I am on a mission to rediscover classics, books I should have read in my adolescence but couldn’t. The next in the series was John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. This one richly deserves its place amongst the classics. After reading it I know why. I realized what separates good from great, and drama from a saga. It is a richly woven and brilliantly nuanced tapestry of human follies, serendipity of emotions and painstakingly etched characters. The story-profound in its detail is spanned across 3 generations of two families whose intertwined kismets commit them to repeating a vicious cycle of karma. The pervasive theme seems to be a quest for redemption and the thought of inescapability of fate from father to son, brother to brother. And yet steinbeck keeps reminding us 'Thou Mayest'- its always our choice.
Steinbeck seems to operate in an enclosure of alternate reality amidst the mundane everyday. His story is not fantasy but is fantastical, the people he creates are haunting and haunted. The characters seem to dwell in textures and colours of their own creation, from the unabashed blackness of Cathy to the various shades of gray of everybody else’s. In this book very clearly- the characters are the heroes.
They are bound by their pasts and doomed to their destinies but always with a small window of opportunity of only they are brave enough to take it . His characters all seem to be seeking some form of parental validation. The story is about two families the Hamiltons and the Trasks who by routes of their own device settle in Salinas Valley, California and from thereon, through bad times and good, dry season and the wet their lives unfolds. The most moving and complex for me is Cal and his relationships, those with people around him and with himself. He has self doubts and even self loathing he is determined to be not like his mother but thinks it is inevitable. His progress in the book, his betrayal of his brother and subsequent forgiveness by his father is breath taking, his character is always kept on the precipice of darkness but always capable of better. The book’s misogynistic undertones are subtle but nonetheless present and pervasive-women are either out rightly evil, weak, simple or just fickle.
Steinbeck said he put in this book all he had. And I think what he has is a masterpiece for the ages.
They are bound by their pasts and doomed to their destinies but always with a small window of opportunity of only they are brave enough to take it . His characters all seem to be seeking some form of parental validation. The story is about two families the Hamiltons and the Trasks who by routes of their own device settle in Salinas Valley, California and from thereon, through bad times and good, dry season and the wet their lives unfolds. The most moving and complex for me is Cal and his relationships, those with people around him and with himself. He has self doubts and even self loathing he is determined to be not like his mother but thinks it is inevitable. His progress in the book, his betrayal of his brother and subsequent forgiveness by his father is breath taking, his character is always kept on the precipice of darkness but always capable of better. The book’s misogynistic undertones are subtle but nonetheless present and pervasive-women are either out rightly evil, weak, simple or just fickle.
Steinbeck said he put in this book all he had. And I think what he has is a masterpiece for the ages.
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