East of Eden

Chapter 22

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Now that Samuel and Adam were seated together and the barriers were down, a curtain of shyness fell on Samuel. What he had beaten in with his fists he could not supplement easily. He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on. His mind grinned inward at itself.

We carry them along with us like invisible tails—the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel. And I don’t understand either of them. I don’t understand them at all but I feel them. Liza gets angry with me. She says I should not try to understand them. She says why should we try to explain a verity.

Read the second passage aloud. Samuel says he does not understand the two old stories “at all but I feel them.” What is the difference between feeling a story and understanding it?

For the educator Both passages are Samuel’s, one from just after the fight and one from just before the reading, so together they hold the turn from fists to words. The first opens with a long setting clause (“Now that Samuel and Adam were seated together and the barriers were down”) and only then reaches its subject, and the main clause is a metaphor: “a curtain of shyness fell on Samuel.” The second sentence puts its object first, “What he had beaten in with his fists,” so the fight comes before the man who must now follow it up; its key verb, “supplement,” is a careful Latin word for a rough act. The third names two virtues in a pair, “courage and forbearance,” and then gives them a body that can go soft, “flabby,” for want of use. The fourth is six words long and turns the joke on Samuel himself: “His mind grinned inward at itself.” The second passage is Samuel talking at the table. Its first sentence carries a simile, “like invisible tails,” and then a dash that names the two stories in a balanced pair: “the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel.” The next two sentences repeat “understand,” and the third turns on a plain “but”: “I don’t understand them at all but I feel them.” Then three short sentences hand the talk to Liza, two of them opening the same way, “She says,” and the last one ending on the vocabulary word “verity.” Students copying practice a sentence with a long opening clause and a metaphor in its main clause, a sentence that puts its object first, a pair of abstract nouns given a body, a short closing sentence, a simile followed by a dash and a balanced pair, a repeated key word, a sentence that turns on “but,” and two sentences that open the same way. For the talk prompt, some will say that to feel a story is to know it is true of you without being able to say why, which is close to what Lee says later (“unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us”); some will say that understanding is explaining, and side with Samuel’s urge to look under every stone; some will take Liza’s part, that a verity is felt and need not be explained. Leave it open. Whether Lee’s explanation of the story holds for all people is what the last written question asks.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the weeds on the Trask place to Samuel driving off without saying good-by. Then pick the one moment you think matters most. What does that moment tell you about what Steinbeck wants this chapter to do?

Adam is sure Cathy did not mean to kill him. If she had wanted him dead, he says, it “would have been a kind of love.” Is being hated really closer to love than not mattering at all? Character
Liza calls Samuel “the most contentious man this world has ever seen.” After Lee lays out his answer, Samuel says, “You’ve taken a contentious game and made an answer of it.” What does Samuel stand to lose if Lee is right? Theme
When the boys are named, Samuel laughs and tells them, “now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.” How can being damned be a right? Moral reasoning
At the shed, Samuel turns on Adam with tears in his eyes. “Don’t think it will ever die,” he cries. What is the “it” that he says will not die? Inference

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when giving something a name changed the way people treated it. What can a name do that a description cannot?

Vocabulary

verity: She says why should we try to explain a verity. A truth, especially a basic one held to be beyond question. It comes from the Latin veritas, truth, the root of verify and veracity. Samuel is reporting Liza: a verity is a thing to accept, not to explain, and to pick at it is almost an insult. The word appears earlier in the plural, when Joe’s letters attack “all the accepted verities” at college. Near the end Lee asks, “Couldn’t a world be built around accepted truth?” The chapter sets two ways of holding a truth side by side: Liza’s, which needs no explaining, and Lee’s, which is reached by explaining.
forbearance: He thought of the virtues of courage and forbearance, which become flabby when there is nothing to use them on. Patient self-control: holding back from acting, especially from striking back or punishing, when one could. It comes from forbear, an old verb made of for- (away) and bear, so to forbear is to hold off. The noun names a strength, not a weakness. Samuel thinks of it right after the fight, sitting across from the man he has just knocked down, so the word has some irony: in the yard he showed courage and very little forbearance. Now the slow talk ahead needs the second virtue, and he finds it “flabby” for want of use.
vehemence: She wins all arguments by the use of vehemence and the conviction that a difference of opinion is a personal affront. Great force of feeling, shown in strong and insistent words. It comes from the Latin vehemens, eager or violent; the adjective is vehement and the adverb vehemently. Samuel says Liza wins arguments not by reasons but by the heat with which she holds them, and by treating disagreement as an insult. Set it beside Samuel, who argues by turning a thing over and over, and beside his own outburst in the yard. Vehemence can carry a truth or bury a question, and this chapter shows it doing both.

Critical thinking

Samuel chokes Adam and knocks him down twice. Afterward he asks, “Did I do it right?” Was he right to do it at all?
Adam asks why a man who knows so much works a dry hill ranch. “It’s because I haven’t courage,” Samuel says. Does the man we watch in this chapter lack courage?
Lee says the story of Cain and Abel lasts because it is everyone's story: someone is refused love, grows angry, does wrong, and carries guilt. Is he right that this is the story of all people?