Like Father like Son like Biblical Character

For my final blog on East of Eden, I will talk about the third important Biblical parallel in the book: the relationship between father and son. More specifically speaking, the parallel is about a parent’s rejection of one child and the favoring of another.

Most of us are familiar with the story of Cain and Abel in the Bible, but let’s refresh to clarify the point. Adam (first guy) had two sons, Cain and Abel. God, however, is the real father figure to the two boys. When the boys are older, they both bring sacrifices to God. For no apparent reason, God prefers Abel’s gift above Cain’s. Cain, enraged and jealous, kills Abel in the wilderness. God, in turn, banishes Cain to the land east of Eden (wow that sounds familiar don’t it?).

So on to the novel. Like in the Bible, the father figures (Cyrus and Adam) favor one son over the other. Cyrus’s situation closely mirrors the story of the Bible. Both of his sons bring him presents on his birthday: Adam a stray puppy he found, Charles a knife he saved for and bought. Steinbeck actually even directs us to be sympathetic for Charles in this section because Charles really works for his present and is rejected by his father. Ironically, though, Adam says at one point that he was frustrated with God when reading that section of the Bible.

Later on, Adam reenacts the same situation with his own sons. For their whole lives, Adam favors Aron over Cal. Again we are lead toward sympathizing with the Cain character in the story. From the beginning, we don’t like Aron because of his naivety, helplessness, and cowardice. Cal, on the other hand, works hard to stay on a straight path and is the older brother type, looking out for Aron even to the point where he keeps the secret of their mother’s true identity. Even so, Adam still favor Aron over Cal. :ike God, Adam favors the one son over the other for no obvious reason. After Aron dies, Adam outwardly blames Cal, still oblivious to how blindly he favored his one son over the other. Indeed, he doesn’t even treat Cal like a son. Also, it wasn’t really Cal’s fault that Aron died. Aron still made the choice to go into the army. Cal caused Aron’s break down, but it is unfair to say that Cain’s murder and Cal’s revealing of his mother’s identity are exactly the same, even if they had similar cruel intentions. Finally, though, Cal is given his happy ending with Abra and with Adam’s blessing on his deathbed. In a way, he is freed of the Cain curse of sin and discrimination.

Lastly, I want to respond to Mr. Coon’s comment on my blog last week. He asked if Cathy as more of a figure that was meant to represent Cain in the novel rather than evil human nature itself. I personally still think she is more an embodiment of human evil. Cain felt rejected by God and was jealous of Abel, so he killed him. He had motivation for what he did, bad motivation but still. Cathy doesn’t seem to have a reason for any of the bad things she does. We don’t know anything about her parents except for that she killed them. So there’s nothing there to compare her to Cain. Because her evil is so inhumane and she acts without any apparent guilt or motivation, I think it is hard to compare her to Cain. It would almost be doing Cain an injustice to do so. Cathy is evil for the sake of being evil. (607)