Finished: East of Eden (Steinbeck). Loved this book! A classic in literature and a classic for me. :-) An epic book spanning three generations of two families, centering around the biblical story of Cain and Abel. One family was based on John Steinbeck's own family. His grandfather was represented by Samuel Hamilton, who was a kind, good, honest, generous soul, but a very poor farmer. He raised nine children, including Steinbeck's own mother, Olive. Samuel is a wise and good friend to all, especially the rich Adam Trask who descends upon the Salinas Valley with his new wife. We get to know many of Samuel's children in the book, as well as his wife, Liza. Samuel is instrumental in Adam's life later down the road.

Adam and his brother Charles are the sons of no-nonsense army man, Cyrus Trask. Raised strictly on a successful farm in Connecticut, Charles feels like his father loves Adam more, and so sets out to win his love, failing every step of the way. As a teenager, he takes his disappointment out on his brother, Adam, nearly beating him to death. Adam, honest to a fault, always loves his brother but is afraid of him. He is forced to join the army by his father, and spends many years away from the family farm. Charles is made to stay home and tend to the farm. After Cyrus dies, Adam comes back and runs the farm with Charles, but even though they love each other as brothers do, they always end up arguing. Eventually Adam moves across the country to California to start his own life, and has his own children, fraternal twin boys Caleb and Aron. Of course, Adam has married a heartless, psychopath (no really, she sets fire to her house and kills her parents when she's a teenager because she doesn't get her way), and she leaves Adam and the babies the minute they are born and goes off to become a prostitute. She ends up slowly killing the current madame of a "well run" brothel, inherits the brothel from her, and turns it into a sick and torturous brothel.

Adam is in a fog for years, leaving the boys to be raised by his Chinese man-servant, and friend, Lee. By the time Adam snaps out of it, the boys are 11, but then he becomes a real father to them...well, as real as he can be. He always kind of lives in his own fog, but he's always well-intentioned. He never wants the boys to know, though, that their mother is alive and left them. He lets them think she's dead. Caleb is the darker, brooding, more complicated of the brothers. He finds out early on that his mother is still alive and feels like he's got all the evilness from her welling up inside of him. He knows that everyone automatically loves the fair-haired, blue-eyed Aron. Aron doesn't have to work to make people love him like Cal does. Cal wants his father's love more than anything. (Which he has but doesn't realize.) When the boys are 17, their father loses alot of money on a risky business venture. The boys are made fun of at school. To escape the ridicule, Aron works hard to take his exams and make it into college early. He lives his life in this perfect little bubble where he has everything planned out. He'll always think his mother was a saint who died. He'll always think his girlfriend, Abra, is perfect. And, he thinks his life should go a set way. He's actually very self-centered. Cal, on the other hand, decides to help his father by earning back the money he lost. He gets with the savvy town business man and together they make a profit off the farmers who are renting Adam's huge farm by offering them a certain price for crops, and then being able to sell those crops for six times the amount when WWI starts up. Cal is excited to present his father with the $15,000 profit he has earned, and decides to do it at Thanksgiving. Meanwhile, Aron gets to college and hates it. He comes home for Thanksgiving and is going to tell his father that he wants to quit college. All he wants to do is live on their family farm, marry Abra, and be a farmer. When Cal presents the money to his father, his father devastates him by saying he can't accept money that has been earned by taking advantage of farmers who worked so hard, even though it was a completely honest venture. Furthermore, why can't Cal give him a gift more like Aron and be trying to do something to better himself? Cal gets so angry that he takes the sensitive Aron (who he has always protected up til now despite his feelings of jealousy) to see that his mother is, in fact, alive...and is not at all virtuous. The equally devastated Aron then runs off and enlists in the army. And, of course, Aron is killed in the war. Cal feels terrible guilt and feels responsible for Aron's death. Adam has a stroke and is near death. Abra falls for Cal since she realized she'd never be the perfect woman Aron made her out to be. Lee, in all his wisdom, always brings everyone back to an even keel. He drags Cal in to see his father, and begs Adam to let Cal know that Aron's death isn't his fault. Adam struggles mightily and utters the word, Timshel. This is his way of giving Caleb his blessing that he does not blame Cal for Aron's death; he is not inherently evil but has the free will to make his own choices, rise above things and be good.

Timshel stems from a conversation that Adam, Lee and Samuel Hamilton had many years before when the three men got into a discussion of Cain and Abel. Timshel is simply the idea that God blesses Cain with the free will to overcome sin by his own choice, rather than demanding him to. This translates to Caleb understanding that he has a choice to overcome the evil he feels inside...that he isn't evil because it's in his genetics from his mother. He has Timshel, and can let the good conquer the bad thoughts that rise up in him. This is how I interpreted it, anyway. :-)

I loved this book! The story flowed along, and yet Steinbeck makes some of the most vivid, wonderful descriptions of scenery as well. He has just the right amount of history and sermonizing...not too much. He has rich, complicated characters that you love or love to hate. Mostly, he made my heart break for Cal, even though Cal did some rotten things in his anger! I loved Lee and his natural wisdom. And Lee loved the boys and Adam as his own family. I loved Samuel Hamilton and when he realized he was getting too old to keep farming, it wasn't exactly that he gave up on life, but he just knew his time was coming. Every character he touched missed him terribly when he was gone...some even reeling out of control. I'd love a whole separate book that digs deeper into some of his children's lives, but I don't know that it's out there. It took me half the book to realize that the author, the grandson named John, was actually John Steinbeck. Duh! :-)

Here are some favorite passages. Who doesn't feel this way when they realize their father is becoming old and frail and may not live forever? Samuel Hamilton's children and their spouses get together to talk about convincing Samuel to retire from the farm:

   They all wanted to say the same thing--all ten of them. Samuel was an old man. It was a startling discovery as the sudden seeing of a ghost. Somehow they had not believed it could happen. They drank their whisky and talked softly of the new thought. 
   His shoulders--did you see how they slump? And there's no spring in his step.
   His toes drag a little, but it's not that--it's in his eyes. His eyes are old.
   He never would go to bed until last.
   Did you notice he forgot what he was saying right in the middle of a story?
   It's his skin told me. It's gone wrinkled, and the backs of his hands have turned transparent.
   He favors his right leg.
   Yes, but that's the one the horse broke.
   I know, but he never favored it before.
   They said these things in outrage. This can't happen, they were saying. Father, can't be an old man. Samuel is young as the dawn--the perpetual dawn.
   He might get old as midday maybe, but sweet God! the evening cannot come, and the night? Sweet God, no!
   It was natural that their minds leaped on and recoiled, and they would not speak of that, but their minds said, There can't be any world without Samuel.
   How could we think about anything without knowing what he thought about it?
   What would the spring be like, or Christmas, or rain? There couldn't be a Christmas. 

Samuel and Lee talk after Samuel has come out to say his goodbye's to Adam and Lee. He's going to take his children up on their offers and take time off to visit them all. During the conversation, Samuel finally shakes Adam out of his perpetual fog by telling him that he knows where Cathy is and what has become of her. Up until this time, Adam doesn't know his wife left him and became a prostitute. This action, though it might seem initially cruel of Samuel, is necessary because it finally makes Adam wake up and start living his life. This is the big change that happens in Adam when his boys are eleven. Anyway...this is part of Samuel's and Lee's conversation afterwards:

   Lee said, "Mr. Hamilton, you're going away and you're not coming back. You do not intend to live very much longer."
   "That's true, Lee. How did you know?"
   "There's death all around you. It shines from you."
   "I didn't know anyone could see it," Samuel said. "You know, Lee, I think of my life as a kind of music, not always good music but still having form and melody. And my life has not been a full orchestra for a long time now. A single note only--and that note unchanging sorrow. I'm not alone in my attitude, Lee. It seems to me that too many of us conceive of a life as ending in defeat."
   Lee said, "Maybe everyone is too rich. I have noticed that there is no dissatisfaction like that of the rich. Feed a man, clothe him, put him in a good house, and he will die of despair."
   "It was your two-word retranslation, Lee---'Thou mayest.' It took me by the throat and shook me. And when the dizziness was over, a path was open, new and bright. And my life which is ending seems to be going on to an ending wonderful. And my music has a new last melody like a bird song in the night."
   Lee was peering at him through the darkness. "That's what it did to those old men of my family."
   " 'Thou mayest rule over sin,' Lee. That's it. I do not believe all men are destroyed. I can name you a dozen who were not, and they are the ones the world lives by. It is true of the spirit as it is true of battles--only the winners are remembered. Surely most men are destroyed, but there are others who like pillars of fire guide frightened men through the darkness. 'Thou mayest, Thou mayest!' What glory! It is true that we are weak and sick and quarrelsome, but if that is all we ever were, we would, millenniums ago, have disappeared from the face of the earth. A few remnants of fossilized jawbone, some broken teeth in strata of limestone, would be the only mark man would have left of his existence in the world. But the choice, Lee, the choice of winning! I had never understood it or accepted it before. Do you see now why I told Adam tonight? I exercised the choice. Maybe I was wrong, but by telling him I also forced him to live or get off the pot. What is that word, Lee?"
   "Timshel," said Lee. "Will you stop the cart?"
   "You'll have a long walk back."
   Lee climbed down. "Samuel!" he said.
   "Here am I." The old man chuckled. "Liza hates for me to say that."
   "Samuel, you've gone beyond me."
   "It's time, Lee."
   "Good-by, Samuel," Lee said, and he walked hurriedly back along the road. He heard the iron tires of the cart grinding on the road. He turned and looked after it, and on the slope he saw old Samuel against the sky, his white hair shining with starlight. 

When World War I started, many of the young men of Salinas went to war; and many parents in Salinas received the dreaded telegram:

   There is no dignity in death in battle. Mostly that is a splashing about of human meat and fluid, and the result is filthy, but there is a great and almost sweet dignity in the sorrow, the helpless, the hopeless sorrow, that comes down over a family with the telegram. Nothing to say, nothing to do, and only one hope--I hope he didn't suffer--and what a forlorn and last-choice hope that is. And it is true that there were some people who, when their sorrow was beginning to lose its savor, gently edged it toward pride and felt increasingly important because of their loss. Some of these even made a good thing of it after the war was over. That is only natural, to make money out of war. No one blamed a man for that, but it was expected that he should invest a part of his loot in war bonds. We thought we invented all of it in Salinas, even the sorrow.