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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
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?
The tension Roy arrives sneering, asks Adam “What did the Chink say?”, and Lee answers in the broken English Roy expects; the boy’s “truculence” turns into “magnanimity” and “amused friendliness”, and while “Adam was puzzled at the conversation, but the twins weren’t.”
Watch how each grown man in the chapter handles not knowing something: Adam with the whistle, Will with the Ford, Roy with his lecture.
The chapter has two sections. First, Adam waits impatiently for an answer to the letter he has sent his brother Charles, though it cannot yet have reached San Francisco, and half fears Charles will accept. Restless, he quizzes the twins about school, where they have read the fable of the grasshopper and the ant, and takes back his pocketknife from Cal to show them how to make willow whistles, which Lee taught them three years before; he has forgotten the cut and cannot make one sound. Will Hamilton drives up in a new Ford he has sold Adam. Will hates Fords but they are making him rich, and he explains the car twice before he sees he is getting nowhere. The narrator steps out of the story to say how hard it once was to start a car: it took memory, strength, temper, hope and a little magic. Will cannot start the car again, borrows a horse and buggy to get home, and promises to send a mechanic. Second, the next day, the twins stay home from school, and Adam and Lee circle the Ford as if it were a dangerous horse. The mechanic arrives: nineteen, chewing tobacco, three months out of automobile school, full of contempt. He throws the reins at Lee, asks coldly whether he is in time for dinner, changes into overalls and a Ford cap, and is disgusted that Adam has not read the book under the seat. When he begins, “This-here is a internal combustion engine,” Lee says quietly, “So young to be so erudite.” The boy turns, demands what he said, and then asks Adam, using a slur. Lee answers in broken English that the boy is very smart and might go to college. The boy scorns college, tells everyone to call him Joe, warms up, repeats his father’s view that a good Chinese man is as good as anybody, and agrees that Lee looks like a good one. Adam is puzzled; the twins are not, and practice the boy’s catchphrase. The boy rattles through the theory, which no one understands, and teaches the starting steps, which everyone chants back in chorus, four times. Will returns to fetch the mechanic for a broken hearse, calling him Roy. Cal asks why he said his name was Joe; Roy laughs, “Because my name is Roy”, and orders Adam to study the book. Adam says he will.
This is the comic chapter after a heavy one, and it is easy to read it as a break. Read it yourself first, and slow down at the one exchange that is not only funny: Roy’s insult and Lee’s two answers. Some background the chapter assumes: Lee is the Chinese man who has kept Adam’s house and raised the twins, Cal and Aron, since they were born; he is highly educated and speaks careful, formal English, but in public he has long used broken pidgin because people expect it, which the book showed early on. Will Hamilton is the son of Adam’s late friend Sam Hamilton and a prosperous businessman. Adam has just written to Charles, his half-brother back East, after many years. The Ford is an early Model T, started by a hand crank with a spark lever, a gas lever and a switch between battery and magneto. Roy uses a slur for Chinese people, and he repeats it; name it plainly when it comes up and talk about what it shows about Roy and the room, not about its shock. The word “highbinders” was a name for members of criminal gangs in Chinatowns. Do not say that Lee was hurt or ashamed; the chapter shows only his words and his bland smile. Do not make Roy a villain; the chapter leaves him comic and kinder by the end. Do not say whether Adam learns to drive or what answer Charles sends. Stop on “I will,” said Adam.
Retell The student tells the chapter back from Adam waiting for Charles’s answer to Adam’s “I will”. Look for the two sections in order: Adam’s restless day with the boys and Will’s visit; then the mechanic’s lesson. Look for the turns that carry the chapter: the eagle story Adam has forgotten, the willow whistle that will not sound, Will’s false enthusiasm and his three tries, the narrator’s aside about magic, Will leaving behind a borrowed horse, the Ford under the oak, Roy’s arrival and his lunch, “This-here is a internal combustion engine,” Lee’s two replies, the “good Chink” talk, the twins practicing “Jus’ call me Joe,” the litany, Will’s return, and “Because my name is Roy.” Look for Lee’s exchange told plainly, the slur named only as needed, and no claim about what Lee felt. Then ask which moment the student would most like to have watched, and why.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes five sentences in the manner of the first passage, about something that is easy now and once was hard: a long sentence that turns on but then and ends on a dry twist; a sentence that says how simple it is today; a sentence of four words or fewer; a sentence that says it used to be harder; and a long sentence on not only … but also, with a list of four that runs from the body to the spirit and ends on a small superstition. Then six sentences in the manner of the second, about a guest who thinks too well of himself: a line of his own speech, a command and a jab; a sentence with a mock-grand simile, as … comes out of …; a sentence that pairs two cold acts and saves his demand for the end; two short, plain sentences from the hosts’ side; and a sentence that gives him a small mock title and then piles up what he takes with and after and. Read both aloud beside Steinbeck’s and ask where the narrator’s amusement shows without being stated.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that Lee gave something up to win the peace. It gathers Roy turning from Lee to ask Adam what Lee said; “Say velly smaht fella”; Roy’s father’s view that “a good Chink” is “about as good as anybody”, “They’re honest”; “You look like a good Chink to me”; and the twins watching. The other side argues that Lee came out ahead. It gathers “So young to be so erudite”; “Mebbe go college”, which sets Roy off on college; Adam’s “Lee was admiring your grasp of the subject”; “I hope I may be included in that group?”, said in Lee’s own English; “An amused friendliness took the place of his former contempt”; and “Adam was puzzled at the conversation, but the twins weren’t.” Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may say that Lee was hurt or ashamed, or make Roy a villain.
Purpose Close on the chapter’s design. Steinbeck sets a comic lesson on a new machine beside a serious exchange about race and speech, and lets them share one scene. He has the narrator step out to say that starting a car took a little magic, then shows a young man who spits, chants and makes his pupils repeat words they do not understand. He puts four men side by side who meet what they do not know in different ways: Adam bungles, Will talks, Roy performs, and Lee plays the part expected of him and steps out of it at will. He frames the chapter with two lessons, Adam quizzing his sons and Roy ordering Adam to study. Ask what the comedy lets the chapter say about Lee and Roy that a serious scene could not, and why it ends on a joke about a borrowed name. Name the habit the chapter practices: asking who really understands, and who only seems to.
Easier Read aloud Adam with the boys, from “He interfered with the twins” to “He couldn’t get a peep out of his whistles.”; Will’s visit, from “At noon one day Will Hamilton came roaring” to “he promised to have a mechanic out the next day.”; the mechanic’s arrival, from “They had got up and were ready very early in the morning.” to “Lee and Adam stared at each other.”; the exchange with Lee and the start of the lecture, from “He lifted the tin flaps.” to “That’s interesting,” said Adam.; and the ending, from “Will leaned out of his car.” to the last line. Talk through the five discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both 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 pretending in the chapter. Set Will’s false enthusiasm, the narrator’s aside on magic, Roy’s lecture and borrowed name, Adam’s “I will,” and Lee’s two replies side by side, and judge whether Lee’s performance belongs with the others or stands apart. Meet the strongest objection: the chapter never shows what Lee feels, and the twins learn Roy’s catchphrase, not Lee’s English, so perhaps the chapter will not let anyone, Lee included, step fully outside the act.
1. 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
What it asks It asks the student to look past the car to the man delivering it. Will comes “roaring and bumping up the road” with the brass “blinding with brass polish.” He calls out “Here she is!” with “a false enthusiasm.” The narrator says he “hated Fords with a deadly hatred, but they were daily building his fortune.” He explains “a mechanism he did not understand himself”, twice, and on the third try sees he is “getting no place.” Then: “You see, this isn’t my line. I wanted you to see her. and listen to her before I made delivery.” He promises an expert who will “tell you more in a few minutes than I could in a week”, adds “But I just wanted you to see her”, cranks for a while, and drives home behind a borrowed horse.
A show. Will cannot explain the car, so he sells the shine and the noise: polished brass, “Here she is!”, a promise. When the talk runs out he covers it with a cheerful “Tell you what!” and hands the knowing to someone else. What he sells is confidence, and the chapter lets us see how thin it is.
Here she is!
Will saw that he was getting no place
The future. Will hates the thing, but he knows where the money is going, and he sells the new age itself. He cannot run it, so he sells the expert who can, and he is honest about it: “this isn’t my line.” That is a salesman who knows his limits and says so to the buyer’s face.
they were daily building his fortune
he’ll tell you more in a few minutes than I could in a week
A strong answer A strong response names what Will sells and grounds it. One reader says he sells a show: he cannot explain the car, so he offers polish, “Here she is!” and a promise, and the chapter lets the show run thin. Another says he sells the future and the expert who comes with it, and that “this isn’t my line” says plainly what he does not know. The best answers notice that Will is the first of several men in the chapter who talk about the Ford more than they understand it.
2. 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
What it asks It asks the student to judge why the narrator breaks in where it does. Will has begun to explain “a mechanism he did not understand himself.” Then the story stops, and the narrator speaks from the reader’s own day: “It is hard now to imagine the difficulty of learning to start, drive, and maintain an automobile.” Now people take in the engine “in their cradles,” but back then “you started with the blank belief that it would not run at all, and sometimes you were right.” Starting a car took “a good memory, a strong arm, an angelic temper, and a blind hope,” and a little magic, so that a man might “spit on the ground and whisper a spell.” Then the story picks up again, and Will, starting his explanation for the third time, sees he is “getting no place.”
To take the beginners’ side. Just as Will, Adam and Lee start to look foolish over the open engine, the narrator tells us that everyone started from nothing then, and that doubting the car was often right. The aside makes the fumbling forgivable, so we laugh with these men, not at them.
one had to start from scratch
and sometimes you were right
To tell us how to watch the next day. The aside promises spitting and spells, and the next day brings a young man who spits, rattles off words nobody follows, and has his pupils chant after him. The narrator sets the lesson up as a rite before Roy arrives, so the joke is ready when he does.
spit on the ground and whisper a spell
And he spat a brown disparaging comment on the ground.
A strong answer A strong response says what the interruption does and grounds it in where it falls. One reader says it takes the beginners’ side: it breaks in just as Will is failing, says everyone started from scratch and that doubt was often right, and turns laughter at these men into laughter with them. Another says it prepares the next day: it promises spitting and spells, and Roy arrives to spit and lead a chant. The best answers notice that the aside also puts the reader in the present day, among those who know without effort what these men cannot, which is close to where Roy stands when he looks at Adam. Either way, the aside teaches us to watch how knowing is performed, and that is what the next day is about, up to Lee’s answer to Roy.
3. 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
What it asks It asks the student to compare Lee’s two versions of one remark and weigh what carried over. When Roy says, “This-here is a internal combustion engine,” Lee says quietly, “So young to be so erudite.” Roy swings around scowling, demands, “What did you say?”, and then asks Adam what Lee said. Lee “spread his hands and smiled blandly.” “Say velly smaht fella,” he says. “Mebbe go college. Velly wise.” Roy says “Just call me Joe!” and then: “College! What do them fellas know? Can they set a timer, huh? Can they file a point? College!” and he spits. Adam adds, “Lee was admiring your grasp of the subject”, and the truculence goes out of the boy.
Little or none of it. The second version is all praise, “velly smaht” and “Velly wise”, and it works: once Adam calls it admiration, Roy calms and the lesson goes on. Whatever bite “erudite” had is gone, because the words that carried it are gone. Lee gives up the joke to end the trouble.
Mebbe go college. Velly wise.
Lee was admiring your grasp of the subject.
All of it, out of sight. Lee did not just praise Roy; he put him beside college, the one thing Roy scorns, and Roy goes off about college at once. The second line flatters Roy on the surface and teases him underneath, and only the people who heard the first line can tell. The joke has not been taken back; it has been put where Roy cannot reach it.
College! What do them fellas know?
So young to be so erudite.
A strong answer A strong response decides how much of the first remark survives in the second and grounds it. One reader says little or none: the second line is all praise, and once Adam calls it admiration, Roy calms. Another says all of it, hidden: Lee set Roy beside college, the thing Roy scorns, and Roy took the bait without seeing the hook. The best answers compare the two lines word by word and keep to what Lee says and does, not what he feels.
4. “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
What it asks It asks the student to work out what the boys heard. They have watched Lee say “So young to be so erudite”, then “Say velly smaht fella,” then, in his own careful English, “I hope I may be included in that group?” Roy calls Lee “a good Chink” and Adam is puzzled. “Adam was puzzled at the conversation, but the twins weren’t.” Cal says “experimentally” to Aron, “Jus’ call me Joe,” and Aron moves his lips, “trying out” the same words. Earlier, “The twins regarded him with admiration, and Cal collected spit on the back of his tongue to practice.” At the end Cal is the one who catches Roy out: “I thought your name was Joe.”
They understood Lee. Lee raised them; they know how he really talks, so they hear the broken English as an act and see it work. Adam takes the talk at face value. The boys know the game because they have grown up beside the man playing it.
Lee spread his hands and smiled blandly.
a thing Lee had taught them three years before
They understood Roy. What the boys catch is swagger: the catchphrase, the spit, the way a nineteen-year-old owns a room. They are not decoding Lee; they are learning how to be Roy, and they practice his words, not Lee’s. Cal is still on Roy’s trail at the end, asking about the name.
Jus’ call me Joe
Cal collected spit on the back of his tongue to practice
A strong answer A strong response names what the twins understood and grounds it. One reader says they understood Lee: having grown up with him, they hear the broken English as an act and watch it work, while Adam takes it at face value. Another says they understood Roy: they copy his catchphrase and his spitting, not Lee’s words, and Cal is still on Roy’s trail at the end. The best answers notice that both readings may be true at once, and that the boys learn two different performances in one afternoon.
5. 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
What it asks It asks the student to hear one short line in two places. Early on Adam pesters the twins about school: “Well, what did you learn today?” They have read “That old one about the grasshopper and the ant,” and Adam answers, “Well, that’s interesting.” When they mention the eagle story, he says, “Yes, I remember that one. I forget what happens.” Then he cannot make the willow whistle sound: “He couldn’t get a peep out of his whistles.” The next day Roy talks so fast “that the words ran together,” and his listeners nod “blankly, afraid to stop the flow.” Roy finishes, “This-here is four cycle. Got that?” Again they nod, and Adam says, “That’s interesting,” Later the litany seems “silly to him,” and at the end he answers Roy’s order with “I will.”
The same both times. It is what Adam says when he has nothing to say. He has forgotten the eagle story and cannot follow the engine, so he fills the gap with a polite word and moves on. He is the same man as father and as pupil: he covers not knowing, and he does not seem to notice that he is doing it.
Well, that’s interesting.
Yes, I remember that one. I forget what happens.
Not the same. To his sons the words are a father reaching for them, clumsily, the first try of a man just waking up to his boys. To Roy the same words hide that he is lost. One reaches toward someone; the other keeps someone from seeing.
He interfered with the twins, asked them innumerable questions about school.
They nodded blankly, afraid to stop the flow.
A strong answer A strong response decides whether the line means the same thing twice and grounds it in what comes just before each time. One reader says it is the same: Adam’s polite cover when he does not know, said to sons whose story he has forgotten and to a mechanic he cannot follow. Another says the words match but the moves differ: with his sons Adam reaches toward them, with Roy he hides that he is lost. The best answers set Adam’s small cover beside the larger acts around him, Will’s sales talk, Roy’s “Joe,” and Lee’s broken English, and ask whether Adam knows he is acting at all.
1. 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?
What it asks It asks the student to decide what it means to know a machine. Roy has “three months in automobile school” behind him and calls it “a real school—not like no college.” He gets the engine running. He knows Will “always tries to start it on the magneto,” he holds the crank so his thumb is safe (“See how my thumb is turned down?”), and he works the choke and the switch. But when he explains, the words run together into “a great song of the new era” that his listeners nod at “blankly.” He stalls on “rev-rev-a-lu-shun-ary,” “his face showing strain,” and then warns them, “Don’t get the idea you know it all.” Four times he points Adam to the book under the seat, the last time as an order: “you study up.”
Yes. Knowing the Ford means making it go, and Roy is the only one who can. He knows Will’s mistake with the magneto, the grip that saves a thumb, and the sound of the choke. The long words were never his trade, and the book is for them. Will had the talk and no skill; Roy has the skill.
He always tries to start it on the magneto
See how my thumb is turned down?
Not in the way he claims. Roy knows the steps by heart, the way his pupils learn the litany. When he has to say how the engine works, the words run together, he stumbles, and he hands the hard parts to the book. His warning, “Don’t get the idea you know it all,” fits the speaker as well as the listeners.
He pulled up for a moment, his face showing strain.
You better study up on it in the book.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Roy knows the Ford: he is the only one who can make it run, and he knows the magneto, the thumb and the choke. The strongest objection is that he knows the steps, not the machine: his theory comes out as a song he can barely say, and he leaves the hard parts to the book. A good revision might say that Roy knows the Ford with his hands and not in words, and that his “real school” taught him the first kind of knowing while he scorns anyone who has only the second. The best answers keep Roy comic and human, and notice that the one person who reads Roy perfectly is the man he talks past: Lee.
2. 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?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question about Lee’s answer to Roy. Roy arrives sneering and throws the reins at Lee: “Put this hayburner away,” he says. When Lee says, “So young to be so erudite”, Roy swings around and demands, “What did you say?”, then, without waiting, asks Adam, “What did the Chink say?” Lee “spread his hands and smiled blandly”: “Say velly smaht fella,” then “Mebbe go college. Velly wise.” Then “The truculence went out of the boy and a magnanimity took its place.” Roy says his father holds that “a good Chink” is “about as good as anybody”, Lee asks, “I hope I may be included in that group?”, and Roy answers, “You look like a good Chink to me.” “An amused friendliness took the place of his former contempt.” “Adam was puzzled at the conversation, but the twins weren’t.”
He gave something up. To end the trouble Lee spoke the way Roy imagined him. Roy does not wait for Lee to explain himself; he turns to Adam, and his friendliness, when it comes, rests on Lee seeming to be the man Roy expected. Roy leaves sure that a “good Chink” is one who plays along, and the twins have watched that lesson too. Lee’s own voice is the price of the peace, even if Roy never knows it was paid.
Say velly smaht fella
You look like a good Chink to me.
He came out ahead. For the price of a few words he turned contempt into friendliness, and the lesson went on kinder. A few lines later he spoke his own careful English to Roy’s face, and Roy answered the words without noticing the voice. The boys, who weren’t puzzled, saw who ran that room.
An amused friendliness took the place of his former contempt.
I hope I may be included in that group?
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says Lee gave something up: he bought peace by speaking as Roy imagined him, and Roy leaves sure that “a good Chink” is one who plays along. The strongest objection is that Lee came out ahead: a few words turned contempt into friendliness, and he went on to speak his own careful English to Roy’s face without Roy hearing the change. A good revision might hold both: Lee won the afternoon, and the twins saw how he did it, while Roy’s picture of him, and of men like him, stayed exactly where it was. The chapter does not settle which matters more.
“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.
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.
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.
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.