Chapter 49

East of Eden

Mountaineers · 10th–12th

Copywork

There was pride in it, and relief too. The split second has been growing more and more important to us. 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?” But it isn’t silly, this preoccupation with small time units. 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.

There seemed to be long spaces between his words. “I send boys out,” he said. “I sign my name and they go out. And some will die and some will lie helpless without arms and legs. Not one will come back untorn. Son, do you think I could take a profit on that?”

Read both passages aloud. The first says a split second can matter. In the second, where would you put Adam’s longest pause?

For the educator The first passage is the second paragraph of the narrator’s essay on train schedules in section 1, whole, as the family waits for the Lark. The second is Adam’s answer at the dinner table in section 3, the paragraph that begins “His father took a long time to answer”, from its second sentence to its end. The first passage is five sentences. The first adds an afterthought after a comma, “and relief too.” The second says “more and more”, and the third says it again before climbing a ladder of time: the split second, the split tenth, the split hundredth. That third sentence is long and holds its point back: it opens on “And as”, sets the narrator’s own aside between two commas (“although I don’t believe it”), and ends on a remark in quotation marks that is itself two sentences, a statement and a question. The remark carries a mild curse; decide before reading it aloud. The fourth sentence uses “it” first and names what “it” is only after the comma: “this preoccupation with small time units.” The fifth joins two clauses with a comma and “and,” then ends on a simile built on “like”: a dropped stone and its rings in a quiet pool. The second passage is six sentences. The first is the narrator’s, and “seemed” puts the reader where Cal sits, hearing the gaps. Then Adam speaks. The second sentence puts a comma inside the closing quotation mark before the tag “he said.” The quotation then reopens and runs four sentences under one set of marks, since one man is speaking. “I send” and “I sign” make a pair. The fourth sentence repeats “some will” and lets “die” and “lie” rhyme. The fifth, six words, is the hardest to say. The sixth names the listener, “Son,” sets a comma after the name, and ends on a question. Students can practise the comma before an afterthought, paired commas around an aside, a quotation set inside a sentence, the apostrophes in “don’t”, “we’ll”, “What’s” and “isn’t”, the comma before a dialogue tag, one set of quotation marks around several sentences, and the comma after a name used in direct address. The talk prompt carries the first passage’s split second into the second: a pause is a small unit of time too, and where it falls changes what Adam says. Some will put the longest pause before “Not one will come back untorn”, as if Adam has to make himself say it. Others will put it before “Son,” where he turns from the boys he signs for to the boy in front of him; some will put it after “I sign my name”, where his own part comes in. Let them argue; there is no single answer.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the Lark pulling into Salinas to the form the sergeant hands the boy in San Jose.

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

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

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

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

Make a Connection Think of a gift, in another book or in your own life, that was hard to accept. What made it hard?

Vocabulary

intermeshed 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?”

untorn Not one will come back untorn.

self-punishment And having gone this far, he proceeded with his self-punishment.

courtliness A courtliness settled over the table.

unfitted Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it.

Critical thinking

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?

Thesis

Objection

Revision

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?

Thesis

Objection

Revision

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?

Thesis

Objection

Revision