John Steinbeck's novel East of Eden is a family saga extending from the Civil War to World War I. The novel can be seen as a parable of the fall of man, and the various characters can be represented as being faced with the need to choose between good and evil. The watchword of the peace should be "timshel," meaning "thou mayest," which reveals man's mastery of his own destiny. The biblical allusions in the novel are numerous and important, though Steinbeck does not make a rigid one-to-one correspondence because that would stultify the interplay of the characters and force them into molds rather than allowing them to develop as human beings. Still, the biblical allusions are important in showing how these characters fight against the forces of evil as they try to master their own fate and determine their own future to as great a degree as anyone can.
The Salinas Valley in Northern California is the site where Adam Trask wants to create his own version of Eden--his name signifies that he will be the first man of the family in this valley, to be followed by his sons Caleb and Aron, the C and the A representing Cain and Abel. It would be wrong to seek absolute correspondences between the biblical stories and the novel, for Steinbeck is only using the biblical stories as a reference point and not trying to retell them in modern garb, but the connections are revealing. The Salinas Valley is itself a character in the novel, and it is the first character the reader meets. This Garden of Eden exists before the Trasks arrive and will survive their period of control. The history of the valley is given in the opening chapter, both its natural history and its human history, and the arrival of the Trasks thus signals a new era to be examined in this book.
The serpent in this valley is Cathy, later known as Kate, the wife of Adam Trask and the mother to his two sons. In the biblical story, a serpent seduced Eve and led to all the ill...