East of Eden

Tension of opposites  The women in East of Eden are a varied group. "I want always balances in this book," Steinbeck wrote in his journal, "must have them."

 Hamilton women ◦ Grounded ◦ Practical ◦ Rock-firm in their convictions ◦ Moral template ◦ Brings sanity and balance to their families  Trask women ◦ Brooding ◦ Repressed by Cyrus ◦ Cowed to his power

 Cathy's power to dominate, manipulate and destroy is as repellent as it is fascinating—the essence of evil.

In part, the models are biblical and literary—Lilith and Ahab in Moby Dick. But in large part the story of Cathy is Steinbeck's own story of intense love and betrayal. Cathy is modeled on Gwyn, his second wife, mother of his sons. Journal of a Novel reveals, cautiously, some of his bitterness and pain: "Cathy has great power over people because she has simplified their weaknesses and has no feeling about their strengths and good nesses."

Pure evil? "The one person you are not going to understand in this book is Cathy and that is because you don't know her. Cathy sometimes tells the truth … You can believe her lies but when she tells the truth it is not credible."

 Steinbeck met Gwyn Conger in 1939, a few months after publication of The Grapes of Wrath. The attraction was electric and immediate. Nearly 20 years younger, sensual and fun- loving, Gwyn seemed everything his first wife, the tough, witty, hard-drinking and pragmatic Carol, was not.

 Divorcing Carol in 1943, Steinbeck married Gwyn the same year, a marriage that lasted only 5 years. Gwyn, a professional singer before her marriage, was not as winsome and tractable as Steinbeck may have wished. Children brought tensions. Gwyn's temperament rankled—the hardworking Steinbeck complained that she was always ill, slept until noon. She drank heavily. Gwyn's flirtations with other men, finally her acknowledged infidelity, brought on a split. In the terrible year of 1948, his closest friend Ed Ricketts died and Gwyn left him.

 Much of Cathy is Gwyn. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck writes his way out of the loss of Gwyn and the romantic ideal of love, loss of his sons and a sense of family.

Chapters 8, 13, and 17Chapters17  The novel keeps circling back to Cathy. The narrator John Steinbeck reexamines her meaning, literally rereading the text of Cathy in Chapters 8, 13, 17.  "When I said Cathy was a monster it seemed to me that it was so," he begins Chapter 17. "Now I have bent close with a glass over the small print of her and reread the footnotes, and I wonder if it was true."

 Does Cathy become less terrifying at the end of the book, more human? This question remains open. Is her giving Aron money an act of kindness—her only one—or her final act of revenge, forcing him to accept tainted money, her own?