East of Eden

Chapter 4

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

He stood and grinned and rubbed his split knuckles. And when the drummers, accepting his drink, raised their glasses and said, “Here’s to you,” Charles was delighted. He ordered another drink for his new friends, and then he joined them for some kind of deviltry in another place.

When he fired his carbine to miss he was committing treason against his unit, and he didn’t care. The emotion of nonviolence was building in him until it became a prejudice like any other thought-stultifying prejudice. To inflict any hurt on anything for any purpose became inimical to him.

How much does the narrator let you see inside each brother in these two passages?

For the educator Two passages, six sentences, one brother each. The first is the last three sentences of the chapter’s opening paragraph, Charles at the inn on the night of the beating. It opens on three verbs strung together with “and,” “stood and grinned and rubbed,” so the actions pile up without comment. The second sentence holds its main clause back behind a participle, “accepting his drink,” and a quotation inside the sentence, “Here’s to you,” before it lands on “Charles was delighted.” The third is a compound sentence that ends on a phrase the narrator leaves vague on purpose, “some kind of deviltry.” The second passage is the second, third and fourth sentences of a paragraph in part 2, Adam the soldier. Its first sentence ends on a short, flat clause after a comma, “and he didn’t care,” right after the word “treason.” The next repeats “prejudice” at its close, and “like any other” puts Adam’s feeling in a family with other feelings. The last says “any” three times, “any hurt on anything for any purpose,” so the refusal has no exceptions, and ends on the formal, Latin-born “inimical,” hostile. Students copying the two practise a run of verbs joined by “and,” a main clause held back behind a participle and a quotation, punctuation around a quotation inside a sentence, and a word repeated for force. For the talk prompt, listen for a student who notices that Charles gets one named feeling, “delighted,” and otherwise only acts, while the narrator goes inside Adam, names his feeling and then judges it a “prejudice.” Listen too for one who notices that Charles’s inside reaches us later only through his own letter, since he “could not talk.” Both can point to the page. Do not let the talk settle whether Charles is sorry; the chapter never says so.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in its two parts, from Charles at the bar to the letter Adam keeps.

Charles has only a “meager jingle of silver.” On the night he beat his brother, he spends it on drinks for men he has just met. What is he buying with that money? Character
If Cyrus had found Charles that night, the narrator says, he would probably have killed him. The very next sentence ends on “a fingernail nicked in the garden soil.” Why set something so small beside a killing that nearly happened? Author's choice
Adam lies in bed, too sore to move without a groan. From that bed, Cyrus has him sworn into the cavalry. The narrator says Cyrus does it “as a poultice to his own pride.” A poultice is a pad laid on a sore. What sore is Cyrus treating? Inference
While the pen holds, Charles writes “ha! ha!” twice. Once it breaks and he goes on in pencil, there are no more jokes. What were the jokes doing for him? Character
Charles writes that it feels like he half finished a job and “can’t think what it was.” Which line in his own letter comes closest to telling him? Inference

Make a Connection Think of a time when you, or someone in a story, wrote something they could never have said out loud. What can a person do on paper that they cannot do face to face?

Vocabulary

deviltry: He ordered another drink for his new friends, and then he joined them for some kind of deviltry in another place. Wild mischief, reckless fun (from devil, in its playful sense, as when someone has the devil in them). The narrator does not say what Charles and the drummers did. The phrase “some kind of deviltry” is enough: on the night he beat his brother, Charles goes off for fun while his father looks for him.
thought-stultifying: The emotion of nonviolence was building in him until it became a prejudice like any other thought-stultifying prejudice. Deadening to thought; dulling the mind (stultify, from the Latin stultus, foolish, means to make foolish). The narrator uses it for the feeling behind Adam’s refusal to hurt: in its area, he says, it “blotted out any possible thinking.” It is the word that lets him call a horror of hurting a prejudice.

Critical thinking

Charles writes, “I had to take out after you.” The narrator says the Indian fighting “had to be done.” Adam is sent to do that fighting, and he fires to miss. How much choice does anyone in this chapter have about whether to hurt someone?
In his letter Charles says that if their father had liked the knife, he would not have gone after Adam. Is the letter an apology to Adam, or an excuse Charles makes to himself?