East of Eden

Chapter 34

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror. It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.

We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.

Read the first passage aloud. It opens, “In uncertainty I am certain.” What is the narrator still unsure of?

For the educator Both passages are worth copying for the way a sentence can hold a claim and a doubt at once. The first is the paragraph that follows the three deaths, and it has four sentences. The first opens on a paradox, “In uncertainty I am certain,” then looks “underneath their topmost layers of frailty” and ends on a doubled verb: “want to be good and want to be loved.” The second is short and begins “Indeed,” pressing the claim one step further; “attempted” is the word to slow down on. The third holds its main clause back behind three openings, “When a man comes to die,” “no matter what his talents and influence and genius,” and “if he dies unloved,” and then drops the verb from its last part: “and his dying a cold horror.” The fourth begins with another hedge, “It seems to me,” and turns from “a man” to “you or I” and “we.” The second passage is the essay’s last paragraph, and it has four sentences. The first, “We have only one story,” comes back to the essay’s opening claim in five words. The second repeats “all” and names the contest. The third and fourth each balance on “while,” setting evil against virtue and a young face against an old one, and the third corrects itself in passing: “while good, while virtue.” Respawn and venerable are vocabulary words. For the talk prompt, some will point to “most,” some to “It seems to me,” some to the “perhaps” in the paragraphs before; some will say he is unsure of everything except the one claim. Leave it open.

Discussion

Narration Tell the narrator’s argument back in order, from the question at the top of the chapter to his last lines about vice and virtue. Then choose the one sentence you think the whole argument turns on, and say why.

The net of good and evil catches people everywhere, even in “their kindness and generosity too.” How could kindness catch a person? Theme
Croesus asked Solon who was the luckiest person in the world, and the narrator turns that into a question of good and evil. What does luck have to do with being good? Inference
“A bribed man can only hate his briber,” the narrator writes, because the briber has “removed his self-love.” Who took that self-love away, the man who offered the gift or the man who took it? Moral reasoning
The third man gave his life to making people brave, yet at his death they weep in the streets and think, “How can we go on without him?” Are those the words of brave people? Character
At the top of the chapter, a grown-up asks what the world’s story is about and how it ends. What do the narrator’s last two sentences say about how it ends? Plot structure

Make a Connection The narrator says that “All novels, all poetry” are built on the contest of good and evil. Think of a book you love. Does it fit his rule, or break it?

Vocabulary

eminence: And in our time, when a man dies—if he has had wealth and influence and power and all the vestments that arouse envy, and after the living take stock of the dead man’s property and his eminence and works and monuments—the question is still there: Was his life good or was it evil?—which is another way of putting Croesus’s question. High rank or fame; standing above other people the way a hill stands above flat ground (the word first meant a high place). Here it is one of the things the living “take stock of” when a great man dies, beside his property, works and monuments. The narrator counts it up only to say that when the counting is done, “the question is still there.”
respawn: And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. To be born or produced again. Spawn is what fish and frogs do when they lay masses of eggs, and re- means again. Many students know the word from video games, where a player who is knocked out comes back to play again. The narrator says evil “must constantly respawn”: it keeps coming back new, while virtue is called “immortal.”
venerable: Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is. Worthy of deep respect because of age, long goodness or wisdom; honored the way a very old and good person is honored. It comes from the Latin for to revere. The narrator sets it against vice’s “new fresh young face,” so the word carries both age and honor at once.

Critical thinking

Nearly everyone on the ship was glad the richest man had died, yet the narrator says his good works may have outweighed the evils of his rise. If that is so, what is left of his measuring stick?
The narrator says that most of our vices are “attempted short cuts to love.” Does that make wrongdoing easier to forgive, or only easier to understand?