East of Eden

Chapter 12

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

You can see how this book has reached a great boundary that was called 1900. Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what had happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to be—more rich and meaningful the farther back it was. In the books of some memories it was the best time that ever sloshed over the world—the old time, the gay time, sweet and simple, as though time were young and fearless.

Think back, recall our little nation fringing the oceans, torn with complexities, too big for its britches. Just got going when the British took us on again. We beat them, but it didn’t do us much good. What we had was a burned White House and ten thousand widows on the public pension list.

Read both passages aloud. The first is about how folks remember the old days. The second remembers a war with the British. Which of the two tells the past more honestly?

For the educator Two passages, two ways of telling the past. The first is the chapter’s opening three sentences, from the boundary of 1900 to the old days “as though time were young and fearless”. The second is the whole short paragraph that starts the run of history, just after some say the century must be left behind. In the first passage, the opening sentence is plain and speaks to the reader as “you”. The second sentence joins two clauses with “and”, then uses a dash to add what the muddying does: “more rich and meaningful the farther back it was”, a comparison in which one thing grows as the other does. The third sentence piles up praise in a series after a dash (“the old time, the gay time, sweet and simple”) and ends on “as though time were young and fearless”, where “were” marks something that is not so. The word “gay” has its older sense here, merry and carefree. Point out “sloshed”: the best time ever is given a messy, spilling verb, and students can argue over whether it brims or slops. The second passage is another voice. It opens with two commands (“Think back, recall”), hangs three phrases on “our little nation”, drops its subject in a fragment (“Just got going”), turns a victory on “but”, and ends with “What we had was”, which holds the plain fact back for the last words: a burned White House and widows on a pension list. Students copying them practise a dash that adds and a dash that lists, a series of three, a fragment, and a sentence that saves its point for the end. For the talk prompt, listen for students who call the second voice more honest because it gives hard facts where the first gave sweetness. Others will hear it shrink a war to a punch line, which is its own way of making the past what folks want it to be. Let them argue it from the two passages.

Discussion

Narration Tell back how the chapter moves, from “a great boundary that was called 1900” to the last line about strawberries. If you could keep only one line from it, which would you keep?

Someone remembers a good sling stone: “not round exactly but flattened and water-shaped”. Then the narrator says you can remember only that you had a pleasure. So how does that stone come back so clearly? Inference
The narrator says an old man might grumble that the boy in the grass will catch a cold, “and did”. Who heard him say it? Inference
Read aloud the sentence that curses the century, the one that ends “scrabbling for public lands and damn well getting them by any means at all.” How do the speakers feel about those lands? Tone
The slavery quarrel ends on “Who is it wants to take my property?”, and the next line is a man bleeding into his own beard. What does that picture say back to the man who asked? Moral reasoning
Early on, strawberries “don’t taste as they used to”. The chapter ends, right after the vow of a clean new century, with strawberries that “will never taste so good again”. What did the vow change? Author's choice

Make a Connection Think of a fresh start you have made or watched someone make, like a new school year or a New Year’s promise. Did it leave the old year behind, or carry it along?

Vocabulary

muddied: Another hundred years were ground up and churned, and what had happened was all muddied by the way folks wanted it to be—more rich and meaningful the farther back it was. Made cloudy and hard to see through, the way stirring a creek bed clouds clear water; from mud, used here of the past. The narrator does not say the past was lied about, only that wanting got into it, as silt gets into water, until no one can see the bottom. It is his first word on memory, and it puts every voice that follows under a question.
britches: Think back, recall our little nation fringing the oceans, torn with complexities, too big for its britches. An old, homely word for trousers. To be “too big for its britches” is to act grander than one is, the way a boy is scolded for showing off. Said of a whole young country, the saying is half fond and half sharp: the nation is pictured as a cocky boy, and the next lines show what its swagger cost.
self-murder: We got a lot of western land, damn near doubled our size, and besides that it was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murder settled on us the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible. The killing of oneself; an old word for suicide. Steinbeck uses it for a war a nation fought against itself. The word treats the country as one body, so the war’s dead are its own; it does not divide the country into sides. The picture that follows, a man “bleeding into his own beard”, carries the same idea.

Critical thinking

Just after saying history “was secreted in the glands of a million historians”, the chapter tells a hundred years of history itself. Does its own telling come from the glands too?
The narrator speaks for old men who miss the past and for people shouting for a clean new century. Is he mocking these voices, or does he share their hope?