Is it only East of Eden becuase of the repeating vowels? Why not north?

Given the title of the novel, it's pretty obvious that East of Eden is going to follow an interesting biblical pattern. From very early on in the book we can see that certain characters parallel biblical characters in many more ways than just their names.

Adam’s biblical counterpart, obviously enough, is Adam from the Garden of Eden story in the Bible. Steinbeck seems to give Adam to us as a starting point: “Ok same name, same qualities, if nobody else, they’ll figure him out.” Adam, like his biblical counterpart, has two sons (again with the similar names) and a wife who, in the end, leads to his downfall. In many ways, Adam is too idealistic and innocent. He falls for a downright evil woman and is too blind to see the danger that lives inside her. It’s also important to note that Adam also fits the Abel role in the first generation Cain and Abel parallel. He is the “good son” compared to his brother Charles after all. But throughout the novel, he more largely plays the role of Adam, the father of two seemingly polar opposite sons.

Adam’s son Aron is the second generation Abel of the Cain and Abel parallel. Like his father and biblical parallel, Aron is the good son. He works hard and has a good heart. His father also has a large and obvious preference for him over his brother Cal—just as God and Adam favored Abel in the Bible. However, Aron has the same flaws as his father; he is too idealistic, crippling him by making him morally hypersensitive. That sensitivity is ultimately Aron’s downfall and he is eventually killed as a twisted result, realizing his paralleled destiny of a young death. The knowledge that his mother runs a brothel and left his family is too much for his idealistic mind and he, for all intensive purposes, kills himself by enlisting in the army during World War I. Like Abel, Aron dies because of his overly good qualities and the intense jealousy of his brother.

Adam’s son Cal (note the Aron-Abel, Cain-Cal name relationship) is the second generation parallel to Cain. Like Cain to Abel, Cal is intensely jealous of his twin brother and cannot compete with his extremely likeable brother. He is looked down upon by the people around him because of his manipulative and mischievous behavior and he is dubbed the “bad son” at an early age. He seems to have inherited his mother’s sin (just as Cain inherited the inevitable sin of man from Eve). Like Cain, Cal directly causes his brother’s death by setting Aron up to discover their mother’s true identity. His pivotal line “Am I supposed to look after him,” an obvious allusion to the famous “Am I my brother’s keeper” line from the Bible. Clearly, Cal is meant to parallel the infamous Cain, a comparison that allows the deeper meaning of Cal’s story to come to life.

We’ve shown that Cal is an obvious parallel to the biblical character of Cain, who likewise kills his brother out of jealousy and is forever tainted by the sin of humanity. The people around him write him off as his mother’s child and therefore incapable of being a good person. But Cal differs from Cain in extremely important ways. Cal wants to live a moral life, unlike Cain. He even prays to God to lead him on the path to good. By the end of the novel, he excepts the idea of timshel, that everyone can choose his or her own moral destiny, despite who they are or who their parents are. Unlike the other characters in the novel, Cal does not fully fulfill his biblical destiny. He instead becomes the one character to break out of the parallel and determine his own life. As the most doomed and redeemed character, he becomes the instrument by which Steinbeck sends his central message: everyone, no matter who they are related to or what they are destined to do, can make their own decisions and can live the life that they choose. (681)