East of Eden

Chapter 40

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Whoever she was, she must be crazy to ask for money. Ethel—there were hundreds of Ethels. Ethels grew on every bush. And this one scrawled illegibly on a lined pad.

After she had gone Kate strolled out to the back of the lot behind the house. And even after years she could see from the unevenness of the earth that it must have been pretty thoroughly dug over. The next morning the judge heard the usual chronicle of small violence and nocturnal greed. He only half listened to the fourth case and at the end of the terse testimony of the complaining witness he asked, “How much did you lose?”

Read both passages aloud. In which sentences can you hear Kate’s own voice inside the narrator’s?

For the educator Both passages come from the second section, the first from just before Ethel’s visit and the second from just after it, and they are worth copying as a pair: one shows Kate brushing Ethel off before she arrives, the other shows what Ethel’s visit sends her out to look at, and how calmly the town disposes of Ethel the next morning. The first passage has four sentences, and the whole of it is told in Kate’s own voice, though the narrator never marks it as her thought. The first sentence opens with a clause set off by a comma, “Whoever she was,” and dismisses her before it knows who she is. The second turns on a dash: a name, then the name made plural, “hundreds of Ethels.” The third is a short figure of speech that makes a woman as common as a weed. The fourth begins with “And,” sneers at the handwriting, and holds the vocabulary word illegibly. The second passage also has four sentences. The first is plain action: Kate strolls, as if nothing pressed her. The second begins with “And even after years” and holds the vocabulary word unevenness; its “must have been pretty thoroughly dug over” is a guess, in an easy, spoken word, “pretty.” Then the scene changes with no break. The third sentence is the narrator’s, dry and balanced: “small violence and nocturnal greed,” two nouns, each with its adjective. The fourth pairs two t sounds in “terse testimony” and ends on a line of speech inside a sentence, with its comma and its question mark inside the quotation marks. For the talk prompt, most will hear Kate in all of the first passage: “crazy,” the plural Ethels, the bush. Some will hear her again in “pretty thoroughly dug over,” the shrug of someone checking her own work. Some will say the court sentences are the narrator alone, and that the switch from her voice to the narrator’s is the point: Kate looks at the ground, and the town’s routine takes over. Leave it open.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from Kate alone in her chair after Cal leaves to the bromide’s weight on her eyes. Then choose the one sentence you think the chapter turns on, and say why.

Kate calls Cal a “snot-nose.” Yet the panic he leaves her in makes her think of Samuel Hamilton. What does the boy share with the old man? Character
The court scene does not end with Ethel. It ends with the man who accused her. He strolls toward Kate’s, changes his mind and goes for a haircut. Why end the scene on him? Author's choice
On the night her fear begins, Kate says she is going to bed. Then she asks, “Did you press that dress, Eloise?” When Eloise says yes, Kate tells her, “You didn’t do it very well.” Why pick on the dress that night? Character
Before Kate learns that the pain in her hands is arthritis, a voice whispers that the pain might be a punishment. The narrator calls it an “evil voice.” What makes the voice evil? Author's choice
Kate says she had the lean-to painted gray because the light troubles her eyes. In time her eyes do burn after a trip to town. What is really hurting them? Inference

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when someone settled a problem quickly and then could not stop thinking about it. What kept it alive?

Vocabulary

illegibly: And this one scrawled illegibly on a lined pad. In a way that cannot be read. It is built from il-, not, and legible, readable, from the Latin legere, to read, the root of lecture and legend. Kate sneers at the letter’s scrawl as one more sign of a nobody, and when Ethel comes she asks, “What letter?” A letter no one can read is an easy one to say you never got.
unevenness: And even after years she could see from the unevenness of the earth that it must have been pretty thoroughly dug over. The state of not being level or smooth: bumps and hollows. It is built from un-, not, even, and -ness, the state of being. Years later the ground behind the house still shows that someone dug there. The earth keeps a record that a careful eye can read, and the first eye to read it is Kate’s.

Critical thinking

Lying in bed, Kate asks herself, “Suppose I had been the one to dig up the bottles?” Who is the clever person she is afraid of?
Kate builds the gray room as a place where no eyes can stare at her. Is it a hiding place she controls, or a trap she has built for herself?