East of Eden

Chapter 29

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Today’s children breathe in the theory, habits, and idiosyncrasies of the internal combustion engine in their cradles, but then you started with the blank belief that it would not run at all, and sometimes you were right. Also, to start the engine of a modern car you do just two things, turn a key and touch the starter. Everything else is automatic. The process used to be more complicated. It required not only a good memory, a strong arm, an angelic temper, and a blind hope, but also a certain amount of practice of magic, so that a man about to turn the crank of a Model T might be seen to spit on the ground and whisper a spell.

“Put this hayburner away,” he said, “How do you tell which end is the front?” And he climbed down from the rig as an ambassador comes out of a state train. He sneered at the twins and turned coldly to Adam, “I hope I’m in time for dinner,” he said. Lee and Adam stared at each other. They had forgotten about the noonday meal. In the house the godling grudgingly accepted cheese and bread and cold meat and pie and coffee and a piece of chocolate cake.

Read the second passage aloud. Roy “grudgingly accepted” a meal that runs from cheese all the way to chocolate cake. How should that long list sound in your voice?

For the educator The two passages are the narrator’s two set pieces on the coming of the car: one about the machine, one about the young man who serves it. The first steps out of the story to speak from the reader’s own day. Its first sentence turns on but then: knowledge of the engine is something taken in without effort, “breathe in”, set against “the blank belief that it would not run at all,” and it ends on a dry turn, “and sometimes you were right.” Its list of three, “theory, habits, and idiosyncrasies”, moves from the learned to the personal, as if an engine had a temper. The next three sentences grow shorter, down to the four words of “Everything else is automatic.” Then the last sentence opens out on not only … but also, with a list of four that runs from the body to the spirit (“a good memory, a strong arm, an angelic temper, and a blind hope”), and ends in a result clause that lands on “spit on the ground and whisper a spell.” The second passage is the mechanic’s entrance, told in the high style the narrator keeps for him. Its first sentence is Roy’s own voice: a command and a sneer at the horse, with hayburner, a vocabulary word. The second is a mock-heroic simile, “as an ambassador comes out of a state train.” The third pairs two cold acts with and and saves the demand for the end. The fourth and fifth are short and plain, the hosts’ side of the scene. The sixth names him godling, a vocabulary word, and then piles up his meal with and after and after and, so that “grudgingly” is answered by the length of the list. For the talk prompt, some will read the list flat and fast, letting the length make the joke; some will slow down and give each and its weight, so the pile grows; some will save a tone of wonder for the chocolate cake. Leave it open; the discussion goes on to what this young man says to Lee.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from Adam waiting for his brother’s answer to Adam’s last words, “I will.” Then say which moment you would most like to have watched, and why.

Will hates Fords “with a deadly hatred,” but they are making him rich. Twice he says he just wanted them to see her. What is Will really selling that day? Character
Will is still trying to explain the Ford when the narrator steps out of the story to tell us how hard it once was to start a car. Why stop the scene right there? Author's choice
Lee says quietly, “So young to be so erudite.” When Roy demands to know what he said, Lee answers, “Mebbe go college. Velly wise.” How much of the first remark is still there in the second? Tone
“Adam was puzzled at the conversation, but the twins weren’t.” Then Cal and Aron try out Roy’s words on each other. What did the twins understand that their father missed? Inference
Twice in this chapter Adam says “that’s interesting.” Once it is to his sons, about the grasshopper and the ant. Once it is to Roy, in the middle of his lecture on the engine. Does he mean the same thing both times? Character

Make a Connection Think of a time you talked one way at home and another way somewhere else, or watched someone else do it. Was one of those ways more real than the other?

Vocabulary

hayburner: “Put this hayburner away,” he said, “How do you tell which end is the front?” Old slang for a horse: a thing that burns hay the way an engine burns gasoline. The word is built like a machine’s name, hay plus burner, so it is a mechanic’s joke. To Roy a horse is just a worse engine, slow and old-fashioned, and his second question makes fun of it as if it were a puzzling machine. In a chapter where the Ford is touched like “a dangerous horse” and Will goes home behind a borrowed one, Roy’s first word sets the new age against the old and tells us which side he is on.
godling: In the house the godling grudgingly accepted cheese and bread and cold meat and pie and coffee and a piece of chocolate cake. A minor god, a small god. The ending -ling makes things small, as in duckling and princeling. Said of a person, it mocks someone treated as a god, or acting like one. The narrator calls Roy a godling just after he steps down from the buggy “as an ambassador comes out of a state train”, and the word laughs at him gently: he is worshipped by the twins and grand in his own eyes, but he is a young man of nineteen eating someone else’s pie.
truculence: The truculence went out of the boy and a magnanimity took its place. A fierce, quarrelsome readiness to fight. From the Latin trux, savage, wild. It names Roy’s mood when he swings around scowling and demands, “What did you say?” In the same sentence it gives way to magnanimity, the generous mood of a great-souled person. The narrator’s two big words are part of the joke: Roy’s anger and his generosity are both much grander in the telling than in the boy.
consternation: He noticed a look of consternation on Adam’s face. Sudden alarm and confusion that leaves a person at a loss. From the Latin consternare, to throw into confusion or lay low. Roy has just said that if the coil does not buzz “you got to adjust the points or maybe file them”, and Adam’s face shows he has no idea how. Roy answers kindly, “You can study up on that in the book”. The look tells us how far behind the lesson Adam has fallen.

Critical thinking

Roy is the only one at the ranch who can start the Ford. But he trips over “rev-a-lu-shun-ary” and keeps sending Adam to the book. Does Roy know the Ford?
When Roy insults him, Lee answers in the broken English Roy expects, and Roy turns friendly. Did Lee give something up to win that peace, or did he come out ahead?