East of Eden

Chapter 38

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

In Cal the process had been so long and so slow that he felt no strangeness. He had built a wall of self-sufficiency around himself, strong enough to defend him against the world. If his wall had any weak places they may have been on the sides nearest Aron and Lee, and particularly nearest Adam. Perhaps in his father’s very unawareness Cal had felt safety. Not being noticed at all was better than being noticed adversely.

Cal didn’t hate the lie but the necessity for telling it. Cal lied for reasons of profit of one kind or another. To be driven to a lie seemed shameful to him. He wanted to shout, “I know how you got it and it’s all right.” But, of course, he did not. “I’d like to hear about it,” he said.

Read both passages aloud. In which one is Cal more alone?

For the educator The two passages are the chapter’s first and last close looks at Cal with his father, and they are worth copying as a pair. The first has five sentences and closes the narrator’s account of how rebuffs made Cal. The first sentence is about time: the change was so slow he never felt it. The second turns the change into a thing he built, “a wall of self-sufficiency,” made of not needing anyone. The third goes looking for the wall’s weak places and narrows as it goes, from Aron and Lee to “particularly nearest Adam.” Notice the hedges, “may have been” and “Perhaps”: the narrator does not claim to know Cal’s heart for certain. The last sentence balances on one word used twice, “noticed.” Self-sufficiency and unawareness are vocabulary words. The second passage comes from the end of the chapter. Cal has walked in on Adam in the bath, asked about the bullet scar, and heard Adam say it is “an old wound” from “the Indian campaigns.” Cal has watched his father’s mind “leap into the past for a lie.” The passage has six sentences. The first turns on “but”: what Cal hates is not the lie but the need for it. The second is a flat confession about his own lies, told “for reasons of profit.” The third is built around being “driven,” as if the shame lies in being forced. The fourth holds a sentence Cal never says aloud, set in quotation marks all the same. The fifth is six words long. The sixth gives what he says instead. For the talk prompt, some will say Cal is more alone in the first, behind a wall, safe only because no one sees him. Some will say the second, because now he carries something he cannot share with the one person he most wants to share it with. Some will say the second passage is the first time his secrecy is for someone else. Ask what Cal knows in each passage that his father does not. Leave it open.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in a few sentences, from Cal being rebuffed as a small boy to Cal keeping the secret from Aron. Then say which of the four sections changes Cal the most, and why.

Adam’s hand rises to Cal’s shoulder “automatically,” and Adam probably never knows he does it. Does that touch show that Adam loves him? Character
When Old Tom asks Cal why he is out walking at night, Cal says, “I’m not bothering anybody,” but Tom never said he was. Who is Cal arguing with? Inference
On the walk to Kate’s, what Rabbit describes only seems silly to Cal, but “the men who watched” make him sick. What does Cal see in them? Theme
Cal’s first questions to Lee are mostly about his father, even “What did my father do to make her leave?” What is he hoping to hear? Inference
Cal takes Lee’s rule, “You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself,” and turns it on himself. Did Lee give Cal the idea, or only the words for a fear he already had? Character
When Adam lies about the scar, Cal says, “I’d like to hear about it.” Is Cal lying too? Moral reasoning

Make a Connection Think of someone, in a book or in your own life, who feared they had their mother’s or father’s faults in them. Did the fear help them, or hold them back?

Vocabulary

self-sufficiency: He had built a wall of self-sufficiency around himself, strong enough to defend him against the world. Needing no one else; being enough for yourself. It is built from self and sufficient, which means enough. Steinbeck makes it a building material: Cal’s wall is made of not needing people. The very next sentence goes looking for the wall’s weak places, and guesses they lie on the sides nearest the people in his own house.
unawareness: Perhaps in his father’s very unawareness Cal had felt safety. Not knowing or noticing; the state of being unaware. Here it is Adam’s: a father who does not notice his son, and whose hand probably rises to the boy’s shoulder without his knowing it. The word “very” leans on it, and the narrator’s “Perhaps” leaves room to doubt that a boy can be kept safe by not being seen.
ingenuousness: And what was charming in the blond ingenuousness of Aron became suspicious and unpleasant in the dark-faced, slit-eyed Cal. Innocent openness: a simple, trusting frankness with nothing hidden. Do not mix it up with ingenuity, which is cleverness. Steinbeck gives the quality to Aron, who does not pretend, and the sentence shows what happens when Cal, who is pretending, copies him: the same words and acts turn “suspicious and unpleasant.”
convulsive: Lee’s mind said a convulsive prayer for guidance. Sudden, violent and out of control, like a spasm of the muscles. When Cal says he has seen his mother, Lee answers only “What do you want to know?” in a soft voice, but inside, a prayer jerks out of him. The word shows how much Lee hides under his calm, before he ever jumps up from his chair.
sardonically: He thought sardonically of telling him about his mother, to see how he would handle it, but he withdrew the thought quickly. In a grimly mocking way, with a bitter half-smile. It comes from a Greek word for a scornful laugh. The adverb gives Cal’s thought its mood, a dark joke at the end of a chapter in which his brother has lectured him; the rest of the sentence shows him dropping the thought as fast as it came.

Critical thinking

At the end, Cal thinks of telling Aron about their mother “to see how he would handle it,” but he drops the idea fast. Who is he protecting?
Lee tells Cal that whatever he does, “it will be you who do it—not your mother.” Is Lee right, or is he asking more of Cal than anyone could?