East of Eden is a powerful and vastly ambitious novel that is at once a family saga and a modern retelling of the Book of Genesis. One boy thrives, nurtured by the love of all those around him the other grows up in loneliness, enveloped by a mysterious darkness.įirst published in 1952, East of Eden is the work in which Steinbeck created his most mesmerizing characters and explored his most enduring themes: the mystery of identity, the inexplicability of love, and the murderous consequences of loves absence. Daniel Buerger points out in History and Fiction in East of Eden Criticism (1981) that further investigation into the artistic elements of Steinbecks work. But the birth of his twins, Cal and Aron, brings his wife to the brink of madness, and Adam is left alone to raise his boys to manhood. A decade before he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, John Steinbeck (February 27, 1902December 20, 1968) wrote East of Eden ( public library ), which was eventually adapted into the 1955 film of the same title starring James Dean and which Steinbeck originally addressed to his two young sons. Set in the rich farmland of Californias Salinas Valley, this sprawling and often brutal novel follows the intertwined destinies of two familiesthe Trasks and the Hamiltonswhose generations helplessly reenact the fall of Adam and Eve and the poisonous rivalry of Cain and Abel.Īdam Trask came to California from the East to farm and raise his family on the new, rich land. In his journal, John Steinbeck called East of Eden the first book, and indeed it has the primordial power and simplicity of myth.

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