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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
Adam refuses Cal’s money because some of the boys he sends to the war will die. Was he right to turn down the gift in the way he did?
The tension Adam says, “I guess we never have had such a good Thanksgiving,” and minutes later, over the fanned bills, “You’ll have to give it back”; the boy who that morning resolved to “Give the day to Aron” ends the night saying, “I want to show you something.”
One Thanksgiving: a family gathered at last, a present in red ribbon, and what one sentence at the table undoes.
On the night before Thanksgiving, Adam, Lee and Cal go to the Salinas depot to meet the Lark, the night train. Adam is sure college will have changed Aron. Abra is already there. While they wait, the narrator reflects on train schedules: one thing late or early can disturb everything around it, like a stone dropped in a pool. Aron steps off with his hair cut short, hugs Abra off the ground, and greets the others warmly. At home Adam asks about marks, and impatience crosses Aron’s face. Walking Abra home, Aron learns her father has turned against him; she asks him not to come in, and is hurt that he agrees so easily. In his room Aron feels hemmed in by his father’s ambition. He tells Cal, who is wrapping a present, that he does not want to go on at college and would rather take over the ranch. Cal, feeling older and protective, urges him to sleep on it and finish the term. Alone, Cal counts his gift for his father: fifteen thousand dollars in new bills, released by the bank only on Will Hamilton’s word that the money was honestly his. He cannot sleep, walks Main Street at dawn past Old Martin the sweeper, and comes home to Lee stuffing the turkey. Lee tells him it is hard to give people things and maybe harder to be given them. When Aron asks to move dinner to five so Abra can hear a plan he means to put to his father, Cal feels his day being taken. In his room he names his jealousy, says he is trying to buy his father, and tells himself he knows why his father loves Aron. He resolves to give the money lightly and give the day to Aron, and pays for champagne to be sent home for dinner as Aron’s present. In the afternoon Adam tells Aron not to think any more about college, Lee argues that people want love and admiration more than money, and Adam puts off Cal’s idea about the ice plant until Monday. At dinner the champagne is opened, toasts are drunk, and Adam says they have never had such a good Thanksgiving. Cal pushes the package across. Adam learns the money was made on beans and tells Cal to give it back; when Cal says the British are the buyers, Adam tells him to give it to the farmers he robbed, and Cal says they paid the farmers over the market. Adam answers that he sends boys to the war and cannot take a profit on that; the lettuce was a kind of game. He would rather have from Cal what he finds in Aron, pride and gladness in his progress, and asks for a good life instead. Cal runs from the room. Hate seeps through him; he draws spirals that shrink to a black dot while Lee pleads that he has a choice. Cal answers coolly, apologizes to his father, takes the money back, and slips out through the kitchen. He meets Aron in the street and says he wants to show him something; they walk toward Castroville Street. In San Jose, at an army recruiting office, Sergeant Axel Dane finds a tired-looking boy waiting, guesses aloud about him, tells him they will say he is eighteen, and hands him a form.
Read the chapter yourself before the lesson. It is set in Salinas, California, at Thanksgiving, while the United States is at war with Germany. Adam Trask sits on the local draft board, which signs young men into the army. Readers know from earlier chapters that Cal and Aron are twins whose mother, Kate, left when they were babies; that Adam lost much of his money trying to ship lettuce east packed in ice; and that Cal went into business with Will Hamilton to earn that money back. Cal believes he knows why his father loves Aron; the chapter gives that as Cal’s belief, not the narrator’s, and the talk should keep it so. Lee once told Cal that what he fears in himself is his to control, which is what Lee means by “I told you once”. Do not tell the student what Cal means to show Aron, who the boy in San Jose is, or anything later chapters tell about Kate or Aron; the chapter holds those back, and so should the lesson. A few terms: gold certificates were paper money backed by gold; to buy futures is to buy a crop ahead at a set price; the British Purchasing Agency bought supplies for Britain’s war; Murads were a brand of cigarettes; Oeil de Perdrix, “partridge eye”, is a pink champagne; a hitch is a term of enlistment, and a topkick is a first sergeant. The chapter has mild curses, and Old Martin thinks of the Bacigalupis with an ethnic slur; decide before reading aloud how such words will be handled, and say so plainly to the student. Slow down twice: Cal alone in his room, from “Cal got up quickly and went to his room” to “He jumped up and hurried out to the kitchen”, and the dinner and after, from “When Adam had finished his plum pudding” to “a shiny black dot.”
Retell The student tells the chapter back, from the Lark pulling in to the form in San Jose. Look for the order: the depot and the essay on timing; Aron’s arrival and Abra’s walk home; Aron in Cal’s room; the bills and Will Hamilton’s word; Cal’s sleepless plan, his dawn walk and Lee’s word about giving; dinner moved to five; Cal’s talk with himself and the champagne; the torn cards; college and money in the living room; the dinner, the package and the refusal; the spirals and Lee; the back way out and the walk with Aron; the recruiting office. Look for nothing added about where the brothers go or who the boy is. Then ask which moment of the morning is answered at the table.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes two short passages in the manner of these. The first is five sentences on some small thing that matters more than it seems: a short sentence with an afterthought after a comma; one that repeats a phrase such as “more and more”; one long sentence that climbs in steps, sets the writer’s own aside between two commas, and ends on a remark in quotation marks; one that says “it” first and names what “it” is after a comma; and one that joins two clauses and ends on a simile. The second is six sentences of one person answering another slowly: a sentence of narration about how the words come, then a speech whose first sentence carries the dialogue tag, keeps one set of quotation marks around several sentences, pairs two sentences that begin the same way, holds one short hard sentence, and ends by naming the listener before a question. Read both aloud beside Steinbeck’s.
Debate Take sides on the first written question. One side argues that Cal is after love. It gathers “I’m trying to buy him”, the jail morning and “I trust you”, “I did it for you”, and the champagne bought in Aron’s name. The other side argues that he is after admiration. It gathers “It’s just jealousy”, “It was Cal’s day”, “I want the others to see”, and the triumph Lee sees in his eyes. Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may call the money dishonest or say what Cal does after the chapter ends.
Purpose Close on the chapter’s design. It opens on clocks: a train that must be on time and an essay on the split second. The day turns on moments chosen and put off, while the town goes on around it: an old sweeper at dawn, French bread in a window. After dinner the narrator walks Cal street by street through Salinas, past the Steinbeck house among others, then cuts away before the walk ends and opens in another town on a boy no one names. Ask what the chapter gains by what it leaves out. Name the habit it practises: reading a gift from both sides, the giver’s and the receiver’s, and noticing where a chapter stops.
Easier Read the dinner aloud together, from “When Adam had finished his plum pudding” to “Don’t be angry, son.” Talk through the second and third discussion questions (the two gifts, and when Cal gave his), then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all four discussion questions in order, then write the three 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 what the chapter suggests about gifts given for love. Use the champagne bought in Aron’s name, the fifteen new bills in red ribbon, Lee’s coffee left steaming on the bureau, and Adam’s “give me a good life.” Meet the strongest objection, that Adam’s reason for refusing is about the war and not about love at all, and argue from this chapter alone.
1. Adam hurries to meet Aron’s train to see “what change there is”, but the next day he tells him, “Well, don’t think any more.” What kind of change was Adam hoping for?Character
What it asks It asks the student to set Adam’s eagerness at the depot beside his talk with Aron the next afternoon. Before the train, Adam insists, “He’ll be changed. Experience will do that”, and wonders aloud whether Aron will “talk different”, the way a Harvard man does. At home his first question to Aron is “Will you get good marks?” and “a grimace of impatience” crosses Aron’s face. The next afternoon Aron says, “I’ve been thinking about that, and I wonder”, and Adam answers, “Well, don’t think any more. Your first choice is right.” In the same talk he says, “We didn’t know what we felt about you until you went away.” The reader knows from section 2 that Aron feels “packed like a bird’s egg in the cotton of his father’s ambition for him.” The question opens the hinge from Adam’s side: he loves, and he does not see. It should not make Adam a villain; his warmth in this chapter is real.
The change he wants is on the surface. He pictures a new way of talking, good marks, the polish of a college man. The change he does not want is the one Aron has brought home: a mind of his own. When Aron starts to say it, Adam shuts the door, kindly and at once.
I wonder if he’ll talk different.
Well, don’t think any more.
He wants real growth, and he is afraid of it. Adam sees himself as a man who knows a little of many things and not enough to make a living. He wants his son safe where he was not. His love has grown while Aron was away, and the fear of losing him makes Adam hold the plan tighter.
I know a little bit about a great many things and not enough about any one of them to make a living in these times.
We didn’t know what we felt about you until you went away.
A strong answer A strong response names the change Adam hopes for and grounds it in the depot and the living room. One reader says he wants change on the surface: a new way of talking, good marks, a college manner, and not a mind that questions his plan. Another says he wants Aron to grow, but fear for him, sharpened by Adam’s sense of his own failure, makes him hold the plan tight. The best answers notice that Adam says “I wonder” at the depot and will not let Aron say it.
2. Cal pays for the champagne and calls it Aron’s present, but he tears up the cards he writes for his own gift. Why is one gift so much easier to give than the other?Character
What it asks It asks the student to set the chapter’s two gifts side by side. Cal’s talk with himself ends on “Give the day to Aron.” He takes Aron across the street to Berges and Garrisiere, offers to pay, and says of the champagne, “It’s your present.” Joe Garrisiere will not sell wine to boys, so the bottles are sent to their father. Later Cal tries two cards for the money, “To my father from Caleb” and “To Adam Trask from Caleb Trask”, tears them “in tiny pieces”, and flushes them away. He thinks of giving the money quietly the next day, then says aloud, “I want the others to see.” At dinner the champagne is opened with ceremony, and “The wine dulled Cal’s nervousness”. The question keeps the champagne errand from being filler: it is Cal’s attempt to give Aron a present too. The answer should not say whether Adam knows who paid for the wine; the chapter does not say.
The champagne asks for nothing back. Cal has just told himself to give “lightly” and to give the day to Aron, and the wine is that resolve carried out: his money, Aron’s name, no card at all. The money is the opposite. Each card he writes asks who he is to Adam, son or man, and he cannot settle it. A gift that has to be seen is hard to give.
Let’s get champagne—it can be your present.
I want the others to see.
The two gifts are not so different. The champagne still serves Cal’s day. It makes “a real celebration”, it sets the table toasting, and it calms his nerves just before he pushes the package across. The champagne is easy because it is a step toward the hard gift, not away from it.
Let’s make a real celebration.
The wine dulled Cal’s nervousness and he was not afraid about his present.
A strong answer A strong response explains why the two gifts feel so different to Cal and grounds it in the wine shop and the torn cards. One reader says the champagne is easy because it asks nothing back: it wears Aron’s name and no card, the very lightness Cal had just ordered himself to find. Another says the champagne belongs to the same plan: it makes the celebration and steadies Cal for his own gift. The best answers notice that the money needs witnesses and a name, and that the cards fail on the name.
3. While the family waits for Aron’s train, the narrator says, “One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it.” Did Cal give his gift too early, too late, or right on time?Author's choice
What it asks It asks the student to carry the narrator’s essay on train schedules from the depot to the dinner table. While the family waits for the Lark, the narrator says the split second matters more and more, and that “One thing late or early can disrupt everything around it, and the disturbance runs outward in bands like the waves from a dropped stone in a quiet pool.” The day that follows is full of timing. Aron asks Lee to move dinner to five: “I’ve got a plan I want to put to my father and I want her to be here.” Lee finds “The turkey’s going to be done earlier than the chart says.” When Cal offers ideas for the ice plant, Adam says, “Not today,” and “Monday, if you remember.” Cal thinks of giving the money tomorrow, quietly, and then decides, “I want the others to see.” He gives it with the plum pudding, after the toasts, when “The wine dulled Cal’s nervousness”, and just after Adam says, “I guess we never have had such a good Thanksgiving.” Aron’s plan is never heard at the table. The question keeps the essay from being filler. It asks about Cal’s timing, not whether Adam was right to refuse; that is the last written question.
It was the wrong moment. Cal pushed the package into the warmest minute of the day, in front of everyone, where his father had no private place to put his answer. That same afternoon Adam had already said “Not today” to Cal once. Cal’s own first thought, to give it tomorrow and walk away, would have let his father say no without an audience, and let Cal hear it without eyes on his face.
Maybe tomorrow I could go to him quietly and say, This is for you, and then walk away.
He could feel the eyes of Lee and Aron and Abra crawling on his cheeks.
The moment was as good as it gets, and the clock was not the trouble. Cal waited for the wine, the toasts and his father’s happiest words. Adam’s answer has nothing to do with the hour. He refuses because of where the money came from, and he says he will never want it. On Monday, in private, the answer would have been the same.
I guess we never have had such a good Thanksgiving.
No. I won’t want it ever.
A strong answer A strong response takes a side on Cal’s timing and grounds it in the dinner and the day before it. One reader says it was the wrong moment: he gave it in front of everyone, in the warmest minute of the day, when he had first thought of giving it quietly and his father had already told him “Not today” once. Another says the moment was as good as it gets, and that Adam’s reason has nothing to do with the hour. The best answers follow the narrator’s stone into the pool, notice what the gift set off, including the plan Aron never put, and do not decide here whether Adam was right.
4. In San Jose, Sergeant Dane looks at a tired boy and says, “I hope they take good care of him.” Then he helps the boy say he is eighteen. Adam signs boys into the war too. How different is Adam from Dane?Moral reasoning
What it asks It asks the student to set the chapter’s last scene beside Adam’s reason for refusing. That morning Adam went to the closed draft-board office “to brood over the records of a new batch of boys coming up.” At the table he says, “I send boys out,” “I sign my name and they go out”, and “Not one will come back untorn.” Section 5 jumps to San Jose. Sergeant Axel Dane, whose peacetime hitches “completely unfitted him for war,” has “learned enough method to get out of it.” He finds Corporal Kemp asleep, wakes him with “Darling”, looks closely at a tired boy, and says, “God! he’s beautiful. I hope they take good care of him.” He guesses the boy is “running away from love”, then “from himself”, asks Kemp, “What do you think?”, hears “I say if they’re big enough, they’re old enough”, and tells the boy, “Let’s say you’re eighteen.” The question feeds the hinge through Adam’s reason without asking whether the refusal was right. It should not make Adam a villain, and the chapter never names the boy, so the answer should not.
Far apart. Dane has arranged to stay out of the war himself, jokes with a sleepy corporal, and helps a boy past the age rule with a wink. His hope that “they” will take care of the boy hands the boy to someone else. Adam says “I”: he owns the signing, he gives his holiday morning to the records, and he will not make a cent from what the war pays.
Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it.
At eleven o’clock Adam went to the closed draft-board office to brood over the records of a new batch of boys coming up.
Closer than they look. Each man feels for the boys, and each signs them anyway. Dane’s pity lasts a sentence and Adam’s lasts a day of brooding, but the boys go out either way. Adam’s refusal keeps his own hands clean of the profit. It does not stop his pen.
I hope they take good care of him.
I sign my name and they go out.
A strong answer A strong response weighs how far apart the two men are and grounds it in both offices. One reader says they are far apart: Dane has dodged the war himself, passes the boy along with a joke about his age, and leaves his care to “they”, while Adam owns the signing and will not profit from it. Another says they are closer than they look: both feel for the boys and both sign them in, and Adam’s refusal keeps his hands clean without stopping his pen. The best answers hear the comic tone of section 5, keep Adam’s seriousness in view, and leave the boy unnamed.
1. That afternoon, Lee says most people don’t want money. “They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.” Cal is sitting in the room. Which of the three is he after?
What it asks It asks the student to hold Lee’s words up to Cal. In the living room that afternoon Lee argues about college and specialists and gets excited: “Money’s easy to make if it’s money you want. But with a few exceptions people don’t want money. They want luxury and they want love and they want admiration.” Cal has sat down quietly, and Adam has not noticed him. In Cal’s room are fifteen thousand dollars in red ribbon. The night before, he told Aron, “I want a lot of money and I’m going to get it too.” That morning, alone, he named his jealousy and said, “I’m trying to buy him.” He had “carved this day out for himself”. He tore up two cards, then said aloud, “I want the others to see.” When his nerve failed he thought of the morning his father got him out of jail, and “I trust you.” At dinner, as Adam stares at the money, Lee sees “the light of joy and triumph in his eyes,” and Cal says, “I did it for you.” The question takes up the hinge’s anchor on Cal’s motive. The answer should not call the money dishonest; the bank took Will Hamilton’s word that it was “honestly come by.” It should keep Cal whole, neither only a victim nor only cold, and treat “I know why my father loves Aron” as Cal’s belief, not the narrator’s fact.
Love. The money is only the means, and Cal says so himself: he is trying to buy his father. What he wants to buy is what Aron seems to have for free. When his nerve fails, the memory he reaches for is not a scene of praise but one morning of warmth and trust. That is what he is after, and money is the only way he knows to ask for it.
I’m trying to buy him.
The warmth and closeness—they were the things to remember—and his father’s trust.
Admiration. Cal wants to be seen winning. It is his day, and he feels Aron taking it from him. He will not give the money quietly; he wants the others to see. Lee sees triumph in his eyes before his father has said a word. Jealous of his brother, he wants the family to look at him the way they look at Aron.
He had carved this day out for himself and he wanted it.
He darted a glance at Cal and saw the light of joy and triumph in his eyes.
A strong answer A strong response names what Cal is after, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says love: he says he is trying to buy his father, and the warmth he reaches for is one morning of trust. The strongest objection is admiration: it is his day, he wants the others to see, and Lee reads triumph in his eyes before Adam speaks. A good revision might say he wants love that can be seen, because being seen is the only proof of love he trusts. The best answers take Will Hamilton’s word that the money was “honestly come by” and argue about the motive, not the money.
2. Lee tells Cal, “You have a choice”, as the spirals on his blotting pad shrink to a black dot. Where, if anywhere, does Cal make that choice?
What it asks It asks the student to follow Lee’s word through the night. After the refusal Cal sits at his desk and watches his brain “go to work slyly, quietly.” He fights it “more weakly, for hate was seeping all through his body”. Then “the control and the fear were gone and his brain cried out in an aching triumph”, and he draws “tight little spirals”. Lee comes in an hour later with coffee. Cal thanks him with cold politeness, and Lee cries, “Stop it!” Then Lee pleads: “He couldn’t help it, Cal. That’s his nature. It was the only way he knew. He didn’t have any choice. But you have. Don’t you hear me? You have a choice.” The spirals end in “a shiny black dot”, and Cal says, “Come off it, Lee.” He apologizes to Adam, puts the money back in his coat (“I’ll see what I can do about this”), sees Lee on the front steps, says, “Champagne makes you thirsty,” and slips out the kitchen door. He meets Aron, who says, “I’m sorry about this afternoon”, and answers, “You couldn’t help it—forget it”, in nearly Lee’s words about Adam. He says, “I want to show you something”, and “Not very long at all.” The chapter leaves them walking “toward Castroville Street.” The answer must not say where they go or what Cal shows Aron; the chapter does not.
He has chosen before Lee comes in. The “aching triumph” comes before Lee walks in, and the black dot is finished as Lee pleads. Everything after is cool and done on purpose: the smooth apology, the money back in his pocket, the excuse about thirst, the back way out, the friendly words to Aron. “You couldn’t help it” is Lee’s mercy turned into a tool.
The spirals had become so small that the pencil lines ran together and the result was a shiny black dot.
Cal closed the door quietly and went back through the living room.
The chapter stops before he chooses. On the walk his mind is numb; he does not even feel the frost. He goes looking for his brother and answers Aron’s apology with forgiveness, in Lee’s own words. Whatever he means to show him, the page ends on the walk, and the choice Lee names is still open when it does.
Cal’s mind was numb.
They walked past Central Avenue toward Castroville Street.
A strong answer A strong response says when, if ever, Cal chooses, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says he chooses in his room: the “aching triumph” comes before Lee, the black dot is done as Lee pleads, and the rest of the night is cool and deliberate. The strongest objection is that the chapter leaves him numb and walking, forgiving Aron in Lee’s words, and ends before anything is done. A good revision might say the choice leans hard one way when the chapter stops. The best answers say nothing of what Cal shows Aron.
3. Adam refuses Cal’s money because some of the boys he sends to the war will die. Was he right to turn down the gift in the way he did?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s own question. Set the pieces side by side. The money: fifteen new bills, which the bank would hand over only on Will Hamilton’s word that they were “honestly come by,” made on bean futures when the British Purchasing Agency was paying twelve and a half cents, with the farmers paid, Cal says, “two cents a pound over the market.” The moment: just after “I guess we never have had such a good Thanksgiving”, in front of Abra, Aron and Lee, at the end of a dinner of toasts. The refusal: “You’ll have to give it back”, then “Then give it to the farmers you robbed”, then “I send boys out” and “Son, do you think I could take a profit on that?” The lettuce, Adam says, was “a kind of game”. Then he says, “Money, even clean money, doesn’t stack up with that”, beside “what your brother has”, and asks for “a good life.” He thanks Cal for the thought, asks, “Have I made you angry, son?”, and calls after him, “Don’t be angry, son.” Later he looks up at Cal “apologetically”. The answer should not make Adam a villain or Cal only a victim, should not call the money dishonest, should not treat Cal’s belief about why Adam loves Aron as fact, and should not say what Cal shows Aron.
He was right to refuse, and his way of refusing is part of what makes it right. Adam signs the papers that send boys to be killed and maimed. Money made from what the war pays for beans is, to him, a profit on that, and he could not take it and stay honest with himself. He thanks Cal, says he likes the idea of a present, asks whether he has made him angry, and tells him what gift he could value. A father can love his son and still refuse what the son cannot rightly give.
Not one will come back untorn.
I thank you for the thought
He may be right to refuse the money, but not in that way. He calls Cal’s honest dealing robbery before he knows what the farmers were paid. He refuses in front of the whole table, and in the same breath holds up “what your brother has”. He never sees what the money meant: a son trying to make up his father’s loss. A father could have said no to the profit and yes to the son.
Then give it to the farmers you robbed.
I would have been so happy if you could have given me—well, what your brother has—pride in the thing he’s doing, gladness in his progress.
A strong answer A strong response separates Adam’s reason from his manner, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says he was right in both: he signs for boys who will come back torn, he will not profit from that, and he thanks Cal and names a gift he could value. The strongest objection is in his own words: “robbed” before he knows what the farmers were paid, and “what your brother has” in the same breath as the refusal, in front of everyone. A good revision might say he was right to refuse the money and blind in the way he refused the son. The best answers do not make Adam a villain and do not call the money dishonest.
And as human activities become more and more intermeshed and integrated, the split tenth of a second will emerge, and then a new name must be made for the split hundredth, until one day, although I don’t believe it, we’ll say, “Oh, the hell with it. What’s wrong with an hour?”Locked together, like the teeth of gears that turn one another. The narrator imagines a world so intermeshed that the split second, then the split tenth, starts to matter. The word sets up a day in which each person’s timing catches on everyone else’s.
Not one will come back untorn.Not torn; whole. The prefix un- turns torn into its opposite. Adam uses it of the boys he signs into the war: not one, he says, will come back whole. It is a plainer word than unharmed and a harder one, and his refusal rests on it.
And having gone this far, he proceeded with his self-punishment.Hurting yourself, in words or in deeds, for something you blame yourself for. After naming his jealousy, Cal goes on to attack his own motives. The narrator’s word makes the reader ask what the punishing does for him, and a moment later Cal suspects he is enjoying it.
A courtliness settled over the table.Formal, gracious manners, the kind once expected at a king’s court. Over the plum pudding the family raises toasts and drinks each other’s health with ceremony. The word marks how high and careful the table feels in the minutes before Cal pushes his package across.
Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it.Made unsuited for something. Years of peacetime army routine have unfitted Sergeant Dane first for life as a civilian and then for war itself. The word sketches the man who, instead of fighting, now takes in the boys who will.