East of Eden

Chapter 44

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

There was no subject she could not discuss with Lee. And the few things she could talk about to her father and mother were thin and pale and tired and mostly not even true. There Lee was different also. Abra wanted to tell Lee only true things even when she wasn’t quite sure what was true.

“But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Humans just do smell bad sometimes.”

Read both passages aloud. Lee gives two names for the pure girl Abra must live up to. Then he says “and the other.” Who might the other be?

For the educator The first passage comes from the opening of the first section, when Abra has begun spending her afternoons in Lee’s kitchen; the second is Lee’s answer when she says she is afraid Aron will find out she is not the girl he made up: “I’ll get mad or I’ll smell bad—or something else. He’ll find out.” The first is four sentences in the narrator’s voice: short, long, short, long. The long second sentence piles up four descriptions joined by “and” with no commas, “thin and pale and tired and mostly not even true,” and the first three are words for a sick person, used here for talk. The third sentence, “There Lee was different also,” is a turn of five words. The last uses “true” twice, so the truth Abra wants to tell and the truth she is not sure of sit in one sentence. The second passage is Lee’s, two sentences of speech. The first uses “living” the way an actor might say he is playing a part, and gives a list of three in which the third is left unnamed, “and the other.” The Lily Maid and the Goddess-Virgin are explained in the vocabulary. The second sentence drops from that high language to plain words, and its “do” is stressed: humans just do smell bad. It answers Abra’s own fear, “I’ll smell bad,” almost word for word. Students can practise the run of “and”s, the list with commas before a final “and,” the capitals on the two titles, and the hyphen that makes Goddess-Virgin one name. For the talk prompt, many will say the other is a mother: a moment later Abra says Aron, with no mother, “made her everything good he could think of,” and Lee says he “dumped it all on you.” Others will say it is the made-up girl herself, the “white—ghost,” or a wife fit for a man who talks of priests not marrying. Some will say Lee leaves her unnamed on purpose, because he will not put his finger in anyone’s business. Let the students argue it from the page; the chapter never names her.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from Abra’s afternoons in Lee’s kitchen to her walk with Cal the next day.

Abra uses the turnip story to show that some people just hate things. Lee says a lie her father found out later would have been far worse. She answers only, “I guess so.” Why does she let his point go? Inference
Abra asks Lee if Aron will be a minister. Then she says, “I hope he doesn’t,” and quickly shuts her mouth. Why would her own wish surprise her? Character
The first time Abra asks if Mrs. Trask is alive, Lee says he did not hear a question. The second time she asks softly, “Is she alive?” and he says yes. What changed in between? Character
Cal says, “Remember how we had champagne for Aron? We’ll get champagne.” He wants Abra to help decorate the dining room. What is he hoping the dinner will be? Character
On the walk, Abra tells Cal that Aron’s letters seem to be written “to—himself.” Soon after, she asks him, “Do you think I could have been wrong all the time?” Wrong about what? Inference

Make a Connection Think of a story, or a time in your own life, when someone thought a person was better than that person really was. Is it kinder to tell the truth, or to let them keep thinking it?

Vocabulary

Lily Maid: “But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. Elaine of Astolat, called the lily maid of Astolat in the tales of King Arthur, best known from Tennyson’s poem Lancelot and Elaine. She loves Lancelot, who cannot love her back, and dies of it; her body is floated down the river to Camelot in a boat, a letter in her hand. The lily is a flower of whiteness and purity. Lee uses her as a name for the girl Aron writes to: pure, devoted, and not quite alive.
Goddess-Virgin: “But it must be hard living the Lily Maid, the Goddess-Virgin, and the other all at once. A goddess sworn never to marry or take a lover, such as Diana, or Artemis, of the Romans and Greeks; the capital V may also call up the Virgin Mary, and Lee does not say which he means. The hyphen makes the two words one title. It is a figure to be worshipped, not known, which is Abra’s complaint: Aron wants a “white—ghost,” not her.
appraise: She was relieved when, calling at the Trask house, Cal was not there, to look secretly at her, judge, appraise, consider, and look away when she caught him at it. To look something over closely in order to judge what it is worth, as a jeweller appraises a ring. It comes through Old French from the same root as price and praise. In “judge, appraise, consider” the narrator lists the ways Cal’s secret looks seem to weigh Abra up, and she is relieved when he is out.

Critical thinking

Lee asks Abra if it is hard “trying to live up to the one—in your skin.” He means the pure girl Abra says Aron made up. Has Abra had a hand in making that girl?
Lee calls himself “cowardly,” a man who will not put his finger “in any human pie.” Going by what he does in this chapter, is he right about himself?
Abra tells Cal, “I’m not good either.” Why would she want him, of all people, to know that about her?