A literary Analysis of East of
A literary Analysis of East ofLiterary analysis of East of Eden
In Webster�s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, the word love is defined as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Love can bring two people together but it can also have a person be rejected by another because of love. In the novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the main character, Adam Trask, confronts a feeling of love throughout the whole book but he either rejects the love of people who care about him or has his love rejected by the people that he cares about. When Adam was a young man in the beginning of the novel, his father, Cyrus Trask loved him but Adam did not love him back and when Adam went into the army he did not come back home until his father�s death. Later on in the story Adam really loved his wife, Cathy, but she didn�t love him back and so when she tried to leave him and he would not let her, she shot him. Even though Adam survived he was demoralized for most of his life because he still loved her. Through Adam�s experiences of love in the novel, John Steinbeck shows that Adam Trask has an inability to handle love.
When he first appears in the novel, Adam Trask is a young man who is not loved by his brother or mother but only by his father. Cyrus had punished Adam before and had tried to teach him to be a soldier and so Adam hated him for that and when Cyrus told him he loved him, Adam did not accept his love. Cyrus tells Adam, �I think you�re a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but it�s true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the trouble of hurting you?� (Steinbeck 28). Cyrus is telling Adam that he has always loved him and that the only reason that he punished him is because he loved him. He wants Adam to go into the army because he knows that Adam would be courageous and since Cyrus was in the army, he wants to pass on the legacy. When Adam came home from his discharge, his brother and him were talking about their father and Adam told him the truth. �I wasn�t sure until now,� said Adam. �I was all mixed up with how I was supposed to feel. No. I did not love him� (69). Adam is telling Charles that after thinking about it, he never loved his father and so he rejected his love. Charles is now not jealous of Adam because he knows that Adam does not love his father and he still does. In contrast to Charles�s behavior Adam rejects the only love that loved him so far in the novel.
As the novel...
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