East of Eden

The final chapters of Part 3 are ripe with cyclical themes, challenges to the norms set by previous characters, and reflections on the importance of timshel. Cal is dark and troubled, like Charles, while his twin brother, Aron, has a light complexion and is trusting, like Adam. The twins mirror the disparities between Adam and Charles, but they add new layers to the issue of love lost and the complex dynamics of being an individual within a family. Although Cal can be mean and calculating with other people’s emotions, just like his mother, he’s desperate for love and capable of feeling guilt. Motherless and often rejected in favor of his brother, Cal feels lonely, and his hurt sometimes triggers him to act meanly. Unlike Cathy, Cal doesn’t want to be a bad person—but struggles to manage his emotions. Steinbeck makes it clear that Cal is capable of great harm, but he also provides an avenue for empathy in understanding how a motherless child with an emotionally absent father could take his insecurity out on the people around him. Cal embodies Steinbeck’s theme that the human condition centers on the fight between good and evil. Cal is more complex than Aron, as the storm that chases the boys home—after their rabbit hunt—symbolizes. The narrative characterizes the storm as a “black monster.” Like the storm, Cal has the potential to be the black monster, both because he’s capable of manipulative cruelty and because he’s set on finding Cathy, which foreshadows impending doom.

Cal isn’t solely responsible for his behavior. Adam is around but hardly present for his sons, leaving most of the boys’ upbringing to Lee. Just as Cyrus’s lies disillusioned Adam, Adam disappoints Cal when Cal discovers his father’s lie about Cal and Aron’s mother. This is yet another instance in which Adam doesn’t learn from his past. He’s generally good but repeats cycles of deception and secretiveness that hurt him as a young person and now hurt his sons. This shows that Adam, while not evil like Cathy, isn’t wholly good. At the very least, Adam is flawed. He doesn’t consider his sons’ best interests, and it’s difficult to understand what motivates him. He lets his fertile land go to waste, doesn’t raise his children, and doesn’t reach out to his estranged brother until it’s too late. Adam bears some responsibility for Cal’s cruelties because Cal hasn’t learned how to love or be loved. Lee’s horrifying story of his mother’s death is a didactic move: Lee—and Steinbeck—wants Adam to realize the value of honesty. The world encompasses both good and bad, and the more we repress the bad, the more likely it is to turn into something worse, something uncontrollable.

The issue of repression counteracts the notion of timshel. If people can assert control over their lives, then logic dictates that repression allows a person to avoid that control. Instead of hopelessness, Steinbeck encourages confronting issues—and Tom’s death by suicide exemplifies the importance of doing so. Although the Hamiltons are marginal characters compared to the Trasks, they provide additional considerations in Steinbeck’s criticism of classism, repression, and the collective good. Tom is the second of the novel’s characters to die by suicide (Cyrus’s first wife, Adam’s mother, was the first). The purpose of Tom’s death by suicide in Chapter 33 is to highlight various positions surrounding death by suicide. Instead of leaving life completely, which was Tom’s position, the narrative’s use of timshel means that Tom could have seized the day and made decisions that might have given more meaning to his life had he not killed himself. In addition, Chapter 33 presents the difficulty in navigating between individuals and society: A family unit is like a mini society of its own, and both Dessie and Tom put that family unit before their individual good. Although the Hamilton family is loving and supportive—a positive example of how groups can provide meaning to an individual—Steinbeck suggests that family can impede individual self-actualization. If Dessie and Tom are both willing to give up their lives for the sake of a family member, then they’re not looking out for themselves. The Hamiltons thus serve as both a warning and a role model for what family is capable of.