East of Eden: Part One - Until Cathy

East of Eden in quite possibly the best written book I've read this year (at least), and I'm not even a quarter of the way in. I've been reading from my floppy Penguin Modern Classics paperback with copious amounts of notes and scribblings, and I've been marking things that I want to write about with a determination I only just have discovered. There are some passages I have underlined heavily, with reminders to come back to later on. Although this has been called the 'Great American Novel' by some, to me those connotations are rather reaching at this point, and I'm trying to dive into this book for the characters, for the story and its wonderful sentences which often seem to emerge effortlessly in the pages.

Right from the get go, Steinbeck makes it understood that the Salinas Valley is one of the main characters. I wonder if it is so because he wanted it known that this place is what he was referring to in the title. Our as-yet-unknown narrator devotes the opening chapter to laying a solid foundation of this setting; its flora and terrain, and its people, politics and history. It is evident from the bountifully flowing praise of the landscape that he has had a charmed childhood in the lap of the Valley. Said praise is rich with such descriptions of the seasons as would enchant any reader. I felt like there could've been no better opening to the book; now that I'm further into the story, I appreciate the significance of the Valley, and treat it with somewhat of the same reverent nostalgia that the narrator seems to withhold. 

We are now introduced to the cast of our story, beginning with Samuel Hamilton and Cyrus Trask. The helm of two branching family trees.

I regard Samuel Hamilton with a mixture of sympathy and frustration, as one would regard a man who's too nice for his own good. He was a man of love. That love seemed to flow from his stories, his songs and laughter. And then, occupying the same chapter is his wife Liza, who couldn't be any more different from Samuel. Tight-lipped where Samuel was the story-teller, prudish where Samuel was openly the creative inventor.

This is a rather common theme running in the book so far, Steinbeck emphasises those attributes of his characters he wants us to pay attention to, by juxtaposing them against their polar contrasts. We see it in Samuel and Liza, in Samuel and Cyrus, in Cyrus and Charles, and in Charles and Adam. 

Which bring us to the Trasks. Never have I been more immersed in reading about long, difficult years of depredation than I have been in reading about the childhoods and youths of Adam and Charles, and of attributing their struggles to Cyrus' cruel parentage. They both grew up to more or less leave behind their worst qualities, but the road there is gruesome. Steinbeck writes the quintessential jealous younger sibling in Charles, always parched for little slivers of his father's attentions and willing to go to inhuman lengths in that quest. I loathed Charles and his rage, and had a sinister satisfaction at any hurt that befell him. "Serves him right", I thought, when he injured himself with a crowbar. Adam, Steinbeck then mercilessly  paints as the portrait of perfection, the soft child and the desolate silent sufferer. I yearned for Adam to find a shred of happiness, and with growing desperation, watched him descend into a life shackled to the army, fighting someone else's fight. And in this fashion they grow into men.

Despite my loathing of Charles, he got under my skin somehow with the letters he wrote to Adam, and I was hopeful that the brothers would live together finally with a small peace between them, and put their pasts behind. Alas, some things aren't meant to be. This is not the typical novel with happy times and rainbows for the brothers.  I have spent some time pondering not only the Adam-Charles dynamic, but also the natures of both brothers separately. 

In my mind, Adam is ever the romantic; that is the one aspect of him that undergoes little change over the course of the harsh years. The servitude to the reveille and life's relentless admonishments seemed only to have magnified the romantic in him. Charles, on the other hand, is gritty and no-nonsense, charging ahead with the force of a bull towards what he holds in his mind as his next target. And Charles, on the other hand, seems to have changed as one changes unwittingly under the heavy sceptre of time. His father's efforts to contain him seem to have come to fruition, in a way. By the time he hits the halfway mark of his life, he has a conscience, a moral compass (albeit slightly skewed), and appreciation for toil and a day's hard work. But he is rich without anyone to love, and respected without anyone to call a friend. Perhaps it would all have turned out differently, had it not been for Cyrus. 

At this point Steinbeck could write about these two endlessly and still keep me glued to the page. Here and there an outcropping of a chapter dedicated to the Hamilton's would probably do too. I'm quite excited to see all their lives unfold.