East of Eden

Chapter 9

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

Mr. Edwards was not a concupiscent man, and besides he never mixed his professional life with his private pleasures. His reaction startled him.

About eighty per cent of the girls who came to him needed money to pay off a mortgage. And Mr. Edwards made it an unvarying rule not to believe anything his girls said at any time, beyond what they had for breakfast, and they sometimes lied about that. And here he was, a big, fat, grown-up whoremaster, leaning his stomach against his desk while his cheeks darkened with blood and excited chills ran up his legs and thighs.

Read both passages aloud. Each one gives a rule Mr. Edwards lives by, and then what his body does. Why does the narrator put them in that order?

For the educator Two short passages from the office scene, a few paragraphs apart, where the man who trusts no girl believes this one. The first, two sentences long, sets a long, formal sentence beside a four-word one. The long sentence states what Mr. Edwards is not, in the stiff Latin-born “concupiscent”, and adds a rule he keeps, joined by the offhand “and besides”. The short one undoes both: “His reaction startled him.” The second, three sentences long, climbs in the same way. A plain figure (“About eighty per cent”) leads to a rule stated as absolute, “an unvarying rule”, whose tail turns it into a joke: “and they sometimes lied about that.” Then “And here he was” swings the camera onto his body, with three stacked words (“a big, fat, grown-up”) and a long run of physical detail, cheeks, chills, legs. Students copying them practise a long sentence answered by a short one, a sentence that undercuts itself at the end, and a series of adjectives that builds to a noun. For the talk prompt, listen for answers that the order makes the fall comic (the grand claim first, the body after), and for answers that it shows the rule losing to something stronger than knowledge. A student may notice that “grown-up” sits oddly on a man in his late forties and ask what it mocks. Another may hear the end of the chapter in it, where he says “A man who can’t learn from experience is a fool.” Let the student argue from the page.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back in its three parts, from Mr. Edwards’s orderly business to the gate at dawn.

Before Catherine ever walks in, we learn how Mr. Edwards will die: at sixty-seven, choking on a chicken bone. The narrator calls that end “symbolic of success and well-being.” Who is the joke on? Tone
Mr. Edwards turns away very pretty girls. Some local young man might fall in love with one, “and there would be hell to pay.” Then Catherine walks in. Why doesn’t his own rule protect him? Theme
The narrator says, “To Catherine, Mr. Edwards was as cold a business proposition as his units were to him.” How close is that match? Character
Catherine has always refused the champagne. He keeps saying, “Drink it.” She drinks, pours more, and says calmly, “I didn’t want to do it. Remember that.” Why does she want him to remember it? Inference
After the clipping, Mr. Edwards packs his suitcase “just as he always did”: clean shirts and underwear, a nightgown and slippers, and the heavy quirt. What are the slippers doing in that list? Author's choice

Make a Connection Think of a person who knows their work so well that nothing in it can fool them. Where would that person be easiest to fool?

Vocabulary

unvarying: And Mr. Edwards made it an unvarying rule not to believe anything his girls said at any time, beyond what they had for breakfast, and they sometimes lied about that. Never changing; the same every time (un- plus varying, from vary). The word makes his rule sound as fixed as his accounts. That is what makes the break loud: within the same interview, a rule that never changed changes for one girl.
concupiscent: Mr. Edwards was not a concupiscent man, and besides he never mixed his professional life with his private pleasures. Full of strong desire, especially bodily desire (from the Latin concupiscere, to long for greatly; the noun, concupiscence, is an old word of church teaching). The narrator uses the stiff, formal word to say what Mr. Edwards is not, in the same paragraph where his body begins “to feel her” and he leans forward, “breathing heavily.” The grand denial sets up the fall.
ascribed: When her husband’s disposition began to disintegrate, causing him to be restless and snappish, to sit staring and then to rush out of the house in a nervous rage, she ascribed it first to his stomach and then to business reverses. Named as the cause of something (from the Latin ascribere, to write in beside; scribe and script share the root). The word comes twice. The morning she comes, Mr. Edwards ascribes his pain to a halibut chowder. Here his wife ascribes his changed temper to his stomach and then to business. Her causes are the ones that miss: what has changed him is his love for Catherine.
fancied: Mr. Edwards went to the town, took the heavy quirt from his suitcase, and whipped the girls unmercifully; instead of seeing the thing his way, the girls begged for more whipping to wipe out their fancied sins. Imagined; believed in but not real (from fancy, a shortened form of fantasy). The girls are sure of their sins, and the word says they made them up. It may be Mr. Edwards’s view as much as the narrator’s, and it lets the dry voice judge in passing. It is worth asking whose word it is.

Critical thinking

Afterward Mr. Edwards goes back to his business. “Always afterward he had a kind of fearful respect for himself.” What does he respect in himself?
Mr. Edwards tells himself he only meant to punish Catherine, and then learns that the impulse to kill was in him. Which does this chapter show to be more dangerous, her cold planning or his love?