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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
Adam loves Cathy without knowing her, and Charles knows her without loving her. By the end of the wedding night, which of the brothers has been fooled?
The tension In the doorway, while Charles struggles with a single stone, time stops for Adam and he proposes out of a surge of love; at the bureau the same afternoon Cathy has already decided, because “She needed protection and money. Adam could give her both.”
Cathy, beaten nearly to death, drags herself to the Trask farm. Adam nurses her and falls in love, Charles distrusts her, and within weeks she is Adam’s wife, and in Charles’s bed that same night.
The chapter moves in six parts. Charles respects Adam more since learning of the prison, and Adam is talking of Paris and the Sphinx when a sound on the stoop turns out to be not a cat but a woman, beaten nearly to death, crawling up the steps. Adam puts her in his own bed and sends Charles for the doctor over Charles’s warning about what the county will say. Washing her face, Adam remembers his stepmother at the same bed, and hears himself promise that she can stay as long as she wants. In the second part the doctor sets her arm, sews her scalp and says someone tried to kill her; Adam explodes at the idea of the sheriff, and later touches her hand in secret. Waking slowly from the opium, Cathy remembers Mr. Edwards’s face turning to murder and fears that someone knows about a fire. Hearing Adam argue that her cracked skull may have taken her memory, she writes for the sheriff that she remembers nothing, and wins him. Only Charles is against her; she watches him rub the scar on his forehead. In the third part Adam is happier than he can remember. Charles tells Cathy he does not trust her and almost recognizes something in her, calls her a devil, and hears her answer, “That makes two of us”. He bluffs that she talked in her drugged sleep, then laughs behind the henhouse. In the fourth part Cathy, badly frightened and without money, tells Adam she never lost her memory and lets him build a story that she is protecting her father. Adam stands in the back doorway while time seems to stop, then proposes. Alone at the bureau, she settles on the marriage she had chosen before he asked. In the fifth part, at the stone wall, Charles tells Adam of Alex Platt’s find by the county road (a suitcase of a man’s clothes without labels, an empty purse and nearly four thousand dollars) and demands that the girl go. Adam promises a week, and says her memory has not come back. In the sixth part Adam marries her before a justice of the peace while Charles is buying calf feed. Charles rages, Adam says he is jealous and plans to leave for California, and Cathy twice says she does not want to go. That night Adam drinks tea from what she calls the wrong cup, with her sleeping medicine in it, and falls into a heavy sleep. At eleven Charles comes home tipsy and finds her by his bed. He laughs, says “The poor bastard,” and takes her in.
Before reading, ask the student what it would take for them to trust a stranger who turned up hurt at their door. Hold the answer. Read the first part aloud and stop when Adam calls the doctor in, to ask what Adam knows about the girl and what he has already promised her. Read the second part, pausing after “She had won the sheriff” to ask who in the house she has not won. Read the third and fourth parts together, and stop after Cathy smiles to think what Charles would say, to ask who knows about the proposal and who does not. Read the last two parts without stopping. Come back to the opening answer only at the last written question.
Retell The student retells the chapter from Charles’s new respect for Adam to his laugh at eleven o’clock. Look for the six parts in order, and for the chain of Cathy’s stories: no memory for the sheriff, then a father’s secret for Adam. Look too for a clear line between what the chapter shows and what it leaves unsaid: whose money Alex Platt found, whether the cups were switched on purpose, and whether Adam ever learns of the night.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two short paragraphs about one person seen two ways. In the first, someone looks at that person with tenderness: open with a long clause before the main verb, balance the next sentence on “but”, and end with a sentence of four or five words. In the second, the same person looks at themselves alone: one sentence that carries them across a room, then short plain sentences, the last ending on the word that matters most.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that Adam is the one fooled, and gathers the pencil, the father’s secret, the bureau (“She needed protection and money. Adam could give her both.”), Adam’s “I’ll wait”, and the heavy sleep. The other argues that Charles is, and gathers his “I don’t” when asked how he knows so much, the bluff that frightened her toward shelter, “She’ll destroy you,” and the blanket at eleven o’clock. Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may say that Adam learns of the night, or that Charles knows her past.
Purpose Close on where the chapter stops: in Charles’s room, on a laugh and “The poor bastard,” with Adam asleep on her medicine and nothing said about the morning. Ask why the narrator ends there and not with Adam waking, and what the reader now carries that Adam does not.
Easier Read aloud the basin scene in the first part, the pencil scene in the second, the talk between Charles and Cathy in the third, and the doorway and the bureau in the fourth. Talk through the first, second and third discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the talk at the stone wall. Adam has heard of California valleys where “you can’t find a stone, not even a little one”; Charles answers that there is no farm without “something wrong with it”, and asks, “What’s a few stones?” Which brother’s way of seeing a farm is his way of seeing Cathy? The essay should meet the objection that Charles, who shrugs at the stones, cannot shrug at her, and weigh how he answers her at eleven o’clock.
1. As Adam washes the blood from her face, he remembers his stepmother at this same bed. She said something over and over, but he cannot remember what. Then he hears himself talking “almost as though he were a stranger listening.” Whose voice is he hearing?Character
What it asks It asks what Adam is listening to when he talks to the hurt girl. He has sent Charles for the doctor and is alone with her. As the water loosens the blood, his mind goes back: “it was this room, this bed.” His stepmother stood over him with a damp cloth, and “she had said something over and over. He heard it but he could not remember what it was.” Then Adam talks, and keeps talking: “You’ll be all right,” “I’ll take care of you”, “There’s lots of time. There’s lots of time.” He hears it “almost as though he were a stranger listening.” The student says whose voice that is. It feeds the hinge: this is where Adam’s love begins, before he knows her name, and the last question asks what that love saw. The card must not make the memory a weakness only; the hinge counts his tenderness here as real.
His stepmother’s. He cannot remember what she said, but his mouth seems to: he says the same few things over and over, as she did, in the same room, with a cloth in his hand. The care he gives the girl is care he was given once, and he is giving it back.
His stepmother was standing over him with a damp cloth in her hand
There’s lots of time. There’s lots of time.
A new one. The narrator’s word is “stranger”: Adam does not know this man who tells someone he has never seen that she can stay as long as she wants. A huge warmth comes over him, and what it says is not a memory but a promise about the future. Something is waking in him that he has never heard before.
As he worked gently with his cloth a huge warmth crept over him.
You can stay here as long as you want.
A strong answer A strong response names the voice and stands on the basin scene. One reader hears the stepmother: Adam cannot remember what she said over and over, yet he says the same few things over and over in the same room, so his care for the girl is care he was given and is now giving back. Another hears a new Adam: the narrator calls him a stranger to himself, a huge warmth comes over him, and he makes promises about the future, not the past. The best answers notice that either way the voice answers something in Adam before it answers anything in her: he does not yet know her name.
2. Cathy hears Adam ask the sheriff, “How do you know she can remember?” Then the sheriff asks her name, and her pencil writes “I don’t know” in huge letters. How much of that lie belongs to Adam?Inference
What it asks It asks the student to weigh Adam’s part in the first lie Cathy tells. She lies in bed hearing the men argue, and the narrator says plainly: “Raised voices gave her the cue to her method.” The sheriff wants a name. Adam answers that her jaw is broken, then: “You heard the doctor say her skull was cracked. How do you know she can remember?” Charles cuts in: “You make it sound like it was you who did it.” Then the pencil: “I don’t know,” “All black. Can’t think,” “No. Mixed up. Help me.” And “She had won the sheriff.” The student says how much of the lie is Adam’s. It feeds the hinge: if Adam helped write the story he believes, his being fooled is partly his own work. The card must not say Adam knows she is lying here; he learns it only when she tells him, in the fourth part, and even then she gives him a new story.
Much of it. Adam handed it to her. Before he spoke she was only looking for a way out; his argument for leaving her alone told her what to be, a girl who cannot remember. The same thing happens in the fourth part, when she lets him guess that her secret protects her father, and the narrator says he would make up the story himself.
Raised voices gave her the cue to her method.
How do you know she can remember?
He would make up the story himself.
Little of it. Adam meant to protect her, not to fool the sheriff, and the lie is all hers: she shuts her eyes, her mouth goes thin, and she writes. Her mind had already “sniffed about like a rat looking for an escape” before anyone spoke. Adam gave her a chance; any chance would have done.
And her mind sniffed about like a rat looking for an escape.
Her mouth grew thin and her eyes squinted.
A strong answer A strong response weighs Adam’s share and stands on the second part. One reader says much of it: the narrator says the raised voices gave her the cue, and the cue was Adam’s own question about whether she can remember, so the story he later believes is one he first suggested. Another says little: the lie is hers, planned with her eyes shut, and her mind was already hunting for an escape; Adam gave her an opening, not a plan. The best answers notice the pattern coming back in the fourth part, where Adam guesses the father’s secret himself and never finishes asking why she lied.
3. Charles tells Cathy, “I think you’re a devil.” She laughs softly. “That makes two of us,” she says. Two of what?Character
What it asks It asks the student to hear the one line in which Cathy may be speaking about herself without a mask. Charles has come to her door. He tells her he does not trust her, does not believe she lost her memory, and that there is “something—I almost recognize.” She asks what he means to do about her; he says he will get her out and bring his brother around “if I have to lick him.” She calls him a mean man. He answers: “I don’t think I’m half as mean as you are under that nice skin. I think you’re a devil.” She laughs softly, says the line, and asks how long she has. The student says two of what: the line can mean two devils, or two people who agree that she is one. It feeds the hinge: this is what Charles knows about her, and how he knows it. The card must not say Charles knows her past; asked later how he knows so much, he says “I don’t”.
Two devils: Cathy and Charles. She throws his word back at him: if she is a devil, so is he. The narrator says the knowing runs both ways, and that he is the only person she has ever met who plays her game. Her laugh is one player meeting another.
And if he had recognized her, so had she recognized him.
He was the only person she had ever met who played it her way.
Two people who think she is a devil: Charles, and Cathy herself. She agrees with him. It is a confession, made with a laugh to the one person in the house who already thinks so, and so the one person she need not act for.
She laughed softly.
She didn’t mind his suspicion of her.
A strong answer A strong response says two of what and stands on the third and fourth parts. One reader hears two devils: she throws his word back, and the narrator soon says she recognized him as he half recognized her, the only person who ever played it her way. Another hears two people who agree that she is a devil: she says it softly to the one man she does not have to fool, then turns straight to how long she has. The best answers notice that the line can work both ways at once, and ask what it means for Charles to be known by her in the same breath that he claims to know her.
4. Charles tells Cathy she talked a lot while she was drugged. Then, behind the henhouse, he slaps his leg and laughs. “I thought she was smarter,” he says to himself. What has the bluff won him?Plot structure
What it asks It asks what Charles’s threat actually gets him. When Cathy wonders aloud what happens if she does not go, he regards her “craftily, almost with pleasure at the thought of combat” and tells her she talked a lot under the drug, “like in your sleep.” She says she does not believe it; he laughs, “for he had seen the quick tightening of her mouth”, and promises to keep quiet if she goes. Behind the henhouse he laughs again and feels “more easy than he had for days.” The next part opens: “Charles had frightened her badly.” She needs protection, her tricks will not work on him, and by the end of that part she has settled on marrying Adam. The student says what the bluff won. It feeds the hinge: Charles is the brother who knows her, and here his knowing is a guess dressed as a threat. The card must not say Cathy did talk in her sleep, or that Charles knows anything of her past.
The opposite of what he wanted. He wants her out of the house and away from his brother. The bluff frightens her into looking for shelter that will last, with a week or ten days to find it, and the shelter she finds is a husband: Adam.
Charles had frightened her badly.
She had to be sheltered, and would have to be for a long time.
Her respect. Her tricks will not work on him, and now she knows it. She feels a kinship to him and smiles to think what he will say. The bluff makes him the one person in the house she takes seriously, which is a kind of winning, though not the kind he meant.
She knew that her tricks would not work with him, and she needed protection and rest.
She felt a kinship to Charles.
A strong answer A strong response names what the bluff won and stands on the third and fourth parts. One reader says it won the opposite of what he wanted: the next part opens with Charles having frightened her badly, she needs shelter for a long time and has a week or ten days, and the shelter she chooses is his brother. Another says it won her respect: she knows now that her tricks will not work on him, and she feels a kinship to him. The best answers notice that Charles walks off easy because he thinks she was fooled, and ask who was.
5. By the county road, Alex Platt has found a suitcase of a man’s clothes with no labels, an empty purse, and almost four thousand dollars. Steinbeck puts this news right after we learn that Cathy needs “protection and money.” What do you wonder here that neither brother does?Author's choice
What it asks It asks the student to notice where the narrator puts a piece of valley news. Cathy has just stood at the bureau and decided: “She needed protection and money. Adam could give her both.” At the start of that part the narrator has said: “Her money was gone.” In the next scene Charles tells Adam that Alex Platt, hunting rabbits between his cedars and his stone wall on the county road, found a suitcase of a man’s clothes, “all packed nice”, soaked with rain and there some time, a locked wooden box with near four thousand dollars in it, and a purse with nothing in it. No name, no labels: “It’s just like the fellow didn’t want to be traced.” Adam says twice that somebody is sure to claim it, Charles agrees, and then he turns to the county’s talk about the girl. The student says what a reader might wonder that the brothers do not. It feeds the hinge: Charles, the brother who suspects her, hears this and suspects nothing. The card must not say the money, the purse or the suitcase belong to Cathy or to anyone else; the chapter never says, and no one in it links them to her.
Whether the money and the empty purse have anything to do with her. She has just counted her needs as protection and money, and the narrator has said her money was gone; now money and a purse with nothing in it turn up by the road with no name. A reader may suspect a link the chapter never makes, and the irony stands either way: she plans for money while a box of it lies unclaimed down the road.
Her money was gone.
And he found a purse too. There wasn’t anything in it.
Who the man was who did not want to be traced. Somebody beat her nearly to death, and the doctor says somebody tried to kill her; Cathy remembers Mr. Edwards’s face dissolving “into murder.” A man’s clothes with no labels at all, left by a road, make a reader think of a man who meant to leave nothing behind. The brothers think only of who will claim the money.
It’s just like the fellow didn’t want to be traced.
If you want the truth, somebody tried to kill her.
A strong answer A strong response names what a reader wonders and why the brothers do not. One reader wonders about the money: Cathy has just counted her needs as protection and money, her own money is gone, and now a box of it and an empty purse turn up by the road with no name. Another wonders about the man: a suitcase with no labels at all looks like someone who did not want to be traced, in a chapter about a woman somebody tried to kill. The best answers notice that Charles, who suspects her of everything, finds the missing labels only funny and turns at once to the county’s gossip, and they leave open what the chapter leaves open.
1. Adam stands in the back doorway, and time seems to stop. When he looks back at his brother, Charles is “still struggling with the same large stone.” Then Adam goes in and asks Cathy to marry him. What does his brother have to do with the proposal?
What it asks It asks the student to find Charles inside Adam’s proposal. Cathy has just told Adam she is afraid, that his brother wants her out, and that “If he wanted me to go I would have to.” Adam answers that his brother cannot make her go: he owns half the farm and has his own money. Then he walks to the back door. Far off in the field his brother is lifting stones from a sled onto the wall. Adam’s ears and eyes clear; chickens, wind, hoofs and the far-off pounding of a neighbor shingling a barn become “a kind of music”; “There was change in everything.” He looks back at his brother: “No time had passed. Charles was still struggling with the same large stone.” Joy and sorrow are “felted into one fabric”; he turns, a surge of love fills him, and he proposes, saying he could protect her. The student builds a thesis on what Charles has to do with the proposal, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: this is the fault line between loving her and knowing her, and the brother who knows her stands in the middle of it. The card must not make Adam only a fool; the narrator gives his moment real weight. It must not say Charles learns of the proposal; Adam keeps it from him, and Charles hears only “We got married.”
A great deal. Adam goes to the door with his brother in his ears: Cathy has just said that if Charles wanted her gone she would have to go, and Adam has just said that Charles cannot make her. He looks at Charles twice before he turns to her. A wife is someone her husband’s brother cannot put out, so “I could protect you” answers Charles as much as it answers her. When he reaches the wall, it is Charles’s tone that stops him telling.
If he wanted me to go I would have to. I can’t spoil your life.
My brother can’t make you go. I own half of this farm. I have my own money.
Adam was on the point of telling him of his proposal but the tone of Charles’ voice made him change his mind.
Nothing, and that is the point. Charles is the one thing in the scene that does not change: the same brother, the same stone, the same hard work. Everything else turns to music and light for Adam, and the proposal comes out of a moment his brother has no share in. The narrator sets the heavy stone beside the held breath so the reader sees how far Adam has gone from the field in front of him. His love is real, and it is his alone.
There was change in everything.
And Adam had not released the full, held breath he had taken when time stopped.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Charles is inside the proposal: Cathy has just said that if his brother wanted her gone she would have to go, Adam looks at Charles twice before he turns to her, and a wife is someone a brother cannot put out, so “I could protect you” is partly an answer to Charles. The strongest objection is the doorway itself: everything in it turns to music except Charles and his stone, and the proposal comes out of a joy his brother has no share in. A good revision might hold that Charles gives Adam the reason to ask and the doorway gives him the courage, while Cathy, at the bureau, had chosen the marriage before either moved him. The best answers do not make Adam only a fool, and carry this into the last question, where the same night tests both brothers.
2. Adam loves Cathy without knowing her, and Charles knows her without loving her. By the end of the wedding night, which of the brothers has been fooled?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. Adam takes in a woman he has never seen, nurses her, believes her pencil, believes her secret, keeps it from his brother, and marries her inside the week he promised Charles. Charles distrusts her from the first, tells her “I don’t trust you”, calls her a devil and a whore, and warns, “She’ll destroy you, Adam, she’ll destroy you!” That night Cathy tells Adam she cannot be a wife to him until she is well, and asks him to sleep near her. He drinks from what she calls “the wrong cup” and goes down into a heavy opium sleep. At eleven Charles comes home tipsy and finds her by his bed. “I already been with a whore”, he says, and asks about her arm. Then he laughs, says “The poor bastard,” and throws back the blanket. The student builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say Adam ever learns of the night; the chapter ends in Charles’s room. It must not say Charles knows her past: asked how he knows so much, he says “I don’t”. And it should weigh the choices that lead to the last scene more than the scene itself.
Adam. He has married a woman who chose him as shelter, believed every story she gave him, and slept through his wedding night on her medicine while she went to his brother. His love saw someone helpless. The chapter shows the reader what he cannot see, and ends before he wakes.
She needed protection and money. Adam could give her both.
Adam went down into a heavy opium sleep though he fought to stay awake.
Charles. He was right about her, and being right protected nothing. His bluff hurried her toward the marriage, he warned that she would destroy his brother, and at eleven o’clock he takes her into his own bed. Knowing what she is did not stop him; it may be what drew him. He laughs, “The poor bastard”, and the joke is on himself as well.
She’ll destroy you, Adam, she’ll destroy you!
Suddenly Charles laughed.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Adam has been fooled: he married a woman who chose him as a refuge, believed her pencil and her secret, and sleeps through his wedding night on her medicine while she goes to his brother. The strongest objection is Charles: he knew she was false and said so, and knowing protected nothing, since his bluff hurried her toward the marriage and at eleven o’clock he takes her into his bed anyway. A good revision might hold that Adam is fooled about her and Charles is fooled about himself, in believing that to see what she is was enough. The best answers stay with the choices that lead to the last scene, and do not say Adam ever learns of it.
Her fingers were pink and soft, but the skin on the back of her hand seemed to have an underbloom like a pearl.A glow that seems to come from beneath a surface; built from under and bloom, the soft glow of healthy skin or the dusty sheen on a ripe plum. It is a rare word, and Steinbeck spends it at the moment Adam is most taken with her: he touches her fingertips in secret and sees light under the skin. The word tells what Adam sees, and leaves the reader to ask what is really under there.
He regarded her craftily, almost with pleasure at the thought of combat.In a sly, scheming way, planning a move the other person will not see; from craft, an old word for skill and strength that came to mean cunning. Charles is about to bluff, and the narrator gives him the word that fits Cathy best. It marks him as the one person in the house who plays her kind of game.
Her face tightened and her hand closed convulsively.In a sudden, jerking way that the body does on its own, before the mind decides anything; from convulse, to shake hard and helplessly. It is the one moment in the chapter when Cathy’s body answers before her plans do: Adam has just proposed, and her hand grips shut. A moment later the narrator says she “recovered in an instant”, which tells you there was something to recover from.
When he was gone Cathy got up from her bed and moved unsteadily to the bureau.In a shaky, wobbling way, not fully in control of one’s balance; the opposite of steadily. Cathy’s body is still weak from the beating, and she crosses the room unsteadily. Her mind is the opposite: in the same paragraph she has already decided to marry Adam and knows she can control him. The word marks the gap between how she moves and how she thinks.