East of Eden
John Steinbeck(1952)
Extract
Thou mayest! Thou mayest!
Two brothers grow up in the Salinas Valley, one golden and beloved, the other dark and desperate for a father's blessing that never comes, and between them they reenact the oldest story ever told. John Steinbeck published this novel in 1952, calling it the book he had been practicing to write his whole life, and into it he poured his valley's history alongside a retelling of Genesis spanning three generations. The Hebrew word "timshel," thou mayest, becomes the moral axis: that human beings are neither compelled toward good nor condemned to evil but granted the terrible freedom of choice. Steinbeck understood that Cain's story is not a curse but a question, asked of every soul that has ever wanted to be loved and feared it was not enough.
If you loved this
Steinbeck's other California epic, but this one measures suffering in dust and distance instead of good and evil.
Dostoevsky writes the same Cain and Abel story, and the question of free will is just as unresolved.
McCarthy takes Steinbeck's American landscape and strips it of every trace of redemption.