East of Eden

Samuel Hamilton and his wife move from the north of Ireland to the Salinas Valley. He’s from a good farming family and is the first in his centuries-old lineage to leave the family farm. Samuel is excellent at manual labor and inventive in new ways to accomplish tasks but has difficulty making money. His wife, Liza, is steadfast and conservative, and although their personalities seem mismatched, Samuel is a dutiful husband. By the time they get to the valley, its most fertile land has already been claimed. Samuel and Liza homestead in the barren hills of King City and have nine children. They add a quarter-section of land to their ranch for each child, thereby growing their ownership, but the land itself is dry and inhospitable. Samuel builds a blacksmith shop, but his family is always poor because he’s bad at business and doesn’t collect what’s owed to him. He’s good with babies and often helps women through their birthing process. While Samuel’s personality is exuberant, Liza is conservative, and her character is shaped by the belief that God’s plan is to have his people on Earth work through a hard life to receive their rewards in the afterlife.

King City is home to many European immigrants, who move there to own land, an unthinkable prospect in their feudal home countries. However, the land they can afford yields nothing, so they continue through life mired in poverty. Meanwhile, people who have money—like Adam Trask—can afford to buy houses on fertile farmland.

Adam Trask comes to California from Connecticut. His father, Cyrus, faked his way through military service and came home with “the clap,” a sexually transmitted disease that shocked Adam’s deeply religious mother so much that she killed herself for having it. Shortly after her funeral, Cyrus remarried. His second wife, a young girl named Alice, was steadfast but quite ill. Alice gave birth to Adam’s half-brother, Charles. Cyrus became more obsessed with his tall tales of heroism and military culture, created a career out of analyzing military strategy, and forced his two sons to participate in home drills.

Eventually, Adam realizes that Cyrus’s strict military decorum in the house is to flatter his own ego, not for his sons’ wellbeing. This realization devastates Adam, cutting the childhood admiration of son for father. Nonetheless, Adam is an obedient child, rather quiet with a rich inner self. Charles, conversely, is a natural athlete, assertive, and protective of his gentle older brother. Although the boys are different and don’t have the same mother, Alice and Cyrus at first treat them equally in upbringing and care. However, Alice seems mysterious and hidden to her stepson, Adam. One day, Adam finds Alice smiling to herself. Adam has never seen her smile before, and his reaction to her secret smile is a physical and emotional wave of passion, feelings that he is unfamiliar with and confused by. Adam begins leaving Alice little gifts around the home and spies on her to see if she smiles when she sees them.

The prospect of being sent away to the military challenges Adam’s sensitivity: “It was Adam who needed the army to make a man out of him. Charles was pretty near a man already. And Charles was a man, and a dangerous man, even at fifteen […].” (22). The boys grow close despite this opposition in their personalities. However, one day, when the boys play a game called peewee, Adam uncharacteristically wins. Full of anger and apparent hatred, Charles beats Adam to unconsciousness. Alice witnesses this but says and does nothing. Later, Adam notices that his father treats him much more gently than before the beating. They have long, deep conversations with one another, separate from Charles. Adam tells Cyrus he doesn’t want to enlist in the army, but Cyrus insists that it’s the only way Adam will learn how to conquer fear and live a courageous life. Cyrus tells Adam that Charles will not be going into the army, since Charles has violence in him and will never learn how to work in a unit. Cyrus reveals a further surprise to Adam: that he loves Adam more than he loves Charles, which is what drives his rules and regulations for Adam.

Later that night, Charles and Adam go for a walk together. Charles demands to know what Adam and their father were talking about. When Adam doesn’t give an answer that satisfies Charles, Charles loses his temper. In a fit of rage, he reminds Adam that their father favored the Christmas gift Adam game him over Charles’s gift and accuses Adam of stealing their father away. Charles gives Adam another brutal beating. When Adam regains consciousness on the road, he hears footsteps and hides in a nearby ditch. Charles has returned, looking for Adam with a hatchet in his hand. When Adam finally makes it home safely, Cyrus and Alice are shocked. Cyrus takes his gun out, and Alice helps Adam get cleaned up. While she’s caring for Adam, Alice assures him that Charles isn’t all bad, that to know him is to understand his kindnesses. She believes that Charles is the one who has been hiding the little gifts around the house for her.

Charles stays away from home for two weeks when he hears that his father is looking for him with a rifle. Adam convalesces and is sworn into the cavalry while still healing in bed. Adam spends five years in the cavalry, helping clear the West of Indian tribes, which “was not nice work but, given the pattern of the country’s development, it had to be done” (34). Fighting repulses Adam, and he misses shots on purpose. Adam becomes obsessed with nonviolence, but his lack of action doesn’t hurt his standing or reputation in the army.

Back home in Connecticut, Alice dies of consumption, and Cyrus gets a job in the Grand Army of the Republic in Washington, DC. Charles writes Adam long letters that surprisingly bare his soul, bringing Adam and Charles closer even though they’re far apart. One day, Adam receives a strange letter from Charles. Charles is spooked by the sounds in the now-empty farmhouse and returns to his resentment that Cyrus didn’t use the knife Charles had gifted him for Christmas. He refers to beating up Cyrus but doesn’t apologize. Adam keeps this letter because it concerns and chills him more than the others.