The fortune that Cathy leaves to Aron, the third such
inheritance in the novel, is a symbol of the sin that has run through
the Trask family ever since Cyrus’s original dishonesty and embezzlement. Cyrus
leaves his tainted inheritance to Charles and Adam, and then Charles
leaves an inheritance to Adam and Cathy. As a result, Cyrus’s fortune
forms the core of Charles’s, and Charles’s then forms the core of
Cathy’s. This family money represents an extraordinary legacy of
dishonesty and evil passed down through the generations—Cyrus’s
was likely earned through theft, and Cathy’s was earned through
theft, extortion, and prostitution. The inheritance thus becomes
a symbol of the idea that the sin of one generation is passed onto
the next—the idea of original sin that came about when Adam and
Eve were expelled from Eden. In this light, Adam, in a way, proves
his essential goodness by squandering his own fortune; Cyrus, Charles,
and Cathy, on the other hand, come across as evil by virtue of the
fact that they increase their own fortunes. This idea of inherited
sin is what makes Aron unable to stand the sight of his mother as
a prostitute. Aron believes, as Cal has throughout the novel, that
Cathy’s wickedness taints him morally and inevitably dooms him to
evil.
In every prior instance of an inheritance in East
of Eden, the money is divided evenly between two people,
diffusing the legacy of sin that the money represents. In the case
of Cathy’s fortune, however, Aron is the sole inheritor. Because
Aron so fully accepts the idea of hereditary sin when the sight
of Cathy crushes him, it is appropriate that the symbolic legacy
of sin—the inheritance—should fall squarely upon his shoulders and
his alone. Cal, on the other hand, receives no part of his mother’s
legacy and thus is symbolically free from the tainted inheritance
that has been passed down through the Trask generations.
