East of Eden

Chapter 3

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

And then—he had known it at the time—he had told Grant and McClellan where they were wrong and had begged them to take his analysis of the situation. Invariably they refused his advice and only afterward was he proved right.

There was one thing Cyrus did not do, and perhaps it was clever of him. He never once promoted himself to noncommissioned rank. Private Trask he began, and Private Trask he remained. In the total telling, it made him at once the most mobile and ubiquitous private in the history of warfare.

Read the first passage aloud. The narrator tucks “he had known it at the time” between two dashes. Whose voice do you hear inside those dashes?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences, both about Cyrus’s war stories, from the end of one paragraph and the start of the next. The first opens on “And then,” the voice of a story being told at the supper table, and breaks at once for an aside between dashes. The main clause runs on two verbs joined by “and,” “had told” and “had begged,” and the next sentence turns the usual word order around, “only afterward was he proved right,” so that the boast lands last. “Invariably” does quiet work: a pattern that never fails is a sign of a story, not a record. The second passage is the first four sentences of the next paragraph. It opens on a sentence that hedges with “perhaps,” then states the fact plainly, then puts the object first in a balanced line, “Private Trask he began, and Private Trask he remained,” where the repeated name holds the two halves still. It ends on a grand phrase, “the most mobile and ubiquitous private in the history of warfare,” that praises and mocks at once. Students copying the two practise an aside set off by dashes, inverted word order for emphasis, a balanced sentence built on a repeated phrase, and irony carried by word choice. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who hears Cyrus himself inside the dashes, the boast told so often it has become memory, and for one who hears the narrator, repeating the claim with a straight face so the reader can judge it. Both can point to the sentence.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in its four numbered parts, from Adam’s birth to the moment he closes his eyes. Then pick the one sentence you think the chapter turns on. Say what it shows about love in the Trask house.

Cyrus puts himself at every great battle and close to Lincoln. Yet “Private Trask he began, and Private Trask he remained.” What keeps a man who invents so much from inventing a higher rank? Character
Once, Adam walks into the kitchen and finds Alice smiling over her darning. He is “as shocked as though he had come upon her naked.” Why does a smile hit him that hard? Inference
Adam wins at peewee for once, and Charles knocks him out with the bat. The narrator says Charles “had very simply fulfilled himself.” What self did Charles fulfill? Character
For years Adam has hidden from his father between the roots of a stump in the woodlot. At dusk, in the middle of the long talk about soldiers, he shows Cyrus the place. What is he giving his father? Character
Charles never once saw his father use the knife he bought him for his birthday. On the dark road he asks Adam, “Did he give it to you?” Why would he ask Adam that? Inference
Adam has just been beaten and then hunted with a hatchet. Lying a long time in the ditch water, he wonders how Charles feels. Why is his mind on his brother and not on himself? Character

Make a Connection Think of a gift you gave or got that landed in a way the giver did not expect. Who decides what a gift means: the one who gives it, the one who gets it, or the people watching?

Vocabulary

invariably: Invariably they refused his advice and only afterward was he proved right. Every time, without exception (from vary, to change: what never varies). In Cyrus’s stories the generals turn down his advice “invariably,” and he is always proved right after. A pattern that never once fails belongs to a story, not to a life, and the word lets the narrator say so without saying it.
ubiquitous: In the total telling, it made him at once the most mobile and ubiquitous private in the history of warfare. Found everywhere at once (from the Latin ubique, everywhere). The narrator uses a grand word for a joke: a private present at every great action would have to be “in as many as four places at once.” The word seems to praise Cyrus and quietly takes his stories apart.
bellicosity: It was very different from the flag-waving, shouting bellicosity of his younger days. Eagerness to fight; a warlike, quarrelsome spirit (from the Latin bellum, war, the same root as belligerent). The narrator uses it to mark how Cyrus has changed: the soft, grave talk he gives Adam about soldiers is set against the shouting of his younger days. The change is real, and Adam fears the new gentleness more than he feared the old violence.
slough: But there are others who go down, submerge in the common slough, and then rise more themselves than they were, because—because they have lost a littleness of vanity and have gained all the gold of the company and the regiment. A muddy hollow or swamp; by extension, a low state a person sinks into (in this sense said to rhyme with “how” or with “through”). Cyrus pictures the army as mud every soldier must go down into, and from which some rise “more themselves than they were.” It is the hope he holds for Adam, and the word makes plain how low he expects his son to go first.
noncommittal: Charles moved slowly toward Adam, his eyes cold and noncommittal. Giving nothing away; showing no feeling and no intention (not committing: from commit, to pledge oneself). Charles’s eyes are “cold and noncommittal” before the bat, and “innocent, noncommittal” before the last blow on the road. The word marks the moment rage goes calm and blank, which Adam has learned to fear most.

Critical thinking

Alice tells the beaten Adam that Charles has hidden little presents for her for years. Adam is the one who hid them, and he closes his eyes. Why does he let his brother have the credit?
Cyrus tells Adam he hurt him because he loves him better, and Charles nearly kills Adam over a knife their father never used. In the Trask house, is it love that does the damage, or the lack of it?