East of Eden

Chapter 28

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

It was at the supper table that the boys discovered the change in their father. They knew him as a presence—as ears that heard but did not listen, eyes that looked and did not notice. He was a cloud of a father. The boys had never learned to tell him of their interests and discoveries, or of their needs. Lee had been their contact with the adult world, and Lee had managed not only to raise, feed, clothe, and discipline the boys, but he had also given them a respect for their father. He was a mystery to the boys, and his word, his law, was carried down by Lee, who naturally made it up himself and ascribed it to Adam.

They saved a part of their daily rice and hid it under their sleeping mats. My father found a length of string and filed out a hook from a piece of wire, for there were trout to be caught in the mountain lakes. He stopped smoking to save the matches issued. And my mother collected every tattered scrap of cloth she could find and unraveled edges to make thread and sewed this ragbag together with a splinter to make swaddling clothes for me. I wish I had known her.

Read the first passage aloud. For years Lee made up the law of the house himself and “ascribed it to Adam.” The narrator says he did it “naturally.” How should that word sound when you read it, and why?

For the educator The two passages set the boys’ story and Lee’s story side by side. The first is the chapter’s opening paragraph, about the household fiction Lee has kept for years. Its first sentence is a cleft sentence: “It was at the supper table that” puts the place first and holds back the news. The second turns on a dash into two parallel phrases, each built on a pair of verbs that seem alike and are not: “ears that heard but did not listen, eyes that looked and did not notice.” The third is short and ends on a metaphor in the pattern of a giant of a man: “a cloud of a father.” The fourth sets its last item apart with a comma, so the weight falls on “or of their needs.” The fifth balances on not only and but also, with a series of four verbs and a serial comma. The sixth piles up two names for one thing, “his word, his law,” and ends on a relative clause whose adverb, “naturally”, and last verb, “ascribed”, a vocabulary word, carry the sentence’s judgment. The second passage comes from the true story Lee’s father would never soften, at the point where it gives Lee a mother he can see. Its first sentence joins two actions on the same rice and repeats their: “their daily rice”, “their sleeping mats.” The second gives a reason with the old conjunction for. In the third, “the matches issued” shows they are camp rations, so even giving up a smoke is part of the plan. The fourth strings its verbs together with and, so the sentence grows as slowly as the sewing; ragbag is a vocabulary word. The fifth, six words long, turns from what they did to what Lee lost. Across the passage the subject moves from they to my father to my mother to me to her. For the talk prompt, some will read “naturally” warmly, as approval: of course the man who raised the boys would give them a father to respect, and Adam was a cloud. Some will read it with a dry smile: the word lets the reader see who really wrote the law, in the chapter where Lee will argue for the truth. Some will try it both ways. Leave it open; the discussion begins at the supper table.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the change the boys find in their father at supper to Lee’s guess, “Two weeks maybe.” Then choose the one sentence you would keep if you could keep only one, and say why.

At supper Cal says the arrow was his but Aron hit the rabbit, and Aron says maybe he hit it, but he isn’t sure. Adam tells them, “you both seem to handle the situation very well.” What is he praising them for? Inference
When Cal says they sent their mother home on a train, Lee nods. He adds that Chinese people are sent home after they die, and Aron says, “You told us that before.” Lee asks, “Did I?” Later, alone with Adam, Lee wishes there were a way to tell the boys the truth. Why does he help with the story first? Character
Lee’s father spoke Cantonese. But whenever he told the story of Lee’s mother, he spoke in “high and beautiful Mandarin.” Why would he tell the worst thing in his life in the most beautiful language he had? Tone
When Lee says a loving woman is “almost indestructible,” Adam makes a face. He says he can’t know from one experience. Later Lee says he wishes he had known his mother, and Adam says, “So do I.” What has Lee’s story done to Adam in between? Character
At supper Adam tells his sons their mother’s grave is “clear across the country”. The chapter ends with him asking Lee how long a letter takes to go “clear east”. Why might Steinbeck end on that echo? Author's choice

Make a Connection Think of a story that gets told again and again, in your own family, in a book, or in history. Who decides how it ends?

Vocabulary

ascribed: He was a mystery to the boys, and his word, his law, was carried down by Lee, who naturally made it up himself and ascribed it to Adam. Gave the credit for something to someone, said it came from them. The Latin root scribere means to write, as in scribe and describe: to ascribe is to write a thing down to someone’s name. Here the credit is given away, not taken. Lee made up the rules and ascribed them to Adam, so the boys respect a father whose law they never heard from him.
ragbag: And my mother collected every tattered scrap of cloth she could find and unraveled edges to make thread and sewed this ragbag together with a splinter to make swaddling clothes for me. A bag of rags and scraps kept for mending; by extension, any jumble of odds and ends thrown together, as in a ragbag of excuses. Lee calls his mother’s sewing “this ragbag”: every tattered scrap she could find, pieced together with a splinter for a needle. The humble word is the point. Out of the camp’s leavings she makes the one thing in the story that is all tenderness, and Lee’s next words are “I wish I had known her.”
verified: Lee verified it. Confirmed that something is true, by checking it or by speaking for it from what you know. It comes from the Latin verus, true, as in verdict and very: to verify is to make a thing stand as true. Aron says the teacher is sick, and Lee verified it. The word is small, but it comes minutes after Lee nodded along with the story about the grave. At the same table Lee vouches for one plain fact and backs one story that is not true, and the boys hear both from the same man.
irritably: “Get on with it,” Adam said irritably. In a short-tempered way, snapping because something rubs a person raw. To irritate first meant to stir up or inflame, the way a rash irritates the skin. The word is the narrator’s, not Adam’s: “Get on with it” could be said many ways, and this one adverb tells us how it sounded. It comes just after Lee tells how his father refused to let the story end at the lake.

Critical thinking

On the first night Adam really listens to his sons, he also lies to them about their mother. Lee warns that if they ever find out, “the true things would suffer.” If the boys learn the truth, will they doubt the father who listened to them that night?
Adam’s letter admits, “I always did make good resolutions.” Then he sees his brother’s scarred face in his mind and cannot make it smile. Under his name he writes, “I never hated you no matter what.” Does that P.S. belong with his good resolutions?
Lee's father would never let the story end safely at the lake, saying there is “more beauty in the truth even if it is dreadful beauty.” Is a terrible truth really better for a young person to hear than a kind story?