Adam later sends money to the store to pay for the clothes and damage. Later, he wires Charles to request $100 to pay for his travels home. He was caught for vagrancy, escaped from a chain gang, and burgled a store for clothing to use as a disguise. Adam and Charles's father, Cyrus, was a Union Civil War veteran who was wounded in his very first battle and unable (or perhaps unwilling) to return to service he nonetheless becomes an expert " armchair general" who uses his intellectual knowledge of military affairs and wounded-veteran status to become a military adviser in Washington, D.C.Īs a young man, Adam spent his time first in the military and then wandering the country. We see his tumultuous childhood on a farm in Connecticut and the brutal treatment he endured from his younger but stronger half-brother, Charles. As the Hamilton children begin to grow up and leave home, a wealthy stranger, Adam Trask, purchases the best ranch in the Valley.Īdam's life is seen in a long, intricate flashback. He and his wife Liza, immigrants from Ireland, raise their nine children on a rough, infertile piece of land in the Salinas Valley. Samuel Hamilton is a warmhearted inventor and farmer. In the beginning of East of Eden, before introducing his characters, Steinbeck carefully establishes the setting with a description of the Salinas Valley in Central California. The story is primarily set in the Salinas Valley, California, between the beginning of the twentieth century and the end of World War I, though some chapters are set in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and the story goes as far back as the American Civil War. A young John Steinbeck also appears briefly in the novel as a minor character. The Hamilton family in the novel is said to be based on the real-life family of Samuel Hamilton, Steinbeck's maternal grandfather. Steinbeck wanted to describe the Salinas Valley for them in detail: the sights, sounds, smells and colors.Įast of Eden brings to life the intricate details of two families, the Trasks and the Hamiltons, and their interwoven stories.
Steinbeck stated about East of Eden: "It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years," and later said: "I think everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this." The novel was originally addressed to Steinbeck's young sons, Thom and John (then 6 1⁄ 2 and 4 1⁄ 2 years old, respectively).
Published in September 1952, the work is regarded by many to be Steinbeck's most ambitious novel and by Steinbeck himself to be his magnum opus. East of Eden is a novel by American author and Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck.
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