Chapter 22 — Teaching Companion

This chapter's big question

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?

The tension Adam begins the day saying “What I do is my own business” and ends it holding a son on his knee, but when Samuel reads the sixteen verses Adam blurts “I didn’t kill my brother—” and stops, “his mind went reeling back in time.”

Today's focus

How an old man’s fists, a Chinese naming-day outfit and sixteen verses from Genesis bring Adam back to his sons.

The shape at a glance

The chapter has four sections. First, more than a year after Cathy shot Adam and left, Adam lives as if under gray water. The Sanchez house stands unfinished, the gardens run to weeds, and the neighbors stop coming. Lee cooks, washes and raises the twins, who learn Cantonese words first. Samuel has tried twice to rouse Adam, and Liza tells him to stay away because he comes home sad. Samuel’s own family is scattering: Joe at Stanford writes letters in rhymed verse attacking belief, Tom is lost in books, Liza is growing old, and the daughters have gone. Samuel strains his back, and Dr. Tilson tells him not to sprain it again. In Will’s store he meets Lee, and over beer Lee tells him the twins have no names: Adam calls them “they.” Samuel promises to come the next day. Second, Samuel tells Liza, expecting her to forbid it. Instead she questions his motives, then says there will be no warm place at home for him unless he gets the boys named. When he storms off shouting, she smiles. She ties his tie and lends him her mother’s worn Bible, scolding him for always picking at Scripture. Third, at the Trask place Adam is gaunt and hostile and orders Samuel off. Samuel argues, insults him, chokes him, and knocks him down twice; then he helps him up and promises they will find names together. Adam thanks him. Adam’s mind goes to his brother Charles and to Cathy, and he asks whether there is news of her. Lee brings out a table, whisky and the twins, dressed in Chinese jackets of turquoise and faded rose; he has dropped his pidgin. Adam tells how Cathy shot him: not to kill, he believes, because he was only an annoyance. Samuel says the boys will be what Adam expects of them. Adam suddenly sees that the twins are not alike, and that one looks like his brother. The two men each hold a boy, and Samuel guesses at their natures. Samuel speaks of names, of the prophet he is named for, of the courage he lacks and the greatness he hopes Tom will choose. Over Lee’s fried chicken, Adam tastes food for the first time in a long while. Fourth, Samuel reads the sixteen verses of Cain and Abel while the twins sleep in the dust. The three men argue over why God preferred Abel’s offering, whether God condemned Cain, and what the mark meant; Samuel says that all people descend from Cain, not from Abel. Lee says a great story lasts only if it is about everyone. Adam starts, “I didn’t kill my brother,” and stops, lost in memory. Lee calls the story a chart of the soul: refused love brings anger, anger brings crime, and crime brings guilt. Samuel is shaken and wants to think alone; Adam fears it is too simple. At dusk Samuel offers Caleb and Joshua; Adam likes Caleb, and one twin wails as if called. The other becomes Aaron. Adam can now tell them apart. At the shed Samuel hopes Adam will make his garden; Adam says the energy is gone and he has no one to show it to. Samuel, in tears, tells him not to think it will ever die, and drives away without saying good-by.

A way in

This chapter is mostly talk, and the talk is the point: it is where the novel takes its title. Read it in two sittings if needed, breaking after Lee’s fried chicken, and do not skip the long argument over the verses. Read the sixteen verses aloud once, slowly, in their King James wording, before anyone discusses them. Take the fight seriously both ways: Samuel’s rage is real and so is his help, and he does it to wake a man who calls his sons “they.” It is neither a joke nor an assault for its own sake. Lee drops the pidgin he uses in town, and after his chart he teases Samuel about “my Oriental patter”: “You know I am no more Oriental than you are.” Let the student notice what that says about the parts people are made to play. One line in this edition reads “Aron broke in,” where the speaker is plainly Adam (the next line reads “Adam said excitedly”); read it as Adam. When Adam stops at “I didn’t kill my brother,” do not guess at the memory; Lee himself says he does not want to know. Lee’s chart of the soul is one of three views at that table, not the book’s last word: Adam fears it is too simple, and Samuel wants to think it over alone. Stop at Samuel driving away. Leave the question of whether Lee is right for the last written question.

Lesson plan

Retell The student tells the chapter back from the weeds on the Trask place to Samuel driving away. Look for the four sections in order: Adam’s gray year and Samuel’s talk with Lee, Liza’s dare and the borrowed Bible, the fight and the meal, and the reading, Lee’s chart and the naming. Look for the turn where Adam first really looks at the twins and sees they are not alike, for Samuel’s laugh when the boys are named, and for the garden at the end. Look for no claim about what Adam remembers when he stops, which twin will become what, or whether Adam returns to his garden. Then ask which moment the student would keep, and why.

Imitate the author After copying, the student writes four sentences in the manner of the first passage, about someone just after doing a hard thing: a sentence that opens with a long clause setting the scene and only then gives its subject a metaphor; a sentence that puts its object first; a sentence that names two virtues as a pair and gives them a body; and a short sentence that turns the joke on the person. Then five sentences in the manner of the second, someone talking about an idea they carry but cannot explain: a sentence with a simile and then a dash that names two things in a balanced pair; two sentences that repeat one key word, the second turning on “but”; and two short sentences that report what someone else says, opening the same way. Read both aloud beside Steinbeck’s and ask which sentence in each carries the most weight, and why.

Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that Lee is right and the story of Cain and Abel is everyone’s. It gathers Lee’s chain in his own words, Adam’s refusal by Cathy (“an annoyance, not an enemy”), Adam breaking off at “I didn’t kill my brother,” and Samuel carrying guilt for a life no one faults. The other side argues the chart does not fit all people. It gathers Lee’s own hedge (“to a large or small extent”), Samuel’s reading that God “did not condemn Cain” and that the mark was “a preserving mark,” Samuel’s claim that the boys “will be what you expect of them,” and Adam’s fear that it is “too simple.” Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may say what Adam remembers, how the twins will turn out, or what the verses finally mean.

Purpose Close on the chapter’s design. Steinbeck brings the book’s title into the book here, in the last verse Samuel reads: Cain “dwelt in the land of Nod on the east of Eden.” He has the story read on a naming day, so the boys receive their names inside it, and he gives the reading to a borrowed Bible in which “all the names but one in here have two dates.” He lets three men argue instead of giving one narrator’s verdict, and he ends not on the names but on Samuel in tears. Ask what the chapter gains by having the verses argued over by three men rather than explained by the narrator. Name the habit the chapter practices: reading an old story as if it were happening now, to us.

Three levels

Easier Read aloud Lee and Samuel in the barroom from “By the way, what did he name the twins?” to “He’s a dead man unless you can wake him up,” the fight from “Then Samuel’s hands were on Adam’s throat” to “Did I do it right?”, the twins on the ground from “Lee brought out a table” to “A boy should be well dressed on his naming day,” Samuel’s reading of the verses, Lee’s chart from “I think this is the best-known story” to “the secret, rejected, guilty soul,” and the naming and the shed, from “Name me some names” to the end. Talk through the four discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.

On level Talk through all four discussion questions in order, then write all three written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.

Harder Ask for one argued essay on two ways of holding an old story. Liza says the Bible is there “in black and white” and asks, “Who wants you to understand it?” Samuel cannot pass a stone without looking under it, and Lee asks, “Couldn’t a world be built around accepted truth?” Follow how each of the three, and Adam, takes the sixteen verses, and weigh whether understanding the story makes it lighter to carry or heavier. Meet the strongest objection: that Samuel himself says, “Maybe Liza’s right. There’s nothing to understand.”

Discussion

1. 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

What it asks It asks the student to weigh Adam’s strangest belief about the shot. Over whisky Samuel asks, “Did she mean to kill you?” Adam has “thought of that more than anything else.” His answer: “No, I don’t think she meant to kill me. She didn’t allow me that dignity. There was no hatred in her, no passion at all.” From the army he knows that to kill a man “you shoot at head or heart or stomach.” Then: “I guess I wouldn’t have minded so much if she had wanted my death. That would have been a kind of love. But I was an annoyance, not an enemy.” Samuel answers that Adam never saw her: “To you she was because you built her.” The student decides whether being hated is closer to love than not mattering at all. It feeds the hinge: Adam’s wound is not the bullet but being of no account to the one he loved, and Lee will soon say that “rejection is the hell he fears.” The card must not say what Cathy did feel or meant; the chapter has only Adam’s reading.

A strong answer A strong response takes a side and uses Adam’s words. One reader agrees with him: hate takes a person seriously, and being “an annoyance, not an enemy” is the deeper refusal, the loss of even that “dignity.” Another hears Adam still building Cathy, as Samuel charges, so that even the shot can be a story about her feeling for him. The best answers notice that either way the hurt is about being refused, not about the wound itself.

2. 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

What it asks It asks the student to hear Liza’s word come back from Samuel’s own mouth. Liza complains that he turns the Testament over “the way a ’coon turns over a wet rock,” and calls him “the most contentious man this world has ever seen.” At the table Samuel says, “I take a pleasure in inquiring into things. I’ve never been content to pass a stone without looking under it,” and he has promised himself not to count that enjoyment a sin. After the reading he says, “Maybe Liza’s right. There’s nothing to understand.” Then Lee lays out his chart: rejection, anger, crime, guilt. Samuel covers his eyes: “Damn you, I want to think. I’ll want to take this off alone where I can pick it apart and see. Maybe you’ve tumbled a world for me. And I don’t know what I can build in my world’s place.” Then: “You’ve disturbed my pretty universe. You’ve taken a contentious game and made an answer of it.” The student decides what Samuel stands to lose. It feeds the hinge: whether Lee is right is the last written question, and Samuel is the first to feel its weight. The card must not say Lee is right or wrong, or give the verses a final meaning; Samuel leaves to think it over alone.

A strong answer A strong response names what is at stake and uses Samuel’s words. One reader says he loses the game: his whole pleasure is in asking, and an answer closes the asking. Another says he loses a world: if Lee is right, the guilt in the old story is in every person, Samuel included, and he does not yet know what to build in its place. The best answers notice that Samuel does not reject Lee’s answer; he asks to be left alone with it.

3. 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

What it asks It asks the student to read the line that names the boys, where Samuel turns a curse into a gift. Samuel came to name the twins, but the naming waits through the fight, the meal and the whole argument over the verses. At dusk Adam says, “I kind of like Caleb—Caleb Trask,” and one twin “without interval began to wail.” Samuel: “You called his name.” The other gets Aaron and “almost joyfully began to cry.” Samuel laughs: “In two minutes,” and “after a waterfall of words.” Then he names them into the human family: “now you are people and you have joined the fraternity and you have the right to be damned.” That morning Adam called his sons “they,” and Liza had said he “has not admitted that his sons live.” While the boys slept, Samuel said that all of us descend from Cain, not from Abel, and Lee said, “The human is the only guilty animal.” The student decides how being damned can be a right. It feeds the hinge: if to be a person is to be able to be damned, then guilt is part of every human story, which is part of what Lee claims. The card must not say the twins will act out Cain and Abel, or which one will be which; the chapter gives only two names and two cries.

A strong answer A strong response explains the paradox and uses the chapter’s words. One reader hears a dignity: only someone who can choose can be damned, so a name brings the power to answer for one’s acts, and the boys who were “they” are now someone. Another hears a rueful joke: to join the human family is to join Cain’s family and inherit guilt, and the best Samuel can do is call it a right. The best answers notice that both readings make guilt part of being a person, which is what Lee’s chart claims, and leave the twins’ futures open.

4. 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

What it asks It asks the student to read the chapter’s last cry, where one small word carries the weight. At the shed, with the boys named, Samuel hopes Adam will now be thinking “of the garden in the flat land.” Adam is “long in answering”: “I think that kind of energy is gone out of me. I can’t feel the pull of it. I have money enough to live. I never wanted it for myself. I have no one to show a garden to.” Then “Samuel wheeled on him and his eyes were filled with tears.” He cries, “Don’t think it will ever die,” and goes on: “Don’t expect it. Are you better than other men? I tell you it won’t ever die until you do.” He drives away without a good-by. The word “it” has no plain owner. It may be the energy and pull Adam says are gone, or the hurt behind “no one to show a garden to.” The student decides what “it” is, and so whether Samuel’s cry is a comfort or a sentence. It feeds the hinge: “Are you better than other men?” makes one man’s loss everyone’s, as Lee made the old story everyone’s. The card must not say Adam will go back to his garden; he says “that kind of energy is gone out of me.”

A strong answer A strong response names what “it” is and works from Adam’s answer just before. One reader says it is the pull to live and make things, which Adam claims is gone and Samuel insists is not, so the cry is a hard kind of hope. Another says it is the hurt of having no one to show a garden to, and “until you do” makes it a sentence every man serves. The best answers notice that Samuel’s tears and “Are you better than other men?” make it his sorrow too, and leave Adam’s garden an open question.

Critical thinking

1. Samuel chokes Adam and knocks him down twice. Afterward he asks, “Did I do it right?” Was he right to do it at all?

What it asks It asks the student to judge the chapter’s most startling act without making it a joke or a crime. Adam has lived a year “through gray water.” The neighbors “would have understood anger or sorrow—and so helped him,” but they stop coming. Lee tells Samuel, “He’s a dead man unless you can wake him up.” Liza says Samuel will “give him sweet-sounding words,” and that unless the boys are named there will be “no warm place in this house.” In the yard Samuel tries words, then insults, and “for the first time his eyes seemed to see.” Samuel “joyously felt hot rage” and cried, “I feel murder nudging my gizzard.” He chokes Adam, and when Adam says, “What I do is my own business,” he knocks him down twice. Then “The fire went out of Samuel’s eyes,” and he helps Adam up: “We’ll give them names.” Adam thanks him: “It’s a hurty thanks, but it’s thanks.” Samuel asks, “Did it seem natural? Did I do it right?” and explains, “in a way I promised my wife I’d do it.” Later he thinks, “Sometimes your opponent can help you more than your friend.” The student writes a thesis on whether Samuel was right, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: in Lee’s chain anger leads to crime, and here an old man’s anger is turned to help another. The card must not make the fight comic or cruel; Samuel does it to wake a man who calls his sons “they.”

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Samuel was right: nothing else had worked, the blows made Adam’s eyes see, and Adam thanks him. The strongest objection is that Samuel hit a grieving man in a real and joyful rage, partly to answer his wife’s dare, and that the real waking came later through the twins. A good revision might hold that the fists began what only patience could finish, and weigh whether a good result makes a violent means right.

2. 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?

What it asks It asks the student to judge Samuel’s verdict on himself, the quiet confession inside a loud day. Adam says, “I’ve wondered why a man of your knowledge would work a desert hill place.” Samuel answers, “It’s because I haven’t courage,” and goes on: “I could never quite take the responsibility. When the Lord God did not call my name, I might have called His name—but I did not. There you have the difference between greatness and mediocrity.” Just before, he has said he will never tell Liza about the fight, because “It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times” and “I haven’t the courage for that.” He says, “I’m glad I chose mediocrity,” the side of “warmth and companionship,” and yet he wants Tom “condemned to greatness”: “What selfishness that must be.” The same day, he planned to “disobey her wish no matter how strong her objection,” drove up uninvited to a man who might throw him off, told that man a view of blood that “No one hereabouts would agree with,” and drove away with his eyes filled with tears. The student writes a thesis on whether Samuel lacks courage, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: Samuel too carries a guilt of his own making, and Lee says “We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff.” The card must not say what Tom will choose.

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis takes Samuel at his word: he means the courage to answer a call and back an unwelcome truth, and he will not even tell Liza about the fight. The strongest objection is the day itself: he means to defy Liza, faces a hostile man, and tells him to his face a view on blood that no one nearby would share. A good revision might hold that Samuel has the courage of love and lacks the courage of a calling, and weigh why he counts only the second.

3. 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?

What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. Samuel reads the sixteen verses of Genesis 4 from Liza’s mother’s Bible while the twins sleep in the dust, and calls them “such a little story to have made so deep a wound.” Lee says, “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true and true of us,” and “We gather our arms full of guilt as though it were precious stuff.” Adam calls the story “an excuse, and there aren’t enough excuses in the world.” Samuel argues that “God did not condemn Cain at all,” that the mark was “a preserving mark,” and that all people descend from Cain. Lee makes a rule: “a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last.” Then Adam says, “I didn’t kill my brother—” and stops. Lee lays out his chart: the greatest terror is “that he is not loved,” and from rejection come anger, crime and guilt: “The human is the only guilty animal.” Samuel says, “Maybe you’ve tumbled a world for me.” Adam asks, “Isn’t it too simple?” and says, “I’m always afraid of simple things.” Lee answers, “It isn’t simple at all,” and “It’s desperately complicated. But at the end there’s light.” The student writes a thesis on whether Lee is right that this is the story of all people, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what Adam remembers when he stops, must not say the twins will act out the story, and must not give the verses a final meaning: the three men leave the talk unfinished.

A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Lee is right: the chapter bears him out, from Adam’s refusal by Cathy and the broken-off “I didn’t kill my brother—” to Samuel’s guilt over a life no one faults. The strongest objection is that the chain is too neat: Lee hedges it himself, Samuel reads the story as mercy, and the day’s good deeds come from love, not from rejection. A good revision might hold that refusal and guilt are in everyone but are not the whole of anyone, and weigh whether a story must explain all of a person to be about all people.

Vocabulary definitions