.)

1. The Salinas Valley 
2. Introducing the Hamiltons and Our Gods (not exactly the same people)
3. Cyrus, the Trasks, and Sexism and The Fall of Gods
4. The Aches of the Restless and Young
5. Meanwhile Back on the Ranch
6. Restlessness, Part Deux -- Maturity
7. The Return Home
8. Nature versus Nurture
9. From the Bottom Up
10. The Trasks: Family Drama
11. Adam is Taken with a Devil
12. unblogged, and subject to your creativity
13. The Glory Boys
14. Olive, the Olympian
15. Divination
16. The Golden Man with the Goat's Eyes
17. Of Meteors and Monsters
18. To Bury Secrets
19. What's the Opposite of a Church
20. Treacherous to Her Master
21. Calculation, Poison, and Patience
22. Baptism, Minus the Water
23. Flies on the Brain
24. Timshel
25. Resurrection and Glory, via Timshel
26. The Beginnings of a New Beginning
27. Abracadabra
28. Just Call Me Joe!
29. Shot Through the Heart
30. ADAM to CATHY to LIZA to WILL; next Dessie and Tom; and there was the parrot, Polly, too
31. Purple Eggs and White Pigeons
32. THE GREAT ACORN CONTEST, scheduled perhaps on a day particularly perfect, as it happens, for bananafish
33. There and Back Again
34. Believe it or Not
35. same as 34
36. Liars
37. Lettuce-Head
38. Cal Trask, Softer than He Seems
39. Caleb Trask, Super Hero
40. The Troglodyte
41. Prep for a Bean Bash



artist unknown



East of Eden XLI -- chpt41: PREP FOR A BEAN BASH

Reading Questions
Chapter 41.1

1. Interesting the final sentence of this first, short section that claims the Salinas Valley, while a part of the Nation frightened by its "imperceptible" slide toward war, is either oblivious or willfully despondent.  Sound like anyone you know?

Chapter 41.2

1. I think we get the direct parallel to the previous question in just the first three inches or so of text here, when Aron, in utterly willful black-and-white obtuseness, says, "But he lost it."
2. In the conversation between the brothers, there's an amplified sense of Aron's personality.  What's going on in the moment of these lines that emphasizes his character: "I'll help you though college."  "You will?"  "Sure I will."  "Why, I'll go and see the principal right away."  Compare this quickness to that of his judgment on his father.
3. Justify Abra: "I try to talk him out of [his attitude about the lettuce].  Maybe he's enjoying it."  Enjoying it?  Really?
4. Is Lee missing something, or is he content?  (Having finished the chapter, this smacks a bit of Deus Ex Machina; can you show that it's not?)

Chapter 41.3

1. The first paragraph of this section reminds me, perhaps strangely, of Life of Pi.  Will, an animal so unlike that of his perhaps-wilder siblings, enjoys his cage in his little self-crafted zoo.  Why is it (if you thoroughly remember Life of Pi) that he's so content in his "square glass cage," especially (and back to EoE from LoP) in view of the next paragraph contrasting Will to Joe?
2. If Will sees and respects Cal, he sees something of himself in the boy.  What does he see?  Are they so similar?  (This is a much bigger question--especially in view of the next--than it seems.)
3. Why does Will's "fleshy face" contort with memory when Cal admits his fondness for his father?
4. Where is God in this chapter?  Consider the source story.  Is it Adam?  Big, doltish, even simpleton Adam?  Wouldn't that be even a sort of blasphemy?  Cal is winding up to offer his sacrifice.  What is Aron's gift?

East of Eden XL -- chpt40: THE TROGLODYTE

Bromide is a tranquilizer, not a painkiller (as far as I know) --well, not a killer of physical pain.  It is a painkiller inasmuch as Cathy is experiencing acute emotional pain right now in this chapter.

This is an interesting chapter, largely built on flashbacks, of both characters and events, triggered by Cal's visit.  She is afraid of him, and she recalls other instances of fear.  There's a problem here, though.  I've wondered it on previous readings, sensing a short sight of Steinbeck's, but I think I've got it now.  Cathy is terrified (that tame fear of one well-acquainted with the emotion--such an acquaintance as can only be had not by frequent, but CONSTANT, fear--and who possesses great self-control), and the fear comes from those who know something about her or who are clever enough to put two and two together.  If she just left, it would be done, and she could start over again.  So here is the only question for this chapter:

Why does Cathy Ames--Kate--not skip town with her cash and find a new life and freedom in, as she repeats in her mind, New York and remain in her little Gollum's cave, where she is susceptible to the dangers of those she fears?

East of Eden XXXIX -- chpt39: Caleb Trask, SUPER HERO

Reading Questions
Chapter 39.1

1. "It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it."  While this quotation is in reference to the collective consciousness of the community, which individual of the story triumphs in a similar way?
2. The revelation of Cal's humanity in this and the previous chapter is startling and heart-warming.  Steinbeck appears to be requiring a balance in this character, such that he that is most capable of bad is also the most capable of good, a balance that so many of the other characters lack.  Cathy, for example, is imbalanced in nearly an equal, opposite manner as Adam, as if the two of them make one whole.  Aron is similar, and seems to require a doppelganger, though it seems unlikely to be Cal (true definition of doppelganger, here).  Are there other characters, like Cal, who are their own and complete without the balance of another?
3. What tremendous reason does Cal have for being glad that he was in jail overnight?
4. This moment of sharing between Cal and Adam is along the same lines of an earlier discussion regarding the falling of giants.  How does a giant's fall make him more human, approachable, and, in Cal's case for his father, loveable?
5. Maybe it's not possible to imagine this moment without being a father; if you're not, project yourself into Adam.  Empathize.  When Cal goes into the kitchen to make coffe, what is Adam thinking and, more importantly--infinitely more importantly--what is he feeling?

Chapter 39.2

1. What about Kate's (Cathy's) hands?
2. Who is the father of the twins?  The answer, any one of three possible choices, can strengthen, weaken, or disregard (only one) the point of Timshel.  I vouch for strengthen.
3. Cal, as heroic and brave as his father--while just as cowardly and afraid--says it: "I don't think the light hurts your eyes.  I think you're afraid."
4. What is her fear, now Cal has seen and known her?

East of Eden XXXVIII -- chpt38: CAL TRASK, SOFTER THAN HE SEEMS

1. Why does Cal walk at night?
2. What makes Cal more capable of dealing with the information about his mother than Aron?
3. Discuss Cal's fear compared to his brother's or his father's.
4. Did Cal "indulge" in the activities of Kate's place?
5. Why does Lee answer Cal's questions?  Would Adam have approved?  Is Lee contradicting his employer?
6. Why does Lee get so upset with Cal as he's leaving his room?  Which characteristics of his father's does Cal have, and what of his mother's?  Is there a naturally dominant side?
7. Consider the second line of the chapter, "If he had been an only child or if Aron had been a different kind of boy...," in tandem with the previous question regarding Lee's action.  The idea is that if things had been different early in Cal's life, Cal wouldn't be who he is right now.  Apply this concept to Cathy.  What if she had had a sibling like Aron, or a mentor like Lee, or even a father more like Adam?  Is it possible that, once upon a time, she possessed the necessary traits, and had they been fostered differently, to be a less evil person?