East of Eden

Chapter 14

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Olive had not her father’s brilliance, but she did have a sense of fun, together with her mother’s strong and undeviating will. What light and beauty could be forced down the throats of her reluctant pupils, she forced.

In the light of what she did I have tried to imagine how she felt. Her soul must have crawled with horror, for how can you fly in something that does not exist? As a punishment the ride would have been cruel and unusual, but it was a prize, a gift, an honor, and an eminence. She must have looked into our eyes and seen the shining idolatry there and understood that she was trapped. Not to have gone would have let her family down. She was surrounded, and there was no honorable way out save death.

Read both passages aloud. In the first, Olive forces light and beauty on pupils who do not want it. In the second, she is trapped herself. What traps her?

For the educator Two passages about force. The first is a whole paragraph of two sentences from the first section, just before “There was a wall against learning.” Its first sentence weighs what Olive did not inherit against what she did, with “had not … but she did have”, and saves its strongest words for the end: “strong and undeviating will.” The second sentence turns itself around. Its object comes first (“What light and beauty could be forced down the throats of her reluctant pupils”), and the verb waits until the end, said a second time and now active: “she forced.” The second passage is the first six of the seven sentences in the paragraph that begins the son’s guessing about the flight. Point out “I have tried to imagine” and the two “must have” sentences: the son tells us he is guessing even as he paints her. It holds a question with no answer (“how can you fly in something that does not exist?”), an antithesis (“As a punishment … but it was a prize”), and a list of four that climbs to its highest word, “an eminence.” Then come two short sentences, and the last ends on “save death”, where “save” means except. Students copying them practise the “not … but” balance, the inverted sentence, the rising list and the short closing sentence. For the talk prompt, some students will name the family: the “shining idolatry” in their eyes is what traps her. Others will name Olive herself: the undeviating will of the first passage, which cannot find an “honorable” way to say no. Let them argue it from both passages.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the country school at Peach Tree to the pilot’s last words. If you could keep only one moment from it, which would you keep?

Two dances fall on the same Saturday night, twenty miles apart. Olive cannot get to both, so she cries and goes to neither. What would going to just one have cost her? Character
After nine weeks in bed, Olive’s son falls back crying, “I can’t get up!” She answers with his father’s work and his father’s debt, and he gets up. Was his “I can’t” true, or did her words change what he could do? Inference
As Olive gets ready to fly, her son guesses that she felt the eyes of Martin Hopps on her. He thinks she was “reimbursing him for his stolen life.” What could she owe him? Theme
Over what she believes are her burial clothes, two sergeants slip on three coats, then a helmet and goggles. Her son writes, “She looked like a goggled ball.” Why would a proud son let us laugh at her here? Tone
From the cockpit, Olive hands her engagement ring down to Mary. Then she sets her gold wedding ring “firmly.” Why does one ring go home and the other go up with her? Character

Make a Connection Think of a story your family tells again and again about one of its own. What does the telling keep, and what does it leave out?

Vocabulary

undeviating: Olive had not her father’s brilliance, but she did have a sense of fun, together with her mother’s strong and undeviating will. Never turning aside from its course; fixed and steady. To deviate is to wander off the road (the Latin root via means road), so an undeviating will never leaves it. The son gives Olive her mother’s undeviating will, and the chapter tests it: the will that will not turn aside gets her son out of bed, and will not let her turn down the airplane.
eminence: As a punishment the ride would have been cruel and unusual, but it was a prize, a gift, an honor, and an eminence. A high place of honor that lifts a person above others; also, a piece of high ground. The ride ends a rising list, a prize, a gift, an honor, and last an eminence. The son uses the word twice; the first time, the honor is so high that “we could hardly stand” it. Both senses fit a woman about to be lifted into the sky.
paragon: And the teacher was not only an intellectual paragon and a social leader, but also the matrimonial catch of the countryside. A perfect model of some quality, held up for others to copy. The valley asks its teacher to be a paragon of learning, a leader and a prize to marry, all at once, and watches her “jealously for any weakness of character.” Olive takes up that place at eighteen.
vexation: This was a fact she could not blast with her disbelief, and so she cried with vexation and went to neither dance. Annoyance and frustration at something that will not go your way; a smaller, hotter feeling than grief. Olive does not weep from sorrow over the dances. She weeps because one fact, twenty miles of road, will not give way to her. The word keeps the scene comic while showing how much she hates a fact she cannot refuse.
slovenliness: The word had connotations of dirt and slovenliness and dishonor. Messiness and carelessness about one’s dress, house or habits. To Olive a debt is not a matter of money but of character, and it sits between dirt and dishonor. A like horror sends her to buy new underwear before the flight, so that she will not be found dead in “mended or, worse, unmended underclothes.”
nerveless: He reached up and shook Olive’s nerveless hand and walked hurriedly away. Without strength or feeling, as if the nerves have stopped working. Nerve can also mean courage, so the word holds a joke: the pilot is praising her nerve while he shakes a hand with no nerve left in it. A moment later it takes four men to get her out of the cockpit.

Critical thinking

Olive did not quite believe in the war, even when Troop C left on a train. Then Martin Hopps was killed. She did not believe in airplanes either, though she had seen them. What makes a thing real to Olive?
Her son says Olive’s acts “were based on feelings rather than thoughts.” Up in the plane, after she hears “stuck,” is he right about her?
Olive smiles and nods at the pilot because she believes they are about to crash and wants to keep him calm. Is that real courage, even though she misunderstood what was happening?