East of Eden by John Steinbeck

07 Sep, 2025

I've slowly been trying to get through more of the classics in my reading.

To that end, this year I've read both Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy (which I need to revisit because so much went over my head) and Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurtry.

Last week during vacation at the beach I raced through John Steinbeck's East of Eden in five days. It's my first exposure to Steinbeck and was a tremendous read. I think I'd rank it behind Lonesome Dove and ahead of Blood Meridian—for now—of the three American classics I've gotten through in 2025.

Published in 1952, East of Eden is an epic, multi-generational story of two families who settle in the Salinas Valley area in California where Steinbeck himself grew up. The book deals with themes of good and evil, jealousy and rejection and whether we are trapped by destiny and fate or have the ability to make our own decisions in life.

The story of Cain and Abel is at the center of East of Eden, with three of our main characters—Samuel Hamilton, Adam Trask and Lee (who to me is the heart of the story and the driver of Steinbeck's philosophical points)—explicitly analyzing the Biblical story in one of its most memorable sequences.

We then get re-tellings of the Cain and Abel story, first through Adam Trask and his brother, Charles, and once again in the final third of the book with Adam's sons Aaron and Caleb.

To me East of Eden feels more allegorical than Lonesome Dove, while being far more accessible than Blood Meridian. Steinbeck's clean prose is the strength of the book. His ability to set a scene, quickly get into the head of many different characters and deliver great dialogue—including plenty of humor, which I was not expecting—made it a consistent page turner.

It's not just a breezy read.

There's plenty to chew on and think through as well. It seems like Steinbeck has a few things he's really trying to emphasize and drive home, and he uses his characters nicely to do that.

The characters do feel more archetypal than they feel like living, breathing, unique people who you aren't sure what they might do next—especially Cathy, Adam, Charles, Samuel, Liza and Aaron—but that seemed to be Steinbeck's goal and I thought it worked extremely well.

The conversations between Samuel and Lee were some of the most interesting of the novel, while Cal's internal conflict and struggle made him the most dynamic and interesting character to follow in the final third of the story.

Overall: 65

• Prose: 70
• Character: 60
• Plot: 60
• Worldbuilding: 60

I use the 20-80 scale to rate things. For books I have four different categories, plus an overall grade. The overall grade is typically an average of the four main categories, though I reserve the right to round up or down based on other factors, like how thought-provoking or resonant a book might have been for me.

Highlights

• “And it never failed that during the dry years the people forgot about the rich years, and during the wet years they lost all memory of the dry years. It was always that way.”
• “Her total intellectual association was the Bible, except the talk of Samuel and her children, and to them she did not listen. In that one book she had her history and her poetry, her knowledge of peoples and things, her ethics, her morals, and her salvation. She never studied the Bible or inspected it; she just read it. The many places where it seems to refute itself did not confuse her in the least. And finally she came to a point where she knew it so well that she went right on reading it without listening.”
• “He took no rest, no recreation, and he became rich without pleasure and respected without friends.”
• “Samuel raised a distinctly superior breed. They were better read and better bred than most of their contemporaries. To all of them Samuel communicated his love of learning, and he set them apart from the prideful ignorance of their time.”
• “There are no ugly questions except those clothed in condescension.”
• “Go through the motions, Adam.” “What motions?” “Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true.” “Why should I?” Adam asked. Samuel was looking at the twins. “You’re going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”
• “If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule—a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting—only the deeply personal and familiar.”
• Chapter 34 entirely. A highlight: “In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”
• “The truth was that Adam needed work. He came out of his long sleep needing to do something.”
• “Try to believe that things are neither so good nor so bad as they seem to you now.”
• “Old Sam Hamilton saw this coming. He said there couldn’t be any more universal philosophers. The weight of knowledge is too great for one mind to absorb. He saw a time when one man would know only one little fragment, but he would know it well.” “Yes,” Lee said from the doorway, “and he deplored it. He hated it.”

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