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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
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?
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?
1. 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
2. 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
3. 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
4. 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
5. 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?
Olive had not her father’s brilliance, but she did have a sense of fun, together with her mother’s strong and undeviating will.
As a punishment the ride would have been cruel and unusual, but it was a prize, a gift, an honor, and an eminence.
And the teacher was not only an intellectual paragon and a social leader, but also the matrimonial catch of the countryside.
This was a fact she could not blast with her disbelief, and so she cried with vexation and went to neither dance.
The word had connotations of dirt and slovenliness and dishonor.
He reached up and shook Olive’s nerveless hand and walked hurriedly away.
1. 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?
2. 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?
3. 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?