East of Eden

Chapter 30

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

He could outthink and outplan his brother. He was beginning to think he could do the same thing to his father. With Lee, Cal’s tricks did not work, for Lee’s bland mind moved effortlessly ahead of him and was always there waiting, understanding, and at the last moment cautioning quietly, “Don’t do it.” Cal had respect for Lee and a little fear of him. But Aron here, looking helplessly at him, was a lump of soft mud in his hands. Cal suddenly felt a deep love for his brother and an impulse to protect him in his weakness.

The window shade bellied slowly in and then the night wind fell and the worn shade flapped quietly against the window. A gray, quilted melancholy descended on him. He wished with all his heart that Aron had not walked away from him out of the wagon shed. He wished with all his heart that he had not crouched listening at the hall door. He moved his lips in the darkness and made the words silently in his head and yet he could hear them.

Read the second passage aloud. Cal wishes for two things “with all his heart.” Which wish should sound heavier in your voice?

For the educator The two passages are Cal in the afternoon and Cal at night, and they are worth copying side by side. The first is a measured climb of six sentences. It opens short and plain, “He could outthink and outplan his brother,” where the paired out- verbs carry Cal’s pride (outplan is a vocabulary word). The second sentence reaches one step further, to his father. The third is the long one, and it is about Lee: a main clause, then for and a clause that runs on through a series, “waiting, understanding, and at the last moment cautioning quietly,” and lands on Lee’s own two words. Then a short sentence of respect and fear. The fifth turns on But and sets Aron against Lee: where Lee’s mind is always ahead, Aron is “a lump of soft mud,” an image of something shaped by another’s hands. The sixth turns again with “suddenly”, and love and the wish to protect arrive in the same breath as the power. The second passage is the same boy alone. Its first sentence strings three clauses on and, so the shade moves in and the wind falls as slowly as the words; bellied, a vocabulary word, makes the room seem to breathe. The second is seven words with a strange, soft adjective, “quilted”, for sadness. The third and fourth are anaphora: “He wished with all his heart” twice, the first wish about what Aron did, the second about what Cal did. The last sentence ends on a small paradox, words made silently that he can still hear. For the talk prompt, some will press harder on the first wish, since losing Aron is what hurts; some on the second, since that is the wish about his own act; some will say the two should sound the same, because Cal cannot yet tell them apart. Leave it open; the discussion begins outside the post office, with what each brother says about an uncle neither of them knew.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the Ford stopping at the post office to the words Cal cries only in his mind. Then choose the one sentence you would keep if you could keep only one, and say why.

Cal says he can’t be sad about an uncle he never met. Aron never met him either. Yet Aron plans flowers for his grave, and feels he is growing “rich in dead relatives.” Which brother is more honest about a man neither of them knew? Moral reasoning
In the wagon shed, Cal puts his arm around Aron. Aron does not flinch or respond. He draws back a little “to see Cal’s face.” What is Aron looking for there? Inference
Aron wonders what Cal’s tricks are “good for.” Then he walks out of the shed. Alone, Cal tries to imagine he is racing down the road, but “it wasn’t any good.” What did Aron’s question take from Cal? Author's choice
Aron lost the bet, so after supper he gets out his deer’s-leg whistle to pay Cal. Cal won’t take it. Aron lays it on the table and says, “It’ll be here for you.” Why doesn’t Aron just put it back in his pocket? Character
Lee says he will listen to Adam first. Then he will know “whether I can offer an honest opinion or whether it is better to reassure you in your own.” By the end, he gives the honest opinion. What makes him choose it? Moral reasoning
In bed, Cal prays, “let me be like Aron.” Then he offers God a deal: “If you will let everybody like me,” he will give anything in the world. What does the deal tell you about the first wish? Theme

Make a Connection Think of a book, or a time in your own life, when a brother or sister knew something the other did not. What did keeping it change between them?

Vocabulary

outplan: He could outthink and outplan his brother. To plan better than someone else, so that you are always a move ahead of them. The prefix out- turns a plain verb into a contest, as in outrun and outwit. Steinbeck pairs it with outthink, and the pair tells us how Cal sees Aron in the shed: as someone to beat. The same planning, minutes later, “suddenly seemed mean and dirty to him.”
bellied: The window shade bellied slowly in and then the night wind fell and the worn shade flapped quietly against the window. Swelled out in a curve, the way a sail fills with wind. The verb comes from the noun belly. Here the night wind pushes the worn shade into the dark room and lets it fall back, slowly, as if the room were breathing. It is the one moving thing Cal watches as he lies awake, just before the sadness descends on him.
testily: “Mr. Adam Trask, King City, California, Dear Sir,” it began testily, “For the last six months we have exhausted every means of locating you. In an irritated, short-tempered way, the way someone speaks when their patience is worn thin. From testy, which comes from an old French word for head, as in headstrong. Steinbeck gives the mood to the letter itself, not to the lawyers: it “began testily”, and Adam “could feel their impatience with him.” It is the first of the letter’s moods, and the narrator wants us to feel each change, from testy to sad to pleasant.
daguerreotype: He went to his room and returned and put a faded brown daguerreotype on the table in front of Lee. An early kind of photograph, made on a sheet of polished, silvered metal, named for Louis Daguerre, who invented it. Its shiny surface is why Lee must shift it “this way and that to overcome the highlights.” Here it is the only way Charles enters the room: Lee reads a dead man’s character from an old picture, and finds “both the love and the murder” in his face.
amiably: “Bull shit!” he said amiably, and he went out and closed the door behind him. In a friendly, good-natured way. From the Latin amicabilis, friendly, the same root as amicable and amity. The word is surprising beside what Lee says. A moment earlier he spoke “angrily”; now he turns back, smiles at Adam, and says two rough words in a friendly voice. The line turns on the gap between the words and the tone, and the reader has to hold both.

Critical thinking

Outside the post office, Lee asks Adam, “Any complications?” Adam says, “No.” That night, Aron asks if Uncle Charles had any money. Cal says, “No.” How much of his father is in Cal’s answer?
Cal answers Aron’s questions with a story about a big wreath packed in ice. Is that story one more of Cal’s tricks, or is it a kindness?