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East of Eden
John Steinbeck, 1952
608 pp.

In Brief
In his journal, John Steinbeck called East of Eden “the first book,” and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth. Set in the rich farmland of California’s Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two families—the Trasks and the Hamiltons—whose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.

Adam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all those around him; the other grows up in loneliness, enveloped by a mysterious darkness.

First published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of love’s absence. A masterpiece of Steinbeck’s later years, East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis. (From the publisher.)

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About the Author

• Birth—February 27, 1902
• Where—Salinas, California USA
• Death—December 20, 1968
• Where—New York, NY
• Education—Studied marine biology at Stanford University,
   1919-25
• Awards—Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award, 1940;
   Nobel Prize, 1962.


John Ernst Steinbeck, Nobel and Pulitzer Prize winner, was born in Salinas, California February 27, 1902. His father, John Steinbeck, served as Monterey County Treasurer for many years. His mother, Olive Hamilton, was a former schoolteacher who developed in him a love of literature. Young Steinbeck came to know the Salinas Valley well, working as a hired hand on nearby ranches in Monterey County. In 1919, he graduated from Salinas High School as president of his class and entered Stanford University majoring in English. Stanford did not claim his undivided attention. During this time he attended only sporadically while working at a variety jobs including on with the Big Sur highway project, and one at Spreckels Sugar Company near Salinas.

Steinbeck left Stanford permanently in 1925 to pursue a career in writing in New York City. He was unsuccessful and returned, disappointed, to California the following year. Though his first novel, Cup of Gold, was published in 1929, it attracted little literary attention. Two subsequent novels, The Pastures of Heaven and To A God Unknown, met the same fate.

After moving to the Monterey Peninsula in 1930, Steinbeck and his new wife, Carol Henning, made their home in Pacific Grove. Here, not far from famed Cannery Row, heart of the California sardine industry, Steinbeck found material he would later use for two more works, Tortilla Flat and Cannery Row.

With Tortilla Flat (1935), Steinbeck's career took a decidedly positive turn, receiving the California Commonwealth Club's Gold Medal. He felt encouraged to continue writing, relying on extensive research and personal observation of the human drama for his stories. In 1937, Of Mice and Men was published. Two years later, the novel was produced on Broadway and made into a movie. In 1940, Steinbeck won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction for Grapes of Wrath, bringing to public attention the plight of dispossessed farmers.

After Steinbeck and Henning divorced in 1942, he married Gwyndolyn Conger. The couple moved to New York City and had two sons, Thomas and two years later, John. During the war years, Steinbeck served as a war correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune. Some of his dispatches reappeared in Once There Was A War. In 1945, Steinbeck published Cannery Row and continued to write prolifically, producing plays, short stories and film scripts. In 1950, he married Elaine Anderson Scott and they remained together until his death.

Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962 "...for his realistic as well as imaginative writings, distinguished by a sympathetic humor and keen social perception.." In his acceptance speech, Steinbeck summarized what he sought to achieve through his works:

"...Literature is as old as speech. It grew out of human need for it and it has not changed except to become more needed. The skalds, the bards, the writers are not separate and exclusive. From the beginning, their functions, their duties, their responsibilities have been decreed by our species... Further more, the writer is delegated to declare and to celebrate man's proven capacity of greatness of heart and spirit—gallantry in defeat, for courage, compassion and love. In the endless war against weakness and despair, these are the bright rally flags of hope and emulation. I hold that a writer who does not passionately believe in the perfectibility of man has no dedication nor any membership in literature..."

Steinbeck remained a private person, shunning publicity and moving frequently in his search for privacy. He died on December 20, 1968 in New York City, where he and his family made a home. But his final resting place was the valley he had written about with such passion. At his request, his ashes were interred in the Garden of Memories cemetery in Salinas. He is survived by his son, Thomas. (Author biography courtesy of the National Steinbeck Center—via Barnes and Noble.)

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Critics Say. . .

Probably the best of John Steinbeck's novels, East of Eden is long but not "big," and anyone who, deceived by its spread in space and time (c. 1860-1920), says that it is "epical in its sweep," is merely in the usual grip of cliche. It's dramatic center is a narrow story of social horror that rests quite disarmingly on the proposition that "there are monsters born in the world to human parents." But through the exercise of a really rather remarkable freedom of his rights as a novelist, Mr. Steinbeck weaves in...this story of prostitution a fantasia of history and of myth that results in a strange and original work of art.
Mark Schorer - New York Times (9/21/52)



A novel planned on the grandest possible scale . . . One of those occasions when a writer has aimed high and then summoned every ounce of energy, talent, seriousness, and passion of which he was capable . . . It is an entirely interesting and impressive book.
New York Herald Tribune



The newest addition to the Oprah pantheon is John Steinbeck's East of Eden, published in 1952. . . . All well and good, but that makes it all the more disheartening to report that East of Eden is a complete dud. And not just from the perspective of an academic such as Harold Bloom, who once wrote that nothing by Steinbeck after The Grapes of Wrath, including East of Eden, deserves re-reading. We're not talking about getting through this book twice, but just once. Oprah promised her readers a rip-roaring plot—“like a movie,” “you just don't want it to end”—and every one of the juicy Danielle Steele essentials—“[East of Eden] has it all: love and betrayal and greed and murder and sex.” But when the love has no resonance or dimension and the betrayal and murder seem deserved because a character has been written with such dullness, the book doesn't pass muster as a beach read, let alone a tome to stand the test of time. And the sex? Don't let Oprah fool you. She's mostly referring to the decidedly unsexy whorehouse that serves as a set piece in the second half of the book.
Jia Lynn Yang - Yale Review of Books


Readers Say...
(Occasionally, with older books few online reviews are available, so we look for helpful reviews by Barnes & Noble customers.)

Outstanding! I am glad I did not read this earlier in my life, I doubt it would have penetrated as deeply as it now does. So powerful and captivating, you wont want the story to end. Steinbeck writes with such vivid descriptions that there is no effort at all to see everything in your mind clear as day.
Reviewer - Thomas, 12/19/03

Emotional, thoughtful and brilliant: I usually don't do online reviews but, after reading this book, I had no other choice. The two families (the Hamiltons and the Trasks) in this novel are an inspiration and very easy to relate to. The character of Cathy (Kate)grabbed me with such force that I loved and hated her all at once. I could not put this book down. Steinbeck is a master of imagery and characterization skills. The beginning is a bit slow and there are a couple of spots in the book where it drags a little but don't stop reading because the good FAR outweighs the bad in this book. It's about time Oprah took a look back in time for her book club.
Reviewer - Tonja, an education student at OC, 8/12/03

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Book Club Discussion Questions

Sorry—the publisher has not made any questions available for this book.

But don't despair. Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:

   • Generic Discussion Questions
   • Read-Think-Talk About a Book

Also consider these LitLovers discussion pointers:

1. The most salient feature of Steinbeck's novel is the parallel to the Biblical loss of paradise and the Cain and Abel story. That would be a good place to start. You might even start with the title itself, East of Eden: what is its significance.

2. Cathy—described as a "monster"—represents the novel's evil force. You might talk about whether she is born immoral or becomes so of her own free will. Drawing from passages in the book, are her immoral choices inevitable...or does she have freedom of action?

3. Talk about Lee's role in the novel and his concept of timshel. What is the meaning of the word?

4. Think about the role of wealth in the novel: it is ill-gotten and passed down (like original sin) from generation to generation.

(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)