4 Quotes From "East of Eden" With The Potential To Improve Your Life

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good” 

In a miraculous and magical way, East of Eden chose me.

I’d just arrived in Ho Chi Minh City. The hostel I was staying at was a few miles walk to the Vietnam War Museum, so I’d spent a few hours there (learning a very different story of the war than the one I’d grown up with). I left with scenes of human arrogance and ugliness playing across my mind. As I walked into the city center, a small bookshop caught my attention.

At this point, I was hungry for reading material, as the only thing I read in the last two weeks was trashy backpacker fiction (literally a novel about backpackers who have a fling). Hostel book exchanges can be slim pickings at the best of times, but in Vietnam, because of government censorship, finding books can be almost impossible. I met a few hostel owners who had actually had their book exchanges raided by Vietnamese police. 

So naturally, I was thrilled when I saw this bookshop. As soon as I walked in I was disappointed. They sold pamphlets, Lonely Planet guides, and kitschy tourist crap. Not a book in sight.

I poked around for a bit, and just as I was about to leave, I lifted a pile of city maps on the countertop and found a battered and forgotten copy of East of Eden.

If this random series of events hadn’t brought this book into my orbit, I’d never have read it. My English teacher had forced me to slog through Grapes of Wrath in high school, and the combination of not choosing it (and being a stubborn teenager) left me with a prejudice that had stopped me from reading any more Steinbeck.

We swallow our pride when we have no choice, don’t we? Hiding from monsoon rain in a cafe after I left the bookstore, I started East of Eden. That was the beginning of a love story between a man and a book more passionate than any I had experienced before.

I’ve never written down more quotes from a book in my life (and I was forced to write down/memorize bible verses throughout my youth).

East of Eden is a three-generation story, following Steinbeck’s own family history (he wrote it first and foremost for his sons). We follow two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, from 1862 until the outbreak of World War I.

Over this 50+ year period, we meet Steinbeck’s philosophical grandfather, Sam Hamilton, who teaches us how curiosity and joy can save our lives. We follow Cathy Ames (who is about as chaotic evil as a character can be) as she wreaks havoc on everyone she meets because she damn well can.

Everything filters down to the Trask twins, Cal and Aron, who show us how familial patterns repeat themselves, and what problems the withholding of love can cause human beings.

This book turned me inside out, beat a few cobwebs off of my insides, and sent me back into the world a better man. I just finished re-reading it for the third time.

From the dedication on the first page, we know we’re going to be given something special. Steinbeck dedicates it to his longtime editor and friend, Pascal Covici:

“Well, here’s your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and excitement are in it, and feeling good or bad and evil thoughts and good thoughts — the pleasure of design and some despair and the indescribable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love I have for you. And still the box is not full.”

Steinbeck was 50 when this book was published, and his wisdom oozes from East of Eden’s pages. From the moment I started reading it, I understood that someone at the top of their game was handing me what they knew to be true, wrapped with a bow, and saying “here. Here’s what I’ve got, I hope it improves your life.”

The characters in this novel are alive. They jump off the page and surprise us. They are more relevant and life-explaining than those from almost any contemporary novel I’ve ever read.

As if that wasn’t enough, East of Eden is tremendously quotable. There’s not a page that you have to slog through. It’s written at a 700 Lexile level (the recommended range for 4th/5th graders). In plain language, Steinbeck lays out what he knows, without being pretentious, putting on airs, or pulling any punches.

As promised, here are four quotes that, if digested properly, have the potential to improve your life:

“Do you take pride in your hurt? Does it make you feel large and tragic? Well, think about it. Maybe you’re playing a part on a great stage with only yourself as audience.”

There are so many stages we go through when something painful happens to us. We may feel grief, we may feel paralyzed. In East of Eden, Adam Trask experiences terrible grief when the mother of his children shoots him in the shoulder and runs away. That’s when the trouble starts.

The problem is not that he experiences grief, It’s that he never moves on. He remains consumed by it for years, becoming a shell of a man. He forgets to name his infant sons until after they can walk, and lets his land go fallow.

To try and shake him out of it, Sam Hamilton says the above quote.

What a gut punch! It comes into my head now whenever I’m beating myself up unproductively, or letting myself mode for far too long. It forces me to ask the question “am I grieving? Or am I performing for myself? Often (not always) it’s the latter.

As Sylvester Stallone says in Rocky Balboa, “it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward.”

How do we keep moving without taking pride in our wounds? It’s one of my new favorite questions.

“It seems to me that if you or I must choose between two courses of thought or action, we should remember our dying and try so to live that our death brings no pleasure to the world.”

This comes from one of the intermissions where Steinbeck pauses to talk to us directly. These are my favorite parts. He has the audacity to break the fourth wall mid-story a few times just to drop some life lessons on us before jumping back in again. It’s very odd for a novel, but it gives us the wonderful impression that we’re being told a story by a fire. 

In this particular section, Steinbeck talks about one of the robber barons, whose death caused widespread celebration. “When a man comes to die,” he says “no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.”

This quote sticks with me. If you are at a crossroads, remember that you must die, and try to choose the path that means no one will celebrate your death. Make sure they’ll miss you, not party when you’re gone.

“Thou Mayest! Why, that makes a man great. That gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.”

This one may take a bit of explaining. East of Eden is a retelling of the Book of Genesis, and at one point, Samuel, Adam, and Lee (Adam’s cook) discuss the meaning of the Hebrew word timshel from the story of Cain and Abel. Lee had previously realized the translations were wrong after bringing the English biblical translations to some old Chinese philosophers. God (the characters agree) does not order us to triumph over sin. He gives us a choice, in the meaning of the word timshel: “thou mayest.”

Now, I’m not religious, but this inspires me to no end. There is a choice. We are not required to fight through our doubts and our baser natures and emerge victorious. We are always given a choice. The choice of right versus wrong, good versus evil.

No matter how low you’ve been brought or fallen, there always remains the choice to climb out of the mud.

“And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.”

Infatuation is another recurring theme of East of Eden, and towards the end, our third-generation heroine Abra realizes that her love interest, Aron, doesn’t “see her.” He made her into a perfect being in his mind, put her on a pedestal so high that he can’t appreciate her for who she is. (It was this moment that made me realize that I, also named Aaron, had done this to someone in my own life, and I needed to let my vision of her go).

When the illusion is shattered for Aron, Abra feels relieved.

How many of us are trying to be impossibly perfect? What could we achieve without that pressure on ourselves? When we don’t have to be perfect, we can be good.

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