East of Eden worth of indivdiu

A detailed Summary of East of Eden worth of indivdiu

"One of the prominent features in East of Eden is Steinbeck's insistence that all men have the power to choose between good and evil" (Lisca, 266). There is an ongoing debate over rather people are born good or evil or if they choose between good and evil. Steinbeck believes that while persons are inherently good or evil, he/she still has the choice to live a good or evil life. This choice is what sets the human race above the animals. Humans are the only beings that can choose to act for good or evil. In fact, they are the only beings with the ability to struggle over the issue in the first place. Steinbeck sees this ability as the greatest thing that there is. He drives his point home through his novel East of Eden. In East of Eden, Adam and Cal reveal that the worth of a man or woman comes from his/her ability to make the choice to rise above his/her circumstances and choose good over evil.

Steinbeck uses Adam to show that a man is useless as part of a group and has no value until he begins to make decisions for himself. "The Army is depicted as a group that tolerates no individual differences in its members, absorbing them completely into itself" (Gunton, 374). When Adam joins the army,

Adam's son Cal also reveals that the true worth of man is his/her ability to make choices and rise above his setting. When Cal is born, he is immediately foreshadowed to play the role of Cain in the reoccurring Cain and Abel story. His name starts with a "C", as do the other two evil characters: Cathy and Charles. He also shows some of the evil traits that the other evil characters in the novel possess. Cal is very jealous of his brother, which causes him to do cruel things to him. He makes the people that he meets very nervous, and at first he seems as evil as the past characters in the novel. There is a difference, however, between Cal and the characters preceding him. Cal shows a conscience, and really does not want to be evil. There is hope for Cal because "in East of Eden, Steinbeck outlines the freedom of every man to commit or to shun evil" (Gribben, 94). Cal demonstrates his ability to shun evil as he matures. As Cal matures, he decides that he does not want to be evil: "I do not want to do bad things-but I do them" (Steinbeck, 595). Cal knows that he can not totally get rid of the evil that he was born with, but because he is his own person, he has the ability to choose good or evil in every situation that he comes across. Soon after he has come to this realization, he heads over to the house of Abra, the girl whom he loves. When he gets there he immediately tells her what he has done: "Abra, I've killed my brother, and my father is paralyzed because of me" (Steinbeck, 598). Instead of trying to hide what is wrong with him, Cal immediately brings out the truth and faces it head on. All of the other "Cain" figures before him hid the truth and used lies to manipulate themselves into the situation that they would like to be in. Unlike before, Cal is now able to truly love somebody. Cal s

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Approximate Word count = 1228
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English