Details on Our Mutual Read: A Victorian Reading Challenge

~ Level 1: 4 books, at least 2 written during 1837 - 1901. The other books may be Neo-Victorian or non-fiction.

I have completed Book 1 of Little Dorrit. Not liking all the caricatures and too many characters. Must think of this as farce.

Period Film Mini-Challenge -- watch at least 6 films that take place between 1837 - 1901 (they don't necessarily have to be based on a book) and post a review.

1. Little Dorrit - Masterpiece Theatre Wonderful casting!

Dracula is finally finished.

Today is the last day of 2009 and my last chance to count Dracula as read in 2009. I must get to it. Back later with picture.

Little Dorrit

Suite Francaise

'Suite Française,' by Irène Némirovsky
As France Burned
Review by PAUL GRAY
Published: April 9, 2006

THIS stunning book contains two narratives, one fictional and the other a fragmentary, factual account of how the fiction came into being. "Suite Française" itself consists of two novellas portraying life in France from June 4, 1940, as German forces prepare to invade Paris, through July 1, 1941, when some of Hitler's occupying troops leave France to join the assault on the Soviet Union. At the end of the volume, a series of appendices and a biographical sketch provide, among other things, information about the author of the novellas. Born in Ukraine, Irène Némirovsky had lived in France since 1919 and had established herself in her adopted country's literary community, publishing nine novels and a biography of Chekhov. She composed "Suite Française" in the village of Issy-l'Evêque, where she, her husband and two young daughters had settled after fleeing Paris. On July 13, 1942, French policemen, enforcing the German race laws, arrested Némirovsky as "a stateless person of Jewish descent." She was transported to Auschwitz, where she died in the infirmary on Aug. 17.
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Courtesy of Denise Epstein

Irène Némirovsky.
SUITE FRANÇAISE

By Irène Némirovsky. Translated by Sandra Smith.

395 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.
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Parisians fleeing their city ahead of the invading Germans, June 1940.

The date of Némirovsky's death induces disbelief. It means, it can only mean, that she wrote the exquisitely shaped and balanced fiction of "Suite Française" almost contemporaneously with the events that inspired them, and everyone knows such a thing cannot be done. In his astute cultural history, "The Great War and Modern Memory," Paul Fussell describes the invariable progression — from the hastily reactive to the serenely reflective — of writings about catastrophes: "The significances belonging to fiction are attainable only as 'diary' or annals move toward the mode of memoir, for it is only the ex post facto view of an action that generates coherence or makes irony possible."

We can now see that Némirovsky achieved just such coherence and irony with an ex post facto view of, at most, a few months. In his defense, Fussell had not heard of "Suite Française," and neither had anyone else at the time, including Némirovsky's elder daughter, Denise, who saved the leatherbound notebook her mother had left behind but refused to read it, fearing it would simply renew old pains. (Her father, Michel Epstein, was sent to Auschwitz several months after her mother and was consigned immediately to the gas chamber.) Not until the late 1990's did Denise examine what her mother had written and discover, instead of a diary or journal, two complete novellas written in a microscopic hand, evidently to save scarce paper. Denise abandoned her plan to give the notebook to a French institute preserving personal documents from the war years and instead sent it to a publisher. "Suite Française" appeared in France in 2004 and became a best seller.

From a purely aesthetic standpoint, the back story of "Suite Française" is irrelevant to the true business of criticism. But most readers don't view books from such Olympian heights, and neither, for that matter, do most critics. If they did, publishers' lists wouldn't be so crowded with literary histories and biographies, those chronicles of messy facts from which enduring art sometimes springs. In truth, "Suite Française" can stand up to the most rigorous and objective analysis, while a knowledge of its history heightens the wonder and awe of reading it. If that's a crime, let's just plead guilty and forge ahead.

"Storm in June," the first novella of "Suite Française," opens as German artillery thunders on the outskirts of Paris and those residents who have trouble sleeping in the unusually warm weather hear the sound of an air-raid siren: "To them it began as a long breath, like air being forced into a deep sigh. It wasn't long before its wailing filled the sky." (Thomas Pynchon also hadn't heard of "Suite Française" while he was writing "Gravity's Rainbow," but compare his opening sentence, set in London, a few years later, same war: "A screaming comes across the sky.") The bombardment resumes: "A shell was fired, now so close to Paris that from the top of every monument birds rose into the sky. Great black birds, rarely seen at other times, stretched out their pink-tinged wings." With the utmost narrative economy, sharp, scattered images coalesce into an atmosphere of dread.

Parisians wake up to the realization that nothing, particularly the gallant French Army they have read and heard so much about, stands between them and the Germans, and they decide, as one, to get out fast. To depict the widespread chaos that ensues — railroads hobbled by overcrowding or bombed tracks, shortages of gasoline and food — Némirovsky concentrates on a few individuals caught up in the collective panic.

While her husband, a government-appointed museum official, remains behind, Charlotte Péricand mobilizes four of her five children (her eldest son, Philippe, is a Roman Catholic priest), her senile father-in law and a retinue of servants into an escape party, burdened by as many possessions as she can salvage from her haut-bourgeois household. Gabriel Corte, a rich, successful and egotistical writer, views the loss of Paris as an insult to his refined sensibilities. On the road, stalled in the choking traffic, he complains to his mistress, "If events as painful as defeat and mass exodus cannot be dignified with some sort of nobility, some grandeur, then they shouldn't happen at all!" As usual, Némirovsky offers no comment on this burst of folly; she allows her characters the liberty to display themselves on their own, for better and worse.
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SUITE FRANÇAISE

By Irène Némirovsky. Translated by Sandra Smith.

395 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.
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First Chapter: ‘Suite Française’ (April 9, 2006)
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Forum: Book News and Reviews

Maurice and Jeanne Michaud, a middle-aged couple, both work in a bank that is moving its operations to Tours. Suitcases in hand, the Michauds learn from their employer at the last instant that the space he has promised them in his car, helping to transport bank records, has been pre-empted by his mistress and her dog. "Both of you must be in Tours the day after tomorrow at the latest," he tells them. "I must have all my staff." The Michauds laugh as they watch his car disappear; they expect little from life and so are rarely disappointed.

Finding the Paris train stations shut down, the Michauds set off on foot: "In spite of the exhaustion, the hunger, the fear, Maurice Michaud was not really unhappy. He had a unique way of thinking: he didn't consider himself that important; in his own eyes, he was not that rare and irreplaceable creature most people imagine when they think about themselves." The Michauds are moral beacons among the rampaging selfishness all around them. Their only concern is their son, Jean-Marie, a soldier whose unit is in the path of the advancing German Army. A few chapters later, it is a relief for readers to learn what the Michauds have not: Jean-Marie, wounded in a bombardment, is recuperating in a farmhouse near Vendôme.

"Storm in June" is a tour de force of narrative distillation, using a handful of people to represent a multitude. Némirovsky's shifts in tone and pace, sensitively rendered in Sandra Smith's graceful translation, are mesmerizing. There are lighthearted moments — one entire chapter is seen from the point of view of the Péricands' cat — followed by eruptions of terror, as when German planes strafe a mass of evacuees: "When the firing stopped, deep furrows were left in the crowd, like wheat after a storm when the fallen stems form close, deep trenches." And it all ends as the facts ordained. News of the armistice — that is, the French surrender — is greeted by the beleaguered homeless as an answered prayer. Survivors straggle back to Paris, where an occupying enemy and a harsh winter await them.

"Dolce," the second novella, displays none of the tumults of its predecessor. It is bucolic, becalmed. The French people have lost the outward war, and the battle has shifted to the inner arena of their consciences and souls. The Germans, who seemed as spectral as invading space aliens in "Storm in June," now appear in person. A garrison of Wehrmacht troops is billeted in the village of Bussy. The local men of fighting age are all gone, either dead or prisoners of war; only old people, women and children remain, and they greet the conquerors with sullen apprehension. Conditioned by years of propaganda to fear the bestial, rapacious Huns, the villagers aren't prepared for these actual soldiers, some barely older than boys. The intruders smile, behave deferentially to their helpless hosts and give candy to the children. Yearning for a return to normalcy and the familiar rhythms of their lives, the people of Bussy grudgingly adapt to the new reality.

Lucile Angellier lives with her widowed mother-in-law in Bussy's most elegant house. She doesn't regret the absence of her loutish, philandering husband, Gaston, who is in a German prison camp, although she hides her feelings from his mother, who regards him as a saint. Bruno von Falk, a German officer, has been assigned to live in the house. Lucile tries to treat the intruder with the same icy disdain displayed by her mother-in-law, but she finds herself warming to him in spite of herself. He is handsome, he plays the piano beautifully — he tells her he had hoped to be a musician before his military obligations intervened — and he has read Balzac. Night after night, Lucile grows more sensitive to Bruno's presence in the next-door bedroom, to the sounds of his pacing and to the ensuing silences suggesting his sleep.

Némirovsky deftly establishes the terms of this melodrama and its inevitable question — where will the attraction between Lucile and Bruno lead? — and then adds a dissonant note of reality. A local farmer has killed a German officer, and the fugitive's wife, who happens to be one of the women who nursed Jean-Marie Michaud back to health in "Storm in June," asks Lucile to hide her husband in the spacious Angellier house, which should be above suspicion because of its German boarder. The terms of the inevitable question alter significantly. Will Lucile choose love or honor?
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SUITE FRANÇAISE

By Irène Némirovsky. Translated by Sandra Smith.

395 pp. Alfred A. Knopf. $25.
Related
First Chapter: ‘Suite Française’ (April 9, 2006)
Readers’ Opinions
Forum: Book News and Reviews

"Dolce" predates by nearly 30 years the explosive confessions of wartime collaboration in Marcel Ophuls's documentary "The Sorrow and the Pity," which French television declined to broadcast in 1970, even though it had partly paid for the project. Némirovsky recorded the best and worst of those times while living in them. Her novella ends as the occupying troops leave Bussy on their mission to Moscow: "Soon the road was empty. All that remained of the German regiment was a little cloud of dust."

But Némirovsky had more plans for "Suite Française," as an appendix to this volume makes clear. In her notebook, she sketched the possibility of a work in five parts. "Storm in June" and "Dolce" were to be followed by: "3. Captivity; 4. Battles?; 5. Peace?" The question marks punctuate Némirovsky's peculiar problem; she was trying to write a historical novel while the outcome of that history remained unknown. The fourth and fifth parts of the book "are in limbo," she observed, "and what limbo! It's really in the lap of the gods since it depends on what happens."

We now know what happened. Némirovsky lost her life in what she foresaw as "Captivity." The improbable survival of her two novellas is a cause for celebration and also for grief at another reminder of the horrors of the Holocaust. She wrote what may be the first work of fiction about what we now call World War II. She also wrote, for all to read at last, some of the greatest, most humane and incisive fiction that conflict has produced.

Review of Cavalier and Clay

Where There Is Icing

Reviewed by Claude Lalumière



The dawn of the comics industry is a fascinating slice of history. It's an essential chapter in the annals of pop culture, but it's also an important part of American history. For comics aficionados, the details of this history are legendary: the struggles of Siegel and Shuster to get Superman in print, the pageant of talent -- from Jack Kirby to Jules Feiffer -- that passed through the doors of Will Eisner's studio, the disputed origins of Batman, the shameful and exploitative treatment of writers and illustrators, the infamous congressional investigation, the legal war between the publishers of Superman and Captain Marvel, the exploits of Simon and Kirby. Although millions of people read the comic books of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s every month, the stories behind the stories remain bits of trivia known only to a select audience.

Michael Chabon incorporates most of these events in his historical novel, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, and alludes to the others. He creates a fictional scenario in the midst of real history and, with this act of fiction, reveals deeper truths and mysteries that any compilation of facts ever could.

In Prague, Josef Kavalier is a young apprentice to an aging escape artist. As Nazi occupation intensifies, Josef, with the help of his mentor, smuggles himself out of Nazi territory. He eventually makes it to New York City, home of the newborn comics industry. He comes to live with his Aunt Ethel, where he hooks up with his visionary and ambitious cousin, Sam Klayman. The boy geniuses decide to pour their synergistic talents into comic books. They change their Jewish names to Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay. Thus rechristened (so to speak), they create their first comic-book superhero: The Escapist.

Joe Kavalier and Sam Clay are fully imagined fictional characters who are not simply doppelgangers of real people. Yet, Kavalier and Clay do evoke the two great Jewish duos of the early days of comics: Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (the creators of Superman), and Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. Like Siegel and Shuster, the pair signed over the rights to their creation for a paltry sum, while the publishers made a fortune off it. The style of The Escapist comics ranges from early Jack Kirby ("It was Joe's battle scenes -- the type of panel or sequence known in the trade as a slugfest -- that first got his work noticed, both in the business and by the boggled young manhood of America. These scenes have been described as wild, frenetic, violent, extreme, even Breughelian.") to Spirit-era Will Eisner ("the daring use of perspective and shading, the radical placement of word balloons and captions and, above all, the integration of narrative and picture by means of artfully disarranged, dislocated panels that stretched, shrank, opened into circles, spread across two full pages, marched diagonally toward one corner of the page, unreeled themselves like the frames of a film"). Kavalier, not only a groundbreaking visual storyteller who never doubts his own genius but also a practicing prestidigitator, has more than a little of Orson Welles about him. But such references are just icing -- albeit delicious.

This is the cake: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a magical novel. Its recreation of the golden age of the comics industry is, although cloaked in fiction, picture perfect. Its characters -- Joe and his struggle to bring his family to America; Sam and his complex relationship to his father; Rosa and the depths of both her talent and compassion -- are gripping. This novel's epic sweep is constructed with tender moments of heartfelt intimacy. The story itself is, in many ways, the story of the USA itself: the Depression, the American dream, isolationism, the dichotomy of racism and integration, sexual repression, the Second World War, the paranoid 1950s, nostalgia for often-imaginary golden ages. Not only do the characters live through this history, but their own lives are reflections of these conflicting, schizoid visions of America.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is that elusive holy grail, The Great American Novel. Here, the dreams of that mythical yet all too real land are related, with unerring confidence and great depths of emotion, through the history of its most maligned art form, the comic book, and its even more maligned creators. The novel's main characters, and even some of the secondary ones, explore the potential and limits of their own personal version of the American dream, finding success and failure, adulation and betrayal, vindication and disillusionment, as well as love and persecution. At the heart of the novel is the story of two friends who believe in their imagination and its power to change their lives and the world -- and of how the course of their lives affects that faith.

Lending the novel yet more poignancy is the fact that Jack Kirby's ghost haunts the whole book. Kirby's imagination has always been an important part of my life. I sensed a kindred soul in Chabon. The novel, despite some superficial similarities between Kavalier and Kirby, is not the story of the late Kirby's life. Nevertheless, one could say that it is the story of Kirby's spirit, from his no-holds-barred hatred of fascism to the relentless and intuitive artistic inventiveness that pushed him to create some of the world's greatest comics. Throughout the book, Kirby's presence is so palpable that, every time I turned a page, I kept expecting him to show up. He is referred to twice, but never appears. And then I read the author's afterword. The last paragraph was, especially after having read Chabon's beautifully uncompromising novel, both illuminating and moving, "Finally, I want to acknowledge the deep depth I owe in this and everything else I've ever written to the work of the late Jack Kirby, the King of Comics." | January 2001

Reading Group Guide
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay
by Michael Chabon

List Price: $26.95
Pages: 659
Format: Hardcover
ISBN: 0679450041
Publisher: Random House

Click here to buy this book from Amazon.com.
Click here to buy this book from Amazon.ca.


About This Book


With this brilliant novel, the bestselling author of The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and Wonder Boys gives us an exhilarating triumph of language and invention, a stunning novel in which the tragicomic adventures of a couple of boy geniuses reveal much about what happened to America in the middle of the twentieth century. Like Phillip Roth's American Pastoral or Don DeLillo's Underworld, Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay is a superb novel with epic sweep, spanning continents and eras, a masterwork by one of America's finest writers.

It is New York City in 1939. Joe Kavalier, a young artist who has also been trained in the art of Houdini-esque escape, has just pulled off his greatest feat to date: smuggling himself out of Nazi-occupied Prague. He is looking to make big money, fast, so that he can bring his family to freedom. His cousin, Brooklyn's own Sammy Clay, is looking for a collaborator to create the heroes, stories, and art for the latest novelty to hit the American dreamscape: the comic book. Out of their fantasies, fears, and dreams, Joe and Sammy weave the legend of that unforgettable champion the Escapist. And inspired by the beautiful and elusive Rosa Saks, a woman who will be linked to both men by powerful ties of desire, love, and shame, they create the otherworldly mistress of the night, Luna Moth. As the shadow of Hitler falls across Europe and the world, the Golden Age of comic books has begun.

The brilliant writing that has led critics to compare Michael Chabon to John Cheever and Vladimir Nabokov is everywhere apparent in The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. Chabon writes "like a magical spider, effortlessly spinning out elaborate webs of words that ensnare the reader," wrote Michiko Kakutani of The New York Times about Wonder Boys-and here he has created, in Joe Kavalier, a hero for the century.

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1. Escape, literally and figuratively, is everywhere in this novel. Why do you think Michael Chabon and the characters in the novel place so much importance on it? From what and to what are the different characters in the novels escaping? When is escape good in the novel and when is it bad? Can the character of Joe Kavalier ever quit trying to escape, whether it is from place, like Prague and New York, or from relationships, like Rosa and Sammy? When Sammy leaves for LA, is this an escape, and if so, is it good or bad? Why do characters in this novel seem to be trying to escape relationships, and what are the different types of relationships that can be binding? Does the escaping end at the conclusion of the novel?

2. Compare the theme of escape in the novel to escapist nature of art. In what ways does Chabon explore this in his novel through the art of magic, and painting, and comics? How is the novel THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY an escape itself and the creation of a world unto itself for the reader? Although the novel is clearly fiction, why do you think Michael Chabon goes to such lengths to make it feel real, by adding real historical facts and fictitious footnotes? Why do you think Chabon chose to write about the medium of comics, as opposed to something else like television or the movies?

3. How are love and family portrayed in the novel? What constitutes a family at different points in the novel? What are the different types of love in the novel? How are the families of Joe, Sammy, and Rosa different, and how are these three people able to make a family themselves? What role does family play in Joe's life? Does it unnecessarily bind him to the past? Why or why not? Is there something special about America that allows for unorthodox types of families? Why do you think Sammy married Rosa? Why did she marry him? Are Sammy and Joe both fathers to Tommy?

4. Joe and Sammy create alter egos for themselves and others in their comic books. What is the significance of this? Do the comic book character give us any insight into the real characters in the book which they resemble. Does the character of Luna Moth help us to understand Rosa or Joe more? What does the character of The Escapist tell us about Joe Kavalier and Sammy Clay? Why does Joe dress up as The Escapist before reuniting with Rosa and Sammy?

5. A golem, according to Webster's New World Dictionary, is "a man artificially created by cabalistic rites: a robot." Knowing this, what do you think the significance of the golem is in this novel. Why is it so important to preserve the golem, and what is the realization one comes to when the golem is only dirt? Where does the transforming power lie, in the dirt or some other, inexplicable, magic quality? Does the power of the creator die with the creation? Compare the creation of the golem to the creation of The Escapist and other characters by Sammy and Joe and the creation of THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF KAVALIER & CLAY by Michael Chabon.

6. Is this a happy ending? Is Sammy escaping to LA?

East of Eden

The Story of Cain and Abel
Genesis 4: 1–16

"The man has intercourse with his wife Eve, and she conceived and gave birth to Cain, 'I have acquired a man with the help of Yahweh,' she said. She gave birth to a second child, Abel, the brother of Cain. Now Abel became a shepherd and kept flocks, while Cain tilled the soil. Time passed and Cain brought some of the produce of the soil as an offering for Yahweh, while Abel for his part brought the first-born of his flock and some of their fat as well. Yahweh looked with favor on Abel and his offering. But he did not look with favor on Cain and his offering, and Cain was very cross and downcast. Yahweh asked Cain, 'Why are you angry and downcast? If you are doing right, surely you ought to hold your head high! But if you are not doing right, Sin is crouching at the door hungry to get you. You can still master him.' Cain said to his brother Abel, 'Let us go out'; and while they were in the open country, Cain set on his brother Abel and killed him.

"Yahweh asked Cain, 'Where is your brother Abel?' 'I do not know,' he replied. 'Am I my brother's guardian?' 'What have you done?' Yahweh asked. 'Listen! Your brother's blood is crying out to me from the ground. Now be cursed and banned from the ground that has opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood at your hands. When you till the ground it will no longer yield its strength to you. A restless wanderer you will be on earth.' Cain then said to Yahweh, 'My punishment is greater than I can bear. Look, today you drive me from the surface of the earth, I must hide from you, and be a restless wanderer on the earth. Why, whoever comes across me will kill me!' 'Very well then,' Yahweh replied, 'Whoever kills Cain will suffer a sevenfold vengeance.' So Yahweh put a mark on Cain, so that no one coming across him would kill him. Cain left Yahweh's presence and settled in the land of Nod, east of Eden."

From The New Jerusalem Bible

Other Resources
East of Eden
The Story of Cain and Abel

To Steinbeck, there was only "one story in the world" (Ch. 34), the story of good and evil. East of Eden is his allegory of that story, and as its title suggests, he believed that story went all the way back to the beginning of mankind.

Before reading East of Eden, it is good to be acquainted with the story of Cain and Abel from which Steinbeck got the title and many key ideas. Here is the complete text to Genesis Chapter 4 of the New King James version of the Bible.

1 And Adam knew Eve his wife; and she conceived, and bare Cain, and said, I have gotten a man from the Lord. 2 And she again bare his brother Abel. And Abel was a keeper of sheep, but Cain was a tiller of the ground. 3 And in process of time it came to pass, that Cain brought of the fruit of the ground an offering unto the Lord. 4 And Abel, he also brought of the firstlings of his flock and of the fat thereof. And the Lord had respect unto Abel and to his offering: 5 But unto Cain and to his offering he had not respect. And Cain was very wroth, and his countenance fell. 6 And the Lord said unto Cain, Why art thou wroth? and why is thy countenance fallen? 7 If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.

8 And Cain talked with Abel his brother: and it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against Abel his brother, and slew him. 9 And the Lord said unto Cain, Where is Abel thy brother? And he said, I know not: Am I my brother's keeper? 10 And he said, What hast thou done? the voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground. 11 And now art thou cursed from the earth, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand; 12 When thou tillest the ground, it shall not henceforth yield unto thee her strength; a fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth. 13 And Cain said unto the Lord, My punishment is greater than I can bear. 14 Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth; and from thy face shall I be hid; and I shall be a fugitive and a vagabond in the earth; and it shall come to pass, that every one that findeth me shall slay me. 15 And the Lord said unto him, Therefore whosoever slayeth Cain, vengeance shall be taken on him sevenfold. And the Lord set a mark upon Cain, lest any finding him should kill him. 16 And Cain went out from the presence of the Lord, and dwelt in the land of Nod, on the east of Eden.

17 And Cain knew his wife; and she conceived, and bare Enoch: and he builded a city, and called the name of the city, after the name of his son, Enoch. 18 And unto Enoch was born Irad: and Irad begat Mehujael: and Mehujael begat Methusael: and Methusael begat Lamech. 19 And Lamech took unto him two wives: the name of the one was Adah, and the name of the other Zillah. 20 And Adah bare Jabal: he was the father of such as dwell in tents, and of such as have cattle. 21 And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ. 22 And Zillah, she also bare Tubalcain, an instructer of every artificer in brass and iron: and the sister of Tubalcain was Naamah.

23 And Lamech said unto his wives, Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; ye wives of Lamech, hearken unto my speech: for I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my hurt. 24 If Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.

25 And Adam knew his wife again; and she bare a son, and called his name Seth: For God, said she, hath appointed me another seed instead of Abel, whom Cain slew. 26 And to Seth, to him also there was born a son; and he called his name Enos: then began men to call upon the name of the Lord.

Discussion

In summary, Cain killed his brother Abel because he was jealous that Abel's offering won favor and his own did not. Cain denied that he killed him, and so he was banished and destined to wander forever. He was marked to be recognizable, too. Cain's descendants also were evil and did not recognize the Lord.

The story comes after the story of Adam and Eve, which is often interpreted as the moment mankind changed from innocent into a mixture of good and evil. In Adam and Eve's story, God banishes humankind from the Garden of Eden, the sinless place, forever because of a sin they committed.

In the Cain and Abel story, God for the first time talks about sin and evil. He says to Cain, "Thou shalt rule over [evil]" (Verse 7). But is that a statement or a command? Is it true for all of us?

To Steinbeck, these were life's most important questions. Are we all innately evil as Adam and Eve's story is often interpreted? Or are we in control of our evil sides?

Part One—Discussion Questions

1. How do the contrasting values in the landscape affect a reader's sense of the valley?

2. There is an epic scope to the opening chapter, as if Steinbeck is announcing to the reader the grandness of his theme. Comment on how he suggests the grandness of his conception.

3. Steinbeck describes the inhabitants of the valley—Indians, Spanish, Americans—in rather unattractive terms, as if he's echoing an "official" history. Why would he do so?

4. How do the patriarchs, Samuel Hamilton and Cyrus Trask—and their respective families—differ? Compare their different moral environments.

5. How do Samuel and Cyrus contrast as storytellers? Why does storytelling play such a major role in this novel? What kind of storyteller is the character Steinbeck?

6. How are children in Part One influenced by perceived flaws in their fathers, and how do they respond? What are the consequences of parental love, neglect or rejection among the Hamiltons and Trasks?

7. Regardless of Charles's brutal beating of Adam and his infidelity with Adam's wife, does he love his brother? Why? Are the brothers close? Why might they be closer through letters? Why does Charles' handwriting change in the strange letter he writes to Adam at the end of Chapter 4? And why might Steinbeck say that this letter is a "key" to the novel?

8. Is Cathy Ames doomed by nature to be who she is, or does she have a choice? Cathy is introduced as a monster in Chapter 8; in Chapter 12 she's described slightly differently. Steinbeck seems to be assessing her character as he writes the book. Why might Steinbeck be asking the reader to assess Cathy carefully?

9. How might Cathy Ames be an Eve-like figure? Or is she like Lilith, a demon created from filth, who, according to some Jewish myths, was Adam's first wife? What role does human sexuality play in the lives of the characters?

10. How is Adam's good nature and inability to see through Cathy a weakness? If Adam is an "A" character and therefore "good," is he also an admirable character? Do you, as a reader, like all that he does?

11. Who is telling the story at any given moment? Steinbeck, Olive's son, a character in his own book? The all-knowing narrator who can even tell what others are thinking? Or is the philosopher-critic a third possibility? Why do you think that Steinbeck includes himself in this text? What might be his point in so doing?

12. Comment on gift-giving in the novel. Why is it so important?

13. As opposed to the Cain and Abel story in the Bible, it is the Abel figure in East of Eden (Adam) who seems condemned to be a wanderer. Why?

14. Steinbeck has been accused of creating only two types of female characters, mother figures (like the heroic Ma Joad) and prostitutes (like Cathy). While many female characters in this book are not as richly drawn as the male characters, he nonetheless creates fascinating characters in Alice, Liza and later Abra. Comment on the role of these women as nurturers, as mothers, as confidants. The thematic role of each differs.

15. Early reviewers complained about Cathy. If this is a novel about free will, why is Cathy, a monster seemingly without free will, a major character in the novel? Think about this question as you read the book.

16. Why might Cathy be compared to Alice in Wonderland?

Part Two—Discussion Questions

1. In Chapter 13, Steinbeck celebrates "the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected." Both Adam and Faye create and harbor a childlike image of Cathy to their peril. They fall prey to their own creations. What traits do these two characters share? And what are some of the dangers inherent in "freedom of the mind"?

2. Is Adam's forgetfulness of his past in his new Eden convincing? Is his obliviousness a form of repression destined to wreak havoc?

3. From your reading of Chapter 14—about Olive Hamilton, Steinbeck's mother—do you think it is wildly intrusive and inappropriate, as some critics have claimed? Or, is the chapter consistent with other interjections throughout the book and with Steinbeck's ambition to write a novel for his sons in an unrestricted style?

4. Regarding Cathy, the narrator says: "Who knows but that she tried to tell someone or everyone what she was like, and could not for lack of a common language." Both Lee and Samuel know upon meeting her "what she is like." So does Charles. What qualities in Cathy are transparent to those who care to notice?

5. How does Steinbeck handle the issue of racial prejudice in his portrayal of Lee, Adam's Chinese servant, and "the Nigger," whorehouse madam? Both are dignified characters, yet both are subject to denigration. Clearly Lee is the more important character. Why does he speak English so readily with Samuel? How many roles does he play in this novel?

6. Both Mr. Edwards, the whoremaster in Part One, and Faye, the brothel madam, fall in love with Cathy. The narrator says that Cathy "was mistress of a technique which is the basis of good wrestling—that of letting your opponent do the heavy work toward his own defeat, or of guiding his strength toward his weakness." How is this so, with respect to Mr. Edwards and Faye? How does Cathy play them? Does she play Adam in the same way?

7. Liza Hamilton is mother to Samuel's nine children, four boys and five girls. She "had a finely developed sense of sin. � She suffered bravely and uncomplainingly through life, convinced that that was the way her God wanted everyone to live. She felt that rewards came later."

Talk about her relationship with Samuel. Which of her characteristics are most admirable?

8. Is Adam's despondence after Cathy abandons him and the children authentic grief? Or does he derive masochistic pleasure from it, as Samuel Hamilton suggests? What does it say about Adam that he, too, rejects his infant sons for more than a year, ignoring them, not bothering even to name them? If Adam is an "A" character, and thus "good," is that goodness convincing? Appealing?

9. In discussing the Cain and Abel story with Samuel Hamilton and Adam, Lee says: "The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with crime guilt." To whom does this apply? Charles? Cathy? Adam?

10. Part Two concludes with an evocation of Biblical stories—of Aaron who did not make it to the Promised Land, and Caleb and Joshua who did. Is there a Moses figure in the book thus far, whose vision leads characters out of their spiritual wilderness?

11. Why do you suppose that Steinbeck includes so much about the Cain and Abel story in the novel, having Samuel read the text?

Part Three—Discussion Questions

1. In Part Three, six characters die or their deaths are described—Una, Samuel, Charles, Lee's mother, Dessie and Tom. How does the omnipresence of death change the mood and atmosphere of the novel?

2. Samuel, Adam, Cal, Dessie and Tom all lie to protect the feelings of others in Part Three. Is their deception justifiable as a kindness, or is it ultimately a breach of trust? Compare their actions to that of Lee's father. Note also Lee's advice to Adam about telling the boys the truth about Cathy.

3. How are the twins, Cal and Aron, different? Look at the paragraph near the end of Chapter 27, where the difference in the two boys is described by their supposed responses to an anthill. How do Cal's actions accord with that description?

4. In many ways, Lee's mother is the opposite of Cathy. How so? Why is the story of her rape included in the novel? Is the way that Lee's father and then Lee tell the story important?

5. Consider the importance of the automobile and the advent of the ready-made dress. How is technical progress changing life in the Salinas Valley, and what affect does it have on characters such as Will?

6. Some critics have derided Lee as stereotypical—the inscrutable, wise Oriental man. Especially during the discussion of timshel, do you find him convincing? Why does he play so many roles in the novel?

7. What do you suppose Charles' motives were in equally dividing his inheritance between Adam and Cathy?

8. In Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters, Steinbeck wrote, "I think you will find that Cathy as Kate fascinates people. � People are always interested in evil even when they pretend their interest is clinical. And they will mull Kate over. They will forget I said she was bad. And they will hate her because while she is a monster, she is a little piece of the monster in all of us. It won't be because she is foreign that people will be interested but because she is not."

Why does Cathy begin to show cracks in her fa�ade during her confrontation with Adam? If she seems more recognizably human in her rage and sorrow, is she still a monster as first described? Why would Steinbeck wish to make his readers see Cathy in different ways? If the author is "rereading" Cathy with each encounter, is he also asking readers to reexamine her and their assumptions about evil? Or does she remain fixed throughout the novel-thoroughly evil, unsympathetic and a "monster"?

9. The scene when Adam first confronts Cathy is remarkable. Note how her body is described, her hands. How does Steinbeck convey Cathy's physical decline and Adam's response to her?

10. Why does Abra tease the boys? Does she seem admirable?

11. Why is Adam so uncomfortable with the Bacons? Why does he take their advice? In buying a car, does Adam seem suddenly a more resolute character?

Part Four—Discussion Questions

1. In Part One, the story of the Trask family unfolds in the shadows of the Civil War and fighting in the West against Native Americans. In Part Four, the lives of the next generation of Trasks are set against the backdrop of World War I. What is the relationship between the private and public conflicts evoked in East of Eden? What does the story of Cain and Abel have to do with war?

2. Much is made of the differences between Cal and Aron, but what traits do they share? How do they deal with their respective senses of inadequacy?

3. Both Adam in Part One and Aron in Part Four come to hate their fathers. Why? In what ways are Cyrus and Adam Trask alike in their ambitions for their sons?

4. How is Aron's imagination of Abra similar to Adam's inability to see nothing but what he wants to see in Cathy? What does their infatuation suggest about a state of innocence and purity?

5. Is Aron's obsession with goodness and purity a form of self-indulgence?

6. What is the nature of the despair that makes both Charles (in Part One) and Cal (in Part Four) restless, drawn to borders of respectability? If Charles and Cal—as opposed to Adam and Aron—are the sons who love their fathers, why do their fathers reject them?

7. By presenting Adam with a gift of $15,000, is Cal really acting out of jealousy and trying to buy his father's affection, or is he motivated by virtuous impulses? Why does Adam reject his son's gift?

8. What in Aron does Cathy identify with? Why does she bequeath her ill-gotten fortune only to him? Why does she commit suicide?

9. Has Adam acted properly by not telling his sons the truth about their mother? Is Adam a good father?

10. How is Abra an agent of change in the novel? How is she different from other women in East of Eden?

11. Why does Abra cease to love Aron, and why does she burn his letters? Compare the three scenes of burning paper—Kate's pictures, Cal's money, Abra's letters.

12. What is the nature of the bond between Lee and Abra? Why does he give her a gift of his mother's treasured possession?

13. What is the novel's position on flawed humanity, as instanced by Cal and Abra?

14. How does inheritance—financial and moral—feature in the novel? What are its ramifications for the lives of Charles and Adam, Adam and Cathy, and Aron? What inheritance does Cal receive from the dying Adam that is unlike any other in the book?

15. What does Adam mean when he utters the word timshel at the novel's conclusion?

16. Why is Lee increasingly important in the novel? Why is the role of surrogate father given to a Chinese character?

17. Why is Samuel Hamilton's memory evoked so often? What does he come to represent in the novel? Does he represent more in death than he does when he's alive?
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http://webpages.charter.net/thejacowskis/eden/johnsteinbeck.html

John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck was born to a schoolteacher mother and a county treasurer father in California's Salinas Valley on February 27, 1902. He graduated from high school and attended Stanford University. Before becoming a successful writer with his fourth book Tortilla Flat,John Steinbeck; he held many jobs. He was a hod carrier, a fruit picker, an apprentice painter, a lab assistant, a caretaker, a surveyor, and a journalist. These experiences gave him the insight to write about universal topics.

Steinbeck's youth in the Salinas Valley is reflected in many of his works, but especially in East of Eden which he called "a sort of autobiography of the Salinas Valley."

East of Eden was published in 1952. To Steinbeck, it was one of his most important novels, addressing what he thought to be a universal theme. Steinbeck himself appears as a narrator and very minor character in the book, so the reader can see his thoughts.

His 1939 Grapes of Wrath won a Pulitzer Prize, and in 1962 he won a Nobel Prize for his accomplishments.

http://www.webenglishteacher.com/steinbeck.html#Eden

Salinas

Many of Steinbeck's works took place in or around his hometown, Salinas, California.Map of settings in the book; It was a colorful place; it showed influences of the American West, Chinese immigrants, Native Americans, and the Spanish settlers, but at the same time was growing and modernizing.

The color of Salinas and the surrounding towns is reflected in the characters. The whorehouse madam or the Chinese immigrant may be one of the most charitable, Map of Salinas with relation to California; upstanding citizens in town, counter to stereotypes of the time. People are civilized, yet they still have duels and fist fights.

The specific qualities of the setting are part of essential to Steinbeck's works, but this is especially so for East of Eden. The book speaks to everyone because the varied characters make the themes and plots in the book understandable to everyone.
Check out the questions"
http://steinbeck.sjsu.edu/works/East%20of%20Eden-Q.jsp

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East of Eden John Steinbeck

Part One, Chapters 1–5

Summary: Chapter 1

The narrator begins by describing his childhood in California's Salinas Valley, where he learned to tell east from west by looking at the mountains—the bright Gabilan Mountains to the east and the dark Santa Lucia Mountains to the west. The valley's weather comes in thirty-year cycles: five or six years of heavy rainfall, six or seven years of moderate rainfall, and then many years of dryness. The valley was settled by three peoples: first, the Indians, whom the narrator derides as lazy; next, the Spanish, whom the narrator calls greedy; and finally, the Americans, who the narrator says are even greedier than the Spanish.

Summary: Chapter 2



In 1870, Samuel and Liza Hamilton—the narrator's grandparents—arrive in the Salinas Valley from Ireland. The Hamiltons are forced to settle on the driest and most barren land in the valley, as all the better lots are already taken. To support his nine children, Samuel works as a blacksmith, a well-digger, and an unlicensed doctor.

Summary: Chapter 3

Some time after Samuel Hamilton arrives, a man named Adam Trask settles a fertile corner of the Salinas Valley for himself and lives as a wealthy man. After introducing Adam, the narrator jumps back in time to tell the story of Adam's childhood.

Adam is the son of Cyrus Trask, a conniving Connecticut farmer who loses a leg in the Civil War and then passes on syphilis to his wife after contracting it from a black prostitute in the South. Cyrus's pious wife commits suicide shortly after discovering her illness. Cyrus needs help with the children, so he marries a young woman named Alice, who lives in fear of her husband and even hides her tuberculosis from him out of worry that he might impose a harsh medical treatment upon her. In his spare time, Cyrus studies military history and strategy so that he might create convincing lies about his time in the Army. His lies about his alleged heroics in the Civil War gain him widespread respect and ultimately an appointment as Secretary of the Army.

As a boy, Adam Trask is kind and good-natured, but his half-brother, Charles, is boisterous and aggressive. One day, Charles beats Adam severely simply because Adam defeats him in a game. Adam loves his stepmother, Alice, and anonymously leaves her secret gifts in order to make her smile.

When Adam is a young man, Cyrus tries to convince him to go into the Army. When Adam asks his father why he does not want Charles to go into the army instead, Cyrus responds that the army would cultivate a part of Charles's nature that needs to be suppressed. In addition, Cyrus says that he loves Adam better.

Later, Charles asks Adam about his conversation with their father. Adam learns that Charles is resentful about Cyrus's recent birthday: Cyrus was completely indifferent to the expensive German knife Charles gave him as a gift, yet deeply appreciated the stray puppy Adam gave him. Suddenly, the jealous Charles beats Adam severely and leaves him in a ditch on the side of the road.

Adam limps home much later and weakly tells Cyrus that Charles thinks Cyrus does not love him. Cyrus leaves with a shotgun in search of Charles. Alice tends to Adam and tells him that Charles has a kind streak as well. It turns out that Alice mistakenly believes that Charles, not Adam, is the one who has been leaving her secret gifts for years.

Summary: Chapter 4

Charles wisely stays away from home for two weeks. When he returns, Cyrus is over his rage and puts him to work.

Summary: Chapter 5

Samuel Hamilton educated himself in Ireland by borrowing books from a wealthy family. In America, his gentle good nature wins him the respect of everyone he meets. The Hamiltons never become rich but live comfortably nonetheless. They have four sons: George, who is bland and moral; Will, who is lucky and grows up to be wealthy; Tom, who is ardent and passionate; and Joe, who is lazy but likable and intelligent. Samuel and Liza also have five daughters: Lizzie, who does not associate with the family very much; Una, who is dark and brooding; Dessie, whose lovely personality makes her well-loved; Olive, the narrator's mother, who becomes a teacher; and Mollie, the baby and beauty of the family.

Liza Hamilton, like her husband, is highly respected in the Salinas valley. She strictly disapproves of alcoholic beverages until the age of seventy, when her doctor tells her to take port wine for medical reasons. From that day forward, the old woman drinks lustily.