John Steinbeck is perhaps the
quintessential California novelist. Born in Salinas, California,
in 1902, he went on
to create a body of work that is closely connected to the land,
people, and history of his home state. As a young man, Steinbeck worked
as a hired hand on farms and ranches throughout the Salinas Valley,
forming lasting impressions of the land and its people that would
influence virtually all of his later work. Meanwhile, his father,
a local government official, and his mother, a former schoolteacher,
encouraged his burgeoning interest in writing. After finishing high
school, Steinbeck started at Stanford University in Palo Alto but
left before finishing his degree in order to pursue work as a reporter
in New York City. He returned to California the following year,
supporting his writing endeavors with a steady income from manual
labor.
The first three novels Steinbeck published—Cup
of Gold (1929), The
Pastures of Heaven (1932),
and To a God Unknown (1933)—were
critical and commercial failures. He persisted in his writing, however,
and attracted more positive notices with Tortilla Flat (1935),
a collection of stories about the ethnic working poor in California. Of
Mice and Men (1937)
brought him increased acclaim, and then The Grapes of Wrath (1939)
earned him widespread fame and the Pulitzer Prize. The story of
a family of migrant farmers making the difficult journey from Oklahoma
to California during the Great Depression, The Grapes of
Wrath was hailed as an instant classic and a landmark of
socially conscious American fiction.
Steinbeck’s novels are acclaimed for their combination
of realistic naturalism and moral optimism—two qualities not commonly found
together. Steinbeck portrayed the pain, poverty, and wickedness
of the world with unsparing detail while at the same time maintained
a belief in the “perfectibility of man.” This optimism pervades
Steinbeck’s fiction, leavening even his gloomiest accounts of the
Great Depression with a powerful sense of hope.
The sweeping California epic East of Eden (1952)
is considered Steinbeck’s most ambitious work and the masterpiece
of his later artistic career. Indeed, although The Grapes
of Wrath is more famous and widely read, Steinbeck himself
regarded East of Eden as his greatest novel. He
wrote that he believed he had imbued East of Eden with
everything he knew about writing and everything he knew about good
and evil in the human condition. Though its story is not autobiographical, East
of Eden does delve into the world of Steinbeck’s childhood,
incorporating his memories of the Salinas Valley in the early years
of the twentieth century, his memories of the war era, and his memories
of his relatives, many of whom are secondary characters in the novel.
(Samuel Hamilton was indeed Steinbeck’s grandfather, Olive Hamilton
was Steinbeck’s mother, and Aron Trask’s gloomy experience at Stanford
University is to some degree based on Steinbeck’s own unsatisfying
years there.)
East of Eden, which was a bestseller
upon its publication, cemented Steinbeck’s position as one of the
most read and beloved American writers of his time. The novel was
not, however, a great critical success, as a number of reviewers
believed that Steinbeck’s epic portrait of the human struggle between
good and evil was painted so broadly that it detracted from the
detail and believability of his portrayals of individual characters.
Despite these mixed critical reviews, Steinbeck continued to write
and produced several more works, notably the popular nonfiction
piece Travels with Charley (1962).
For his contributions to twentieth-century fiction, Steinbeck was
awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962.
He died in New York City in 1968 and
was buried in his hometown of Salinas.
Biblical Background
The story of Adam and Eve and the story of their sons,
Cain and Abel, form the foundation of the narrative of East
of Eden. The stories, which appear in Genesis, the first
book of the Bible, are the basis of Steinbeck’s exploration of the
conflict between good and evil in human life.
The Story of Adam and Eve
The book of Genesis opens with the story of creation.
After creating the world in six days, God declares his intention
to make a being in his own image. He then creates humankind. God
fashions a man out of dust and names him Adam. Then, God forms a
woman out of Adam’s rib, and Adam names her Eve. God places Adam
and Eve on Earth in the idyllic garden of Eden. He encourages them
to procreate and to enjoy the created world fully but forbids them
to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, which grows
in the garden.
One day in the garden, Satan approaches Eve in the form
of a crafty serpent. He convinces her to eat the tree’s forbidden
fruit, assuring her that she will not suffer if she does so. Eve
eats from the tree and then shares the fruit with Adam, and the
two immediately are filled with shame and remorse. God discovers
Adam and Eve’s disobedience. In punishment, God curses Eve to suffer
painful childbirth and to submit to her husband’s authority; he
curses Adam to toil and work the ground for food. God then banishes
Adam and Eve from Eden.
The Story of Cain and Abel
Sent out into the world, Adam and Eve give birth to two
sons, Cain and Abel. Cain becomes a farmer, Abel a shepherd. One
day, the two brothers bring sacrifices to God. Cain offers God grain
from his fields, while Abel offers the fattest portion of his flocks.
For an unknown reason, God favors Abel’s offering over Cain’s. Cain,
out of jealousy, murders Abel. When God sees that Abel is missing
and asks Cain where Abel is, Cain retorts, “Am I my brother’s keeper?”
God realizes that Abel is dead and punishes Cain by condemning him
to exile. When Cain protests that the punishment is too severe and
will put his life in danger, God puts a mark on Cain to warn others
not to harm or kill him, for if they do so, they will be punished sevenfold.
God then banishes Cain from his home to wander in the land of Nod,
which lies to the east of Eden.
