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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
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?
The tension Kate handles Ethel’s blackmail with ease, sixty dollars, a planted complaint and a judge who says “Everything’s a frame,” but nights later the thought arrives that it was “insanity” to have her floated, that someone clever might ask what croton oil does in little doses, and “From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side.”
Notice how the chapter moves from the present, with Kate shaken in her chair, into the past and back again, and what brings her memory there.
The chapter has three sections, and it opens and closes in the present. In the first, Kate sits alone in her gray room just after Cal has left. Waves of nerves cross her body, she tells herself to steady down, and she calls Cal a snot-nose. She thinks of Samuel Hamilton, the only other person who ever made her feel this panic hatred. She draws up the chain around her neck, with its two safe-deposit keys, a gold watch and a steel tube, and checks the morphine capsule inside the tube. Cal’s last words, that he is glad she is afraid, repeat in her head; she says them aloud to stop them, and lets a memory form. The second section goes back to a time before the lean-to was built. Kate has banked the money Charles left, her hands have begun to hurt, and she means to leave for New York once she is well. A letter comes from Ethel, a girl she once ran out of the house. Ethel herself comes, poor and sick, and tells of a dream: on the rainy night Faye died she saw Kate creep out to the back of the lot and stoop, and later found smashed medicine bottles and the rubber tip of an eye-dropper there, which she keeps in an envelope with a friend. Kate offers her a bed and work, which Ethel refuses, then gives her a hundred dollars in all and promises the same each month. After Ethel goes, Kate sees that the earth out back was dug over. The next morning a dark-haired man accuses Ethel of robbing him of nearly a hundred dollars; the judge says everything is a frame and has her run over the county line, and the man walks toward Kate’s and then goes for a haircut. The third section follows the fear as it grows. At first the visit hardly troubles Kate. Then one night a thought flashes past, with Charles’s face and Samuel’s eyes in it. She tours the house; the narrator explains how she keeps her girls afraid and trusting; Joe hushes a curious girl; Kate goes to bed with tea. There she finds the thought: there are clever people. Putting herself in the finder’s place, she sees how buried bottles, croton oil and Faye’s will could be pieced together, and that she can no longer find Ethel. She cannot stay and dares not run, and she takes bromide. From then on fear is always at her side. She is almost glad to learn her hand pain is arthritis; an evil voice had whispered it might be a punishment. She stops going out, builds the gray lean-to, says the light hurts her eyes and comes to believe it, and turns down a secret door because if she could get out, something could get in. Cal’s following brought a terrible leap of fear. The chapter ends back in the present, with Kate sinking into her pillows under the weight of the bromide.
Read the chapter yourself before the lesson. A few things it takes for granted. Kate is Cathy, the twins’ mother, who shot Adam and left him, and who now runs a brothel on Castroville Street in Salinas. In earlier chapters she came to the house as a new girl, slowly poisoned its madam, Faye, after Faye made a will leaving her everything, and took the house; Ethel was one of Faye’s girls whom Kate later ran off. Croton oil is a violent purgative; the chapter names it, and the lesson needs no more. Charles is Adam’s brother, who left money to Adam and Kate when he died, and who saw through her years before; Samuel Hamilton, an old friend of Adam’s, saw through her too. In the chapter before, Cal followed Kate for weeks, sat with her in the gray room and left saying, “I’m glad you’re afraid”; those are the words repeating in her head. To get someone floated is to have them run out of town. Bromide is a sedative. Ethel’s “the old Joe” is slang for a disease, and the circus is a show the house puts on; neither needs more than that. Keep the morphine where the chapter keeps it: Kate carries the capsule and checks it, and nothing more is shown. Ethel and her envelope leave the chapter over the county line; do not guess at their return. The chapter shows no one suspecting Kate; the danger lives only in her mind. Do not let the talk turn into a crime story to be solved, and do not let Kate’s fear soften into remorse: what the chapter studies is a dread of being found out, and how it grows. A teacher who has read on knows more; keep all of it out of the talk. Slow down three times: in Ethel’s visit, from “Well, maybe you remember how I’ve got like second sight” to “Not unless I had to”; on the Tuesday night, from “Lying back among her pillows” to “a heavy dose of bromide”; and in the paragraph on the two opposing thoughts and the secret door.
Retell The student tells the chapter back, from Kate alone in her chair after Cal leaves to the bromide’s weight on her eyes. Look for the first section: the panic, the thought of Samuel, the chain and the capsule, and Cal’s words said aloud; the memory of Ethel’s letter and visit, her dream, the envelope, the bed refused and the hundred dollars; the dug earth out back; the court, the frame and the haircut; the fear arriving on the Tuesday night, the tour of the house, the thought about clever people, and the bromide; the arthritis and the evil voice; the gray lean-to, the eyes and the refused door; and the return to the present. Look for nothing added about what Kate will do with the morphine or whether Ethel comes back. Then ask which one sentence the chapter turns on, and why.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes a short paragraph in the manner of the first passage, in the voice of someone brushing off a message from a person they barely remember: open with a clause like “Whoever she was” that dismisses the sender before knowing who it is; then the name, a dash, and the name made plural; then a short figure of speech that makes the person common; and end with a sentence beginning “And this one” that sneers at one detail of the message. Then a paragraph in the manner of the second: someone goes quietly to check on something, and a sentence beginning “And even after” ends in a guess with “must have been”; then, with no break, the scene moves to an official’s ordinary morning, told in the narrator’s dry voice, with one balanced pair of adjectives and nouns, and ends on a line of speech inside a sentence. Read both aloud beside Steinbeck’s and ask where the voice changes from the character’s to the narrator’s.
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues that the gray room is a hiding place Kate controls. It gathers the reason she gives for it, the narrator’s “a place where no eyes could stare at her,” her judgment that a door would leave her unprotected, the chain with her keys, and the house she still runs from it. The other side argues that it is a trap she has built for herself. It gathers the fear “at her side,” the “feeling rather than a thought” that threw out the door, the “more and more will power” it takes to leave on Mondays, the trip to New York that never came, and her “terrible leap of fear” when Cal followed her. Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece, and each must use the line “If she could get out, something could get in.” Neither may say what Kate will do with the morphine, and neither may turn her fear into guilt.
Purpose Close on the chapter’s design. It opens with Kate shaken after Cal’s visit, steps back to a threat she handled in a morning, follows a fear that arrived nights later and never left, and ends where it began, in the same chair and pillows, with the bromide again. Ask why a chapter about a woman who rules everyone around her spends most of its length inside her fear, and why it never shows anyone else afraid of the danger she imagines. Name the habit it practices: watching a fear grow step by step, and judging what it does to the person who carries it.
Easier Read aloud together the first section, from “Kate sat back in her chair” to “inspect it again”; the end of Ethel’s visit, from “Well, I thought if you could see your way” to “Not unless I had to”; and the last part of the chapter, from “From that time on the crouching fear” to the end. Talk through the first, third and fifth discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on eyes in this chapter: Samuel’s eyes that “looked underneath,” Charles’s face behind Kate on the Tuesday night, the men who stare after her in town, the light she says hurts her eyes, and the room where no eyes could stare at her. Judge whether what Kate fears is being seen or being found out, and whether the chapter lets the reader tell the two apart. Meet the strongest objection: the only eyes that find her in this chapter belong to her own son.
1. 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
What it asks It asks the student to set two people side by side through Kate’s eyes. The chapter opens just after Cal has left her. Waves of nerves cross her body, she tells herself “Steady now,” and she calls him “The goddam snot-nose!” Then “She thought suddenly of the only person who had ever made her feel this panic hatred. It was Samuel Hamilton, with his white beard and his pink cheeks and the laughing eyes that lifted her skin and looked underneath.” She checks the steel tube on her neck chain. Cal’s last words, “I’m glad you’re afraid,” repeat in her head until she says them aloud “to kill the sound.” Later, on the Tuesday night, the thought she cannot catch brings “Sam Hamilton’s puzzled and merry eyes.” After that she dreads that a man in town might have “Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes,” and the section ends, “When Cal began to follow her she had a terrible leap of fear.” The question touches the hinge: before the chapter shows Kate building a room where no eyes can reach her, it shows whose eyes she fears.
They see underneath. Samuel’s eyes “lifted her skin and looked underneath,” and Cal has just done the same thing: he followed her, and before he left he told her what was under her surface, that she is afraid. Calling Cal a “snot-nose” makes him small just when he has seen the most.
the laughing eyes that lifted her skin and looked underneath
I’m glad you’re afraid.
They are not afraid of her. Samuel’s eyes are “laughing” and “merry,” and Cal leaves glad. Kate rules everyone else through fear: her girls are “desperately afraid of her,” and Ethel is run out of the county by noon. A person who laughs, or is glad, gives her nothing to take hold of, and that is what turns her panic into hatred.
Sam Hamilton’s puzzled and merry eyes
They were desperately afraid of her.
A strong answer A strong response names what the boy and the old man share and grounds it in the first section and the Tuesday night. One reader says they see underneath: Samuel’s eyes “lifted her skin and looked underneath,” and Cal has just told Kate she is afraid. Another says they are not afraid of her: Samuel’s eyes are “merry,” Cal leaves glad, and Kate can only rule people who fear her. The best answers notice that the chapter begins and ends with Cal, and keep the capsule as the chapter keeps it, named and no more.
2. 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
What it asks It asks the student to judge where the narrator points the camera. Ethel has told Kate her “dream” about the night Faye died and the glass she put “in an envelope.” Kate gives her forty dollars, then “six more ten-dollar bills,” promises to send the money every month, and says, “I still think you ought to have those bottles analyzed.” Ethel leaves “bubbling over with triumph”; “It was one of the few things that had ever worked out for her.” The next morning a dark-haired man tells the judge he lost “Pretty close to a hundred dollars.” The officer says Ethel had “Ninety-six dollars” and had bought whisky, cigarettes and magazines from the night clerk at six that morning. Ethel says, “This is a frame.” The judge says, “Everything’s a frame,” and “Next.” While a deputy drives her to the county line, “the complaining witness strolled down Castroville Street toward Kate’s, changed his mind and went back to Kenoe’s barbershop to get a hair cut.” That night Eloise talks with “the dark-haired Joe”; the chapter never says whether he is the same man, and the talk should not hang on it. The question touches the hinge: the frame costs Kate nothing at the time, and the next section shows what it costs her later.
To show how little it cost. A woman is run over the county line before noon, and the man who did it has the rest of his morning free for a haircut. The judge has heard it all before. The ease is the point, and it makes the fear that follows stranger, because after Ethel no one in the chapter moves against Kate. The narrator says plainly that the visit “did not disturb Kate very much when it happened.”
Ethel’s visit did not disturb Kate very much when it happened.
went back to Kenoe’s barbershop to get a hair cut
To leave a thread. The last picture of the frame is a man walking straight toward Kate’s door. He turns aside, but the reader has seen where the line runs. It is the thread Kate herself will lie awake over: Ethel, gone where she cannot be found, might tell her story to someone who can follow it.
strolled down Castroville Street toward Kate’s, changed his mind
Ethel wasn’t bright, but she might tell somebody who was bright.
A strong answer A strong response says why the scene ends on the accuser and grounds it in the court and what follows. One reader says it shows how little the frame cost: Ethel is gone by noon and the man goes for a haircut, and the narrator says the visit “did not disturb Kate very much when it happened.” Another says it leaves a thread: the last picture is a man walking toward Kate’s door, the very trail Kate later fears a clever person could follow. The best answers use the hundred dollars and the ninety-six, and keep the link to Joe as the chapter keeps it, unsaid.
3. 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
What it asks It asks the student to read one small, sharp line against the narrator’s account of how Kate rules her house. On the Tuesday night, after the thought she cannot catch, Kate tours the house with Charles seeming “to walk to the side and behind her.” The narrator explains her rule: the girls are “desperately afraid of her. She kept them that way.” They may hate her; “But they trusted her, and that did matter.” “There was no love involved and no respect,” and “The girls did have the security of knowing that they would not be punished without cause.” Kate opens the icebox and inspects the garbage can “for waste”; “She did this every night, but this night she carried some extra charge.” Once she has left the parlor, Eloise says, “She seems nervous,” and Joe hushes her: “I don’t know and you don’t know.” Kate comes back, tells Joe she is going to bed, asks for tea, and then: “Did you press that dress, Eloise?” and “You didn’t do it very well.” The chapter never shows the dress or says whether it was badly pressed. The question touches the hinge: it catches the woman who rules her house by fear on the night fear begins to rule her.
To steady herself. She is shaken: the thought she cannot catch, Charles at her back, her fingers hurting. So she does what she does every night, only harder. She inspects the icebox and the garbage can, and she finds a fault. A badly pressed dress is a problem she can see and set right. Later the same night she puts “all of her papers neatly in the pigeonholes of her desk.” Order is how she quiets herself.
She did this every night, but this night she carried some extra charge.
She put all of her papers neatly in the pigeonholes of her desk
To keep the girls afraid. Kate rules by fear, and she knows the girls watch her: they turn “elaborately casual” when she walks by, and tonight they have seen that something is wrong. On the one night she is the one afraid, a sharp word puts the fear back on them. But it tests the thing the narrator says matters most. The girls trust her not to punish them “without cause,” and the chapter never shows the dress, only Kate’s word on it.
They were desperately afraid of her. She kept them that way.
the girls became elaborately casual
A strong answer A strong response says why Kate picks on the dress and grounds it in the Tuesday night. One reader says she is steadying herself: shaken, she inspects and corrects as she does every night, but with “some extra charge,” and then puts her papers away neatly. Another says she is keeping the girls afraid on the one night she is afraid herself, though the rebuke tests the trust the narrator says rests on no punishment “without cause.” The best answers use the narrator’s account of the house and what Eloise says once Kate has gone, and do not soften Kate’s fear into guilt.
4. 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
What it asks It asks the student to weigh one word. After the Tuesday night the narrator says, “From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side. She was almost glad when she learned that the pain in her hands was developing arthritis. An evil voice had whispered that it might be a punishment.” The pains began “about the time” Kate collected Charles’s money, before Ethel came. Earlier in the chapter the narrator says, “She had nearly forgotten Faye,” and the memory was “simply an unpleasant memory.” What frightens her on the Tuesday is a clever person, not a judgment. The sentence does not say whether “evil” is Kate’s word or the narrator’s, and the card should not claim the arthritis is a punishment; the chapter says only that the voice whispered it. The question touches the hinge: what Kate shuts out of the gray room may include more than staring men.
Because it says there is a judge. Kate’s safety rests on nothing being provable: the bottles would show nothing “recognizable as poison,” and nobody listens to a whore with a grievance. A voice that says her own body might be punishing her says she can be judged with no clever person and no proof at all. No frame can float that away, and so it is evil to her.
An evil voice had whispered that it might be a punishment.
She knew about what attention would be paid to a whore with a grievance
Because it is the fear talking, not a conscience. The voice comes in the same breath as “the crouching fear,” and it works the way the fear works, on her body: her fingers hurt on the night Charles seems to be behind her. Kate has “nearly forgotten Faye.” The voice is evil the way the something at the windows is: one more thing trying to get in.
From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side.
She had nearly forgotten Faye.
A strong answer A strong response says what makes the voice evil, and to whom, and grounds it in the paragraph and the Tuesday night. One reader says it is evil because it says there is a judge: Kate’s safety rests on nothing being provable, and a punishment in her own body needs no proof. Another says it is the fear talking, not a conscience: it arrives with “the crouching fear,” and Kate has “nearly forgotten Faye.” The best answers notice that the arthritis is a relief because it answers the voice, and claim nothing about whether the pain is a punishment.
5. 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
What it asks It asks the student to find the cause of a pain the narrator says is real. After the Tuesday night Kate stops going out: “She knew that men stared secretly after her, knowing who she was.” She dreads a man with “Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes” and has to drive herself out once a week. “Then she built the lean-to and had it painted gray. She said it was because the light troubled her eyes, and gradually she began to believe the light did trouble her eyes. Her eyes burned after a trip to the town.” The narrator then says Kate could “hold two opposing thoughts at the same time”: that the light pained her eyes, and that the room was “a place where no eyes could stare at her.” The question touches the hinge: it asks how true Kate’s own reason for the gray room is, before the last question asks what the room has become.
The light, by now. The narrator’s order is plain: she “said” it, then “gradually she began to believe” it, and then her eyes burned. A reason made up for others has come true in her body, so the pain is real, whatever started it. That is part of what the narrator means by two opposing thoughts: she believes the light hurts, and she also knows what the room hides her from.
She said it was because the light troubled her eyes, and gradually she began to believe the light did trouble her eyes.
It is possible to some people, and it was possible for Kate, to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time.
Being looked at. Her eyes burn “after a trip to the town,” where men stare after her, not in the light of her own house. What hurts is being seen, and the light is the name she gives it. The story is not false so much as the wrong name for a true pain.
She knew that men stared secretly after her, knowing who she was.
Her eyes burned after a trip to the town.
A strong answer A strong response names what hurts Kate’s eyes and grounds it in the narrator’s order. One reader says the light, by now: she said it, came to believe it, and then her eyes burned, so a cover story came true in her body. Another says being looked at: the burning comes after town, where men stare, so the light is the wrong name for the hurt of being seen. The best answers use the narrator’s “two opposing thoughts” and notice where the burning happens.
1. 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?
What it asks It asks the student to name the mind Kate fears. When Ethel comes, Kate is “watchful, suspicious, and confident,” and the visit “did not disturb Kate very much when it happened.” She knows how little anyone listens to a whore with a grievance, and that the bottles would show nothing “recognizable as poison.” Then, one night over a grocery bill, a thought flashes past, bringing “the dark face of Charles” and “Sam Hamilton’s puzzled and merry eyes.” In bed she finds it: “Charles was clever. In his crazy way Sam Hamilton was clever.” Both are dead, “but maybe there were others.” She works out the danger by putting herself in the finder’s place: “Suppose I had been the one to dig up the bottles? What would I think and what would I do?” She asks why bottles that held no poison were buried, what records Dr. Wilde kept, and what croton oil does in “little doses.” Of a madam who “willed everything to a new girl and then died,” “Kate knew perfectly well what her first thought would be.” She fears Ethel “might tell somebody who was bright,” calls the frame “insanity,” and takes bromide. Later she dreads men in town with “Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes,” and just before the chapter returns to the present, Cal begins to follow her. The chapter shows no one suspecting Kate of Faye’s death, Cal included; the danger lives only in her mind, and the card should keep it there. The question touches the hinge: it asks whose eyes the gray room is built against.
Someone like Charles or Samuel. Both men saw through her, and both are dead, but there may be others. The fear has faces: she dreads a man in town with “Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes.” And just before the chapter returns to the present, it names a living person who has followed her and looked underneath, Cal, who sends her into “a terrible leap of fear.” The clever person is out there, a stranger she has not met yet.
Both Sam and Charles were dead, but maybe there were others.
Suppose one of those men should have Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes.
Herself. The only clever mind the chapter shows working out the trail is Kate’s own. She finds the danger by asking what she would do in the finder’s place, and every question that frightens her is one she asks: why bury the bottles, what does croton oil do, what would anyone think of a madam who left everything to a new girl and died. The clever person is a copy of her own mind, which is why she cannot get away from it.
Suppose I had been the one to dig up the bottles?
Kate knew perfectly well what her first thought would be.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis about who the clever person is, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says someone like Charles or Samuel: both saw through her, “maybe there were others,” and she dreads men in town with their face or eyes. The strongest objection is that the only clever mind the chapter shows working out the trail is Kate’s own: she finds the danger by asking, “Suppose I had been the one to dig up the bottles?” A good revision might say she fears strangers because she knows what her own mind would do in their place, so the danger she imagines is built from her own cleverness. The best answers keep the danger where the chapter keeps it, in Kate’s mind, and claim nothing about anyone, Cal included, suspecting her.
2. 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?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question. After the Tuesday night, “From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side.” Kate stops going out except once a week. “Then she built the lean-to and had it painted gray.” She says the light troubles her eyes and comes to believe it, and she also believes the room is “a cave to hide in, a dark burrow in the earth, a place where no eyes could stare at her.” Sitting in her “pillowed chair,” she thinks of a secret door, “an avenue of escape,” and “a feeling rather than a thought threw out the plan. She would not be protected then. If she could get out, something could get in.” That something has begun “to crouch outside the house, to crawl close to the walls at night,” trying to look through the windows. “It required more and more will power for Kate to leave the house on Monday afternoons.” When Cal follows her she has “a terrible leap of fear.” The chapter ends back in the present: “her head dug deep in her soft pillows,” the verb the chapter used for the earth behind the house. The chapter opens with her chain, its two safe-deposit keys and the capsule she checks; it shows only that she carries it and checks it, and the card should claim no more. Her money was enough “to go away,” but “She never felt quite well again. New York seemed cold and very far away.”
A hiding place she controls. She chose it, named it, gave it a reason, and turned down the door by her own judgment: a door would let something in. The room does what it was built to do, since no eyes stare at her there. From it she still runs the house, counts her money and keeps her keys on her chain. It is the last place in Salinas that is wholly hers.
a place where no eyes could stare at her
She would not be protected then.
A trap she built for herself. A room with no way out keeps her in as surely as it keeps others out. The fear is “at her side,” so it lives in the room with her. Leaving takes “more and more will power,” and the plan to go away fades before the fear even begins. The door was turned down by “a feeling rather than a thought,” so the fear chose for her.
From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side.
It required more and more will power for Kate to leave the house on Monday afternoons.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis on what the gray room is, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says it is a hiding place she controls: she chose it and gave it a reason, she turned the door down by her own judgment, and no eyes stare at her there. The strongest objection is that the fear is “at her side,” inside the room with her, that leaving takes “more and more will power,” and that a feeling, not a thought, threw out the door. A good revision might say the room is both at once: a lock works from both sides, and Kate holds the key to a room she can less and less leave. The best answers use the door, the fear “at her side” and the Mondays, and claim nothing about the capsule beyond what the chapter shows.
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.
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.