East of Eden

Chapter 15

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

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Copywork

A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more.

Samuel said satirically, “It’s my duty to take this thing of yours and kick it in the face, then raise it up and spread slime on it thick enough to blot out its dangerous light.” His voice grew strong with vehemence. “I should hold it up to you muck-covered and show you its dirt and danger. I should warn you to look closer until you can see how ugly it really is. I should ask you to think of inconstancy and give you examples. I should give you Othello’s handkerchief.

Read both passages aloud. Adam starts sentence after sentence with “And,” and Samuel starts four in a row with “I should.” Which speaker sounds more sure of what he is saying?

For the educator Two speeches from the ride home, one answering the other. The first is Adam’s account of what Cathy did to his gray life, the seven sentences he speaks after Samuel says, “I eat stories like grapes.” The book prints them inside quotation marks as one speech; here they stand as sentences. Its first sentence is plain and complete, and the six after it all open on “And”, so the speech climbs one short step at a time: light, color, the world, the day, no limits, good people, and last the speaker himself, “And I was not afraid any more.” Point out that the climb ends not on joy but on fear gone: the change in a long gray life is measured by the fear that has left it. The second passage is Samuel’s reply a little later, after Adam says he wants the wells to repay “value received.” Its first sentence opens on a narrative tag, with a comma before the opening quotation mark, and then runs through a chain of verbs (take, kick, raise, spread, blot out) to end on Adam’s own word turned dark, “dangerous light.” The short second sentence turns the tone: “satirically” gives way to “vehemence.” Then the speech opens again with a new quotation mark that this passage does not close, because Samuel goes on talking, and four sentences each begin “I should”, each a different duty. “Othello’s handkerchief” is the false proof, planted in Shakespeare’s play, that persuades Othello his faithful wife has betrayed him: Samuel’s own example of the duty is a doubt that was a lie; a sentence of context is enough, and nothing in the lesson needs more. Students copying practise the repeated opening, the run of verbs, the short turning sentence, and quotation marks around speech broken by narration. For the talk prompt, some students will say Adam is surer: nothing in his speech hedges, and each “And” simply adds. Others will say Samuel is: he knows exactly what the duty is, and his voice grows strong. A sharp reader may say Samuel’s sureness is a satirist’s, since he goes on to refuse the duty he describes. Let them argue it from both passages.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from Adam sitting “like a contented cat on his land” to Adam looking up at “the faint stars.” If you could keep only one line from it, which would you keep?

Cathy asks if Adam thinks her scar is darker today. He says, “No, I don’t,” and the narrator answers, “But it was.” Why might Adam say no? Character
Adam tells Samuel, “Remember my name is Adam. So far I’ve had no Eden, let alone been driven out.” Why would a happy man joke about being driven out? Tone
Lee tells Samuel, “You see what is, where most people see what they expect.” At supper Samuel feels “Something wrong,” but he cannot name it. How much does Samuel really see? Character
The narrator says Cathy gives Adam “proper answers,” because anything else would be wasted effort. At the end, under the tree, she tells him plainly that she will go. What makes it worth saying now? Inference

Make a Connection Lee says some people will only listen to him in pidgin, because pidgin is what they expect. Think of a time you had to talk the way others expected before they would listen. What did that do to what you meant to say?

Vocabulary

vehemence: His voice grew strong with vehemence. Strong, forceful feeling that pushes into the voice; passion pressed hard. It comes from the Latin vehemens, eager or violent. Samuel begins his speech “satirically,” mocking the duty he describes, but by the next sentence his voice has grown strong with vehemence, so the student has to ask how much of the mockery he means.
inconstancy: I should ask you to think of inconstancy and give you examples. Failing to stay the same, especially in love; changeableness or unfaithfulness. Constant means steady and true, and in- turns it around. It is the doubt a hard friend would raise about a beloved, and Samuel lists raising it as a duty he then refuses.
raptly: He glanced at Adam and saw that he was looking raptly at his wife. With complete, carried-away attention, as if seized by what one sees. Rapt comes from the Latin for seized or carried off, the root of rapture. At supper Samuel feels “something strange and strained”; Adam looks raptly at his wife, and “Whatever was strange was not strange to Adam.” The word holds both sides of his looking: it is total, and it is so full that nothing else gets in.
paragon: My wife is one of those paragons—a woman who does not talk very much. A model of perfection; someone held up as the best example of a quality. It came into English through French from the Italian paragone, a touchstone, the stone once used to test gold. At supper Adam answers Samuel’s question for his wife and calls her “one of those paragons” for her quiet: he turns her silence into a virtue, and “those” makes her one of a type he already has in mind. Samuel answers that “a silence tells the most,” and reads the same silence another way.

Critical thinking

Adam says that toward his father he had “the kind of feeling you have in church, and not a little fear in it.” How different is his feeling for Cathy?
Samuel says a friend’s “duty” is to spread slime on Adam’s happiness. A friend once did that duty for Samuel. But he calls himself “a false friend” and leaves it alone. Was that kind or careless?
Adam says the light in his life came from Cathy, and Samuel asks, “And not out of you?” Where does the light Adam feels really come from?