East of Eden

Chapter 36

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Cal was growing up dark-skinned, dark-haired. He was quick and sure and secret. Even though he may have tried, he could not conceal his cleverness. Adults were impressed with what seemed to them a precocious maturity, and they were a little frightened at it too. No one liked Cal very much and yet everyone was touched with fear of him and through fear with respect. Although he had no friends he was welcomed by his obsequious classmates and took up a natural and cold position of leadership in the schoolyard.

His slow deliberate mind could not accept so many thoughts and emotions at once. The door was shut against everything except physical pain. After a while the door opened a little and let in one thing to be scrutinized and then another and another, until all had been absorbed, one at a time. Outside his closed mind a huge thing was clamoring to get in. Aron held it back until last.

Read the second passage aloud, and notice how long the door takes to open. Why does Steinbeck make you wait?

For the educator The two passages are the chapter’s two portraits of a mind, one seen from outside and one from inside, and they are worth copying side by side. The first has six sentences, all about Cal as others see him. Its first sentence ends on two short compound words, dark-skinned and dark-haired, and its second is a run of three joined by “and”: “quick and sure and secret.” The third sentence concedes and then denies. The fourth sets what adults admired beside what they feared. The fifth is a chain, “touched with fear of him and through fear with respect,” in which one feeling leads to the next. The sixth turns on “Although”: no friends, and yet a following, in a position both “natural and cold.” Obsequious is a vocabulary word. The second passage has five sentences and is Aron alone under the willow. The narrator gives his mind a door. The third sentence is the longest in either passage, and it moves the way it describes, “and then another and another,” until all are taken in. The last sentence is the shortest. The phrase “closed mind” returns at the end of the chapter, when Aron “closed his mind against her.” Scrutinized is a vocabulary word. For the talk prompt, most will hear the wait in the third sentence. Some will say the long sentence lets the reader feel Aron’s slowness, and some that it builds the pressure of the thing kept waiting. Leave it open.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in a few sentences, from the West End school to “Good night, Father.” Then choose the one sentence you think the whole chapter turns on, and say why.

The narrator calls Cal’s three-week plan for raising hands “a waste of time,” since both boys learned easily enough. So why does Cal bother? Character
Under the willow, it is Aron who asks Abra to play his mother, and then he cries without warning and cannot stop. What was he asking for? Inference
Abra says she tells the secret because it might make Aron glad, and then the dream of finding his mother carries her off like a rip tide. Whose gladness is she thinking of? Character
When Aron says his father is not a liar, Abra gives him a way for his father to be honest and his mother alive: “Maybe he thinks she’s dead.” What would it cost Aron to take it? Moral reasoning
Just before the big thought gets in, the narrator stops for the frogs, whose song is so steady that the town would wake if it ever stopped. What in Aron’s life is like that song? Author's choice
Aron does not know if his mother’s hair was light or dark, yet he has often pictured her lying underground, “still and cool and unrotted.” Why would he keep that picture? Inference
Abra strokes Aron’s cheek in the mother game, and at the end Aron gives his father “a stroking touch” on the shoulder. What has Aron brought home from the willow? Character

Make a Connection Think of a story, from a book or from your own life, in which someone refused to believe news they did not want to be true. What did refusing it protect?

Vocabulary

obsequious: Although he had no friends he was welcomed by his obsequious classmates and took up a natural and cold position of leadership in the schoolyard. Too eager to please someone who has power; bowing and flattering. It comes from the Latin for following or giving way. Steinbeck sets it against “no friends”: the classmates welcome Cal out of the fear and respect the sentence before describes, not out of liking. An obsequious crowd follows a leader; it does not love him.
scrutinized: After a while the door opened a little and let in one thing to be scrutinized and then another and another, until all had been absorbed, one at a time. Looked at closely and carefully, piece by piece. It comes from a Latin word for searching through, even through rags. Here it is Aron’s slow mind that scrutinizes: each thing that comes through the door is studied before the next is let in. Later he “inspected the cloud of sadness” the same way.
bemused: “We’ll have a house together some time,” Aron said, bemused. Lost in thought; a little dazed, as if the mind were somewhere else. It does not mean amused, though many people use it that way. Aron says it while picturing a house far in the future, where “We’ll go in and close the door and it will be nice.” Abra, beside him, is not bemused at all.

Critical thinking

The narrator says Aron is “unchanging once a course was set,” and no more responsible for his angel face than a fawn is for its spots. How much of what he decides under the willow is his own choice?
Aron pushes his mother “back into death” so that his father need not be a liar. Is closing his mind a way of keeping faith, or a way of hiding from the truth?