East of Eden

Chapter 41

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering. He thought of himself as slow, doltish, conservative, uninspired. No great dream lifted him high and no despair forced self-destruction. He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had—care, and reason, application. He kept the books, hired the attorneys, called the undertaker, and eventually paid the bills.

Read the passage aloud. Which of its words do you think are unfair to Will?

For the educator The passage comes from the middle of the third section, while Will sits silent in his glass office after Cal has said he is fond of his father. It is the narrator’s look inside a man the chapter has so far shown only from outside, joking that he is “just a country boy.” The six sentences move from everyone to Will, and from what he hid to what he did. The first is a general truth in the present tense, the only one in the passage: “Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain.” The second turns to Will in the past and leaves a word out: “concealed his well” means concealed his box well, and the reader supplies the box from the sentence before. It then runs four actions in a row, the last of them negative. The third gives four adjectives with no “and” between them, as if Will were listing his own faults, and it holds the hard, old-fashioned “doltish.” The fourth is built in two matched halves, “No great dream” and “no despair,” and says what Will never was. The fifth carries a long phrase after its comma and turns on a dash to name his gifts, “care, and reason, application,” with the “and” set oddly early. The sixth returns to four actions in a row, plain tasks with “eventually” held back for the last, the paying. The vocabulary words doltish and self-destruction are in the third and fourth sentences. The paragraph’s next sentence, not copied here, is “The others didn’t even know they needed him.” For the talk prompt, many will pick “doltish” or “uninspired” and point out that the passage says he “thought of himself” that way; some will say “perverse” is the unkind word; some will say the last sentence is the unfair one, because it reduces a life of loyal work to bookkeeping, and others will answer that it is the most loving sentence in the passage. Let the students hear the difference between Will’s view of himself and the narrator’s, and leave the verdict to them.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the nation sliding toward war to Will’s big green car turning into the side road. Then choose the one sentence you think the chapter turns on, and say why.

Cal asks Aron not to tell their father about the exams until he has passed them. Aron says that “sounds silly.” Cal wants to shout, “I know who our mother is!” What in Aron’s answer makes him want to say that? Character
Abra agrees that Aron is still ashamed about the lettuce, then adds, “Maybe he’s enjoying it.” What could Aron be getting out of his shame? Inference
Lee offers Cal five thousand dollars. When Cal asks why he would need it, Lee says, “I don’t know.” Is Lee telling the truth? Character
Will sees in Cal “the son he should have had, or the brother, or the father.” Which of the three fits best? Character
Will asks, “If you do that, wouldn’t you be good?” Cal says no: “I think bad.” Does the rest of the chapter prove him right? Moral reasoning
The chapter opens on a nation “frightened and at the same time attracted” by war. How much of each feeling do you hear in Will’s car at the end? Theme

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when an older person saw something of themselves in someone younger. What did that lead them to do?

Vocabulary

imperceptibly: The nation slid imperceptibly toward war, frightened and at the same time attracted. So slowly or slightly that no one notices it happening. It is built from im-, not, and perceptible, able to be noticed, from the Latin percipere, to take hold of or notice, the root of perceive. The nation does not leap toward war; it slides a little each day, and the people in this chapter make their plans inside that slide without quite looking at it.
inevitably: Mr. Wilson was re-elected President in November on his platform promise to keep us out of war, and at the same time he was instructed to take a firm hand, which inevitably meant war. In a way that cannot be avoided or stopped. It is built from in-, not, and the Latin evitare, to avoid. The sentence holds a promise and its opposite: Wilson is re-elected to keep the country out of war and told to take a firm hand, “which inevitably meant war.” The word settles which of the two will win.
naïve: Naïve as the statement was, he didn’t think Cal was naïve. Simple and trusting, from too little experience of the world. It comes through French from the Latin nativus, inborn or natural, the root of native; the two dots over the i mark that it is said in two syllables. The sentence uses the word twice and splits it: Cal’s statement, “I want to make a lot of money,” sounds naïve, but Will does not think the boy is. Saying something simple on purpose is one way to use candor as a weapon.
doltish: He thought of himself as slow, doltish, conservative, uninspired. Slow-witted and dull, like a dolt, an old word for a stupid person; the ending -ish means like or rather. It is the harshest of the four words in the list, and the narrator is careful to say that Will “thought of himself” this way. The rest of the paragraph, in which he keeps the books and pays the bills, argues against him.
self-destruction: No great dream lifted him high and no despair forced self-destruction. The act of destroying or ruining oneself. It joins self, one’s own person, to destruction, from the Latin destruere, to pull down. In the sentence it marks the far end of a scale: no great dream lifted Will high, and no despair drove him to ruin himself. He lives between the two, in the plain middle the passage keeps returning to.

Critical thinking

When Will says he has heard enough, Cal feels “a cautious leap of triumph” and hides it. Does the triumph make his honesty any less true?
Cal admits that giving his father the money would be a way of buying his love. Is the plan a gift, or a bargain?