East of Eden

Chapter 1

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. They were beckoning mountains with a brown grass love. The Santa Lucias stood up against the sky to the west and kept the valley from the open sea, and they were dark and brooding—unfriendly and dangerous. I always found in myself a dread of west and a love of east. Where I ever got such an idea I cannot say, unless it could be that the morning came over the peaks of the Gabilans and the night drifted back from the ridges of the Santa Lucias.

When June came the grasses headed out and turned brown, and the hills turned a brown which was not brown but a gold and saffron and red—an indescribable color.

Read the first passage aloud. The eastern range gets a long picture of a mother’s lap. The western range is summed up in four words, split by a dash. What does that difference in length do to the way you hear the two ranges?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences. The first is five sentences from one paragraph: two mountain ranges set against each other, then an admission. The first sentence is long and warm. It strings its praise together with “and”, “full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation”, and ends on a simile that slips from past to present tense, from “you wanted to climb” to “as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother”. The second is short and odd: “a brown grass love” sets a color and a plant in front of a feeling. The third gives the western range one plain clause about what it does, it “kept the valley from the open sea”, and then four flat words in two pairs, “dark and brooding” and “unfriendly and dangerous”, split by a dash. The fourth is the paragraph’s turn, a balanced line that reverses the order the paragraph has used and puts west first: “a dread of west and a love of east”. The fifth hedges, “I cannot say”, “unless it could be”, and then holds two parallel clauses, morning over one range and night behind the other. The second passage is one sentence about the June hills. It corrects itself as it goes, “a brown which was not brown”, names three colors joined by “and”, and ends after a dash on an admission: “an indescribable color”. Students copying the two practise a long sentence that piles phrases on “and”, a dash before a closing phrase, and parallel clauses held inside one “unless”. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who says the long picture draws the reader in while the four short words keep the reader out, and for one who says the short words hit harder and stay longer. Some will notice that the dark range is the only one the paragraph shows doing something useful. Both can point to the sentences.

Discussion

Narration Give a short account of the chapter in its two parts: the land, from the two ranges to the dry years, and then the people, from the first Indians to the grandfather’s arrival. Then pick the one sentence you think the rest of the chapter grows out of, and say why you chose it.

The narrator says, “Maybe the less you have, the more you are required to boast.” Who or what does the requiring? Inference
The narrator’s father drilled a well, and the drill brought up sea sand, whalebone and a piece of redwood. The narrator never says whether the well found water. Why would he leave that out? Author's choice
In the middle of the wildflowers, the narrator passes on a woman’s tip: a few white flowers make the colored ones look brighter. What is that tip doing in a chapter about a valley? Author's choice
The narrator calls the Indians “too lazy to hunt or fish.” In the same paragraph they live on shellfish and pound bitter acorns into flour. How well do his own details back up his judgment? Character
The narrator loves names like the Lame Moor most of all, because “each name suggests a story that has been forgotten”. What is a name worth if nobody remembers its story? Theme

Make a Connection Think of a place you have known for a long time, and some part of it you have always liked or feared without quite knowing why. Where do you think that feeling came from?

Vocabulary

swale: It is a long narrow swale between two ranges of mountains, and the Salinas River winds and twists up the center until it falls at last into Monterey Bay. A low, gently sloping hollow in the land, often damp, lying between higher ground (probably from a Norse word for cool). It is the narrator’s first picture of the valley, before any mountain, flower or person: a long low place with a range on each side. The word puts the valley between two things from the very first sentence.
foothills: I remember that the Gabilan Mountains to the east of the valley were light gay mountains full of sun and loveliness and a kind of invitation, so that you wanted to climb into their warm foothills almost as you want to climb into the lap of a beloved mother. Low hills at the foot of a mountain range, between the peaks and the flat land. In the copied paragraph the Gabilans’ “warm foothills” are where “you wanted to climb”, as into a lap. Later the narrator says “the foothills wore only a skin of topsoil”, and the chapter’s last line settles his grandfather “in the foothills to the east of King City”. The one word joins the land the narrator loves to the land where the soil is thinnest.
saffron: When June came the grasses headed out and turned brown, and the hills turned a brown which was not brown but a gold and saffron and red—an indescribable color. A deep orange-yellow, the color of a costly spice made from crocus flowers. The narrator says the June hills were “not brown but a gold and saffron and red”, then calls it “an indescribable color.” He refuses the plain word brown and reaches for precious ones: the dry season, when the streams stop and the ground cracks, still looks like gold to him.
principalities: Some of them stayed on grants as large as principalities, given to them by Spanish kings who had not the faintest idea of the gift. Lands ruled by a prince; small countries (related to prince and principal). The Spanish kings handed out “grants as large as principalities” with “not the faintest idea of the gift.” The word measures the land in kingdoms, and the irony falls on the givers: a country’s worth of valley passed from kings who did not know what they gave to men who lived on it in “poor feudal settlements”.
nuclei: Every ten miles along the traveled routes a general store and blacksmith shop happened, and these became the nuclei of little towns, Bradley, King City, Greenfield. Centers around which something gathers and grows (the plural of nucleus, the core of a cell or an atom). A store and a blacksmith shop “happened” every ten miles and became “the nuclei of little towns”. The word, with that odd verb, makes the towns sound grown rather than planned, like the houses that “sprang up” wherever water came out of the ground.

Critical thinking

During the dry years the people forget the rich years. During the wet years they lose “all memory of the dry years”. The narrator says, “It was always that way.” What would it cost them to remember?
The narrator loves the eastern mountains and dreads the western ones, but he cannot say why. Is the light and dark he sees in the valley really in the land, or in the people who look at it?