East of Eden

Chapter 33

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

She thought, How pure he is, how unfit for a world that even she knew more about than he did. A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. She wished her father were here. Her father had felt greatness in Tom. Perhaps he would know now how to release it out of its darkness and let it fly free.

Tom felt comforted by these because they screened the great Gray One in the back seat, waiting—the gray and dreadful crime. He dredged up lesser things, used small sins almost like virtues to save himself. There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love.

Read the first passage aloud. Steinbeck writes “A dragon killer, he was,” turning the usual order around. How does that change the way you say it?

For the educator The two passages answer each other, and both are worth copying for the way a sentence can carry a judgment of a person. The first is Dessie’s thought in the living room after the hill, and it has five sentences. The first gives her thought without quotation marks, “She thought, How pure he is,” and doubles it with a second how: “how unfit for a world that even she knew more about than he did.” The second turns its order around, “A dragon killer, he was,” like a line from an old tale, sets two storybook titles side by side, and comes down at the end to a plain pair, “unfit and unseemly.” Unseemly is a vocabulary word. The third and fourth are short and plain, and both lean on the absent father. The fifth is a hope in a long, rising line that ends on “let it fly free.” The second passage comes from Tom’s trial under the lamp, where “these” are the small sins he faces as accusers. It has three sentences. The first keeps back what the Gray One is until after a dash at the very end, and even then names it only as “the gray and dreadful crime,” so the sentence stalls the way Tom stalls. The second turns on a near-paradox: small sins used “almost like virtues.” The third is a list of sins named like people, each with a capital letter and an object: “Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love.” Covetousness is a vocabulary word. Set side by side, Dessie guesses that Tom’s “small sins seemed so great to him,” and under the lamp he uses small sins to hide from a great one. For the talk prompt, some will hear the turned order as admiring, a hero announced; some as fond teasing; some as a little sad, a hero out of a book in a world he does not fit. Leave it open.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the green year on the ranch to Tom turning his horse south from King City at three in the morning. Then choose the one sentence you think the chapter turns on, and say why.

On the porch, Tom tells Dessie that he goes to women, and that it is “Not much” good to him. Back inside, she thinks, “How pure he is.” What does she mean by pure? Character
Both of them say they want to go “More than anything in the world.” That night, Dessie wonders whether she really wanted to go, or whether Tom did. Who was the trip for? Inference
Will hides his interest in the pig plan, and the narrator calls that kind of hiding “one of the creative joys of a businessman.” That evening, Dessie hides her pain from Tom. Is her hiding an art, too? Theme
Alone under the lamp, Tom says aloud again what he told Dessie: “This will do the job. Just wait till morning. You’ll feel fine then.” Why does he repeat only his own words, and none of hers? Moral reasoning
Later, the sofa where Dessie lay “cricked in criticism” about the smoking lamp. Tom tells it, “Thank you,” and turns down the wick. Should a reader laugh? Tone
The Samuel in Tom’s mind calls him “my son, my darling,” and then helps him plan the letters. Does that voice comfort Tom, or urge him on? Character

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when someone kept a pain to themselves, even from a person they loved. Who was that silence protecting?

Vocabulary

unseemly: A dragon killer, he was, a rescuer of damsels, and his small sins seemed so great to him that he felt unfit and unseemly. Not fitting or proper; out of place, not fit to be seen. Seemly is an old word for fitting, and un- turns it around. Dessie thinks Tom’s small sins make him feel “unfit and unseemly”: not wicked, but not fit for decent company. It is her picture of how hard he judges himself, long before the trial under the lamp.
rallied: She rallied herself against pain. Gathered your strength again for one more effort, the way a scattered army is called back into line. In “She rallied herself against pain,” Dessie is both the tired soldier and the one who calls the soldier back. The strength she gathers goes straight into hiding: her next words are “Just a stomach ache.”
covetousness: There were Covetousness of Will’s money, Treason toward his mother’s God, Theft of time and hope, sick Rejection of love. An eager, envious wanting of what belongs to someone else. It comes from covet, to long for another’s goods, an old word from the commandments. In Tom’s trial it is one of the lesser sins he drags up, “Covetousness of Will’s money,” and its capital letter makes it a person in the courtroom, a small accuser who screens a greater one.
unfilial: He said, “I’m busy greeting my friends,” and he nodded to Discourtesy and Ugliness and Unfilial Conduct and Unkempt Fingernails. Not as a son or daughter ought to be toward a mother or father. Filial comes from the Latin for son or daughter, and un- reverses it. Tom nods to “Unfilial Conduct” as one of his small sins, between Ugliness and Unkempt Fingernails. That same night he writes his mother a long, careful letter.
interpolated: And here interpolated—it’s so hard to remember how you die or when. Put in between other things; inserted into a story or a talk that was already going. The narrator stops Tom’s night with “And here interpolated” and sets down a few lines of his own about how hard it is to remember “how you die or when.” The word marks that, for a moment, the narrator is speaking and not Tom.

Critical thinking

Tom’s cheerful letter to his mother quotes his father: “Come back with your shield or on it.” Why would Tom put that line in a letter meant to hide the truth?
Tom puts himself on trial and finds himself guilty of murder. Is his verdict on himself a fair one?