“Samuel rode lightly on top of a book and he balanced happily among ideas the way a man rides white rapids in a canoe. But Tom got into a book, crawled and groveled between the covers, tunneled like a mole among the thoughts, and came up with the book all over his face and hands.”
Steinbeck creates a magnificent image of a reading Samuel, but leaves a reader with little choice but to be a Tom. Is it even possible to read such a novel without being a Tom? We are all of us Tom in the face of a Steinbeck.
East of Eden is all over my face, my hands, and it has rendered me incapable of expressing the immensity of feeling and thought. It’s been over twenty-four hours since I turned the last page, and the sharp wit is still on my mind. My heart still aches, not from the tragedy that I expected, but because of its penetrating wisdom.
A reader may fool themselves into thinking that they are far removed from the dark experiences that the characters endure. But as the wisest man in the book says, “No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves that it is true of us.”
Steinbeck knew what he was up to. He knew that Lee, especially Lee and his dream of a bookstore, Samuel and his wonderful contentiousness, naive Adam, imperfect Cal, and fragile Aron would be etched on our souls by weaving them in one achingly beautiful story that is true for all of us: a story about the longing to be accepted and loved, fear of rejection, the weighty responsibility that comes with being a person, the internal struggle of doing what’s right and the consciousness of a choice no matter how difficult, finding the comfort in being reminded that we do not have to be perfect, we just have to be good.
Take away the philosophizing and this story thrusts upon us the epiphany that being good is almost never about the self, but how one lives for others. And when one attains goodness, that goodness endures in the lives of others. “Maybe that’s what immortality is.”
The Book-Butterfly 