John Steinbeck, who believed “this one story is the basis of all human neurosis,” took advantage of the open space in the biblical narrative while crafting East of Eden, which he considered the culmination of his life’s work as a writer. As a meditation on themes of family conflict, morality and free will, the novel follows the intertwined lives of two California families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons. The title comes from Genesis 4:16, describing Cain’s banishment after his crime is discovered: “And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.”
Throughout the novel, the story of Cain and Abel serves as both influence and text. While chatting after a meal as the Trask twins sleep, Samuel Hamilton proclaims: “Two stories have haunted us and followed us from our beginning. We carry them along with us like invisible tails—the story of original sin and the story of Cain and Abel.” He concludes: “We are Cain’s children.”
East of Eden echoes the idea of Eve’s original sin—the character Cathy abandons her husband and newborn twins to eventually run a brothel—and explores how themes of sacrifice, violence and destiny run in families. Adam Trask competes with his half-brother Charles for his father’s esteem, just as his sons Cal and Aron vie for his own. Charles and Cal are farmers who literally toil to please their fathers, only to come up empty-handed, emotionally wounded and violently jealous.
The Trask family’s Chinese American servant Lee, who serves as the story’s moral center, explains the story of Cain and Abel and the related concept of timshel, a Hebrew term that Steinbeck rendered as “thou mayest.” This idea of choice and free will runs through Steinbeck’s novel: Are people forever bound to repeat acts of violence and envy, or can they choose to overcome evil?
Steinbeck is neither the first nor the last artist to recreate or reenvision the story of the first murderer and his victim. The conflict between Cain and Abel and its attendant judgment have reappeared in nearly every artistic medium over centuries as a way of exploring murky human depths.
In Beowulf, the monster Grendel is described as a descendant of Cain. Hamlet’s King Claudius acknowledges the depth of his crimes by remarking: “It hath the primal eldest curse upon’t / A brother’s murder.” Lord Byron wrote a play in 1821 purporting to tell the biblical story from Cain’s point of view. Byron’s Cain harbors no small amount of resentment over his parents’ expulsion from paradise after they succumbed to the serpent’s temptation.
In more current media, film scholars have considered the Western genre as especially well-suited friendly to the idea of a wandering figure, flawed and volatile, a “fugitive and a vagabond” as the Bible described Cain. A DC comics series casts the brothers as cosmic caretakers for the Houses of Secrets and Mystery. One might even consider the likes of The Godfather as evidence that the account of Cain and Abel has become a storytelling trope, with the disastrous relationship between brothers Fredo and Michael Corleone ending in betrayal, bloodshed and family grief.
The latest adaptation of Steinbeck’s epic tale is a Netflix limited series that places Cathy at the center of the multigenerational story of conflict. Still, the original moral core of the story is never far away.
