East of Eden

Adam’s younger half-brother, Charles Trask, is the first character Steinbeck uses to question beliefs about good and evil. Charles can’t control his anger, but that bad quality doesn’t make him a bad person. He’s capable of killing in a fit of anger, and he sleeps with his brother’s wife. However, he’s meticulously good at farming his land, he’s honest with himself and his brother about the world, and he doesn’t want to cause hurt or stress to others. He’s generous with his brother, Adam, who gives Charles little to nothing in return. Their father, Cyrus, rejects Charles, and that trauma informs much of how he understands his role in the world. Charles personifies Cain in that he’s an excellent farmer and has a dark scar on his forehead. However, Charles doesn’t kill his brother and even helps him achieve his goal of moving to California. Charles both is and isn’t Cain.

Adam Trask’s cook-turned-babysitter and good friend, Lee, is the story’s moral compass. Both a foreigner and the character who most embodies the American ethos, Lee can weave into many seemingly disparate roles. He’s therefore the glue that holds the Trasks together. In addition, Lee embodies the injustice of the American racial stereotype. Although he’s American born and raised, as well as intelligent and kind, he’s often the subject of harmful racial slurs and assumptions. As the character who discovers the concept of timshel, Lee establishes and spreads the novel’s main theme. However, true to his discovery of timshel, Lee doesn’t let others interfere in his happiness. Even when he puts on a fake Chinese accent, he’s protecting himself, not acquiescing to society’s expectations. Lee is subversive and is crucial to the story in that he gets Adam back on track—and cares for Cal and Aron throughout their infancy and well into their adolescence.

Samuel Hamilton is a poor but happy man who lives on the wrong side of King City. Although he works hard and is brilliantly inventive, he remains in poverty because of his over-generous personality. An Irish immigrant, Samuel is happy to own land, even if it’s unfarmable, and he’s a proud father and devoted husband. Samuel brings a loveable sense of humor to the book. When he discovers that Lee is a philosophical genius, he encourages Lee to be himself unabashedly. In addition, Samuel intervenes when Adam refuses to get over Cathy’s abandonment. Samuel is gentle yet strong and has a firm moral code. The narrator identifies the ideal person as one who has learned how to balance good and bad and who leaves behind love in the wake of his death. That person is Samuel Hamilton.

Cathy Ames is the central antagonist in East of Eden. She’s wanton, evil, and doesn’t care about it. The book introduces her as a true monster. Born evil, Cathy can do nothing to change her nature. She doesn’t realize how evil she is because in her worldview she’s simply stronger, smarter, and more capable than others. She lacks empathy for other people because she’s ashamed of their weaknesses. An expert manipulator, Cathy always angles to assert power over others. She represents the role of Eve in this biblical retelling. Eve eats the apple from the Tree of Knowledge and seduces her husband, Adam, into sin. So too does Cathy lead her Adam into sin, although he eventually prevails against her. Cathy abandons her children, Aron and Caleb, but their return into her life decades later is her undoing. This antagonist is notable in that she’s a woman running her life at a time when women normally couldn’t accomplish the level of independence she sustains. While Cathy is a sociopath—lacking the ability to feel guilt or empathy—she’s easy to blame, as she doesn’t fit the standard for women of the early 20th century. Cathy doesn’t want to be tied down to anything or anyone, a desire that contemporary society often celebrates but that was feared in the early 1900s. In her own way, the biblical Eve was subversive. She desired knowledge that God withheld from her, and although she was severely punished for it, Eve chose to practice timshel. Similarly, Cathy’s business acumen, sense of violence, and lack of care for others are masculine traits, which subvert the feminine norm. Cathy wants freedom in its absolute form. As bad as she is, she’s the only character who’s at peace with herself. However, this peace doesn’t last, as Cathy dies by suicide in Part 4, at which point she has long been known as Kate.

Aron Trask is the twin brother of Caleb (Cal) Trask and the son of Cathy Ames and Adam Trask (or Charles Trask, if Cathy’s claim is true). One of two central characters in Part 4, Aron takes after Adam in that he’s fair-skinned, beautiful, and blond—and in that he inspires love in others without doing anything to earn it. He’s nice to everyone and doesn’t struggle with himself until late in high school. He and Cal love one another, but he’s a foil for Cal, who struggles to match Aron’s ability to get and give love. Although Aron is kind and good, that goodness paves the way for his naivete. He projects a desire for the world to be a beautiful place, which sets him up for terrible disappointment. Because Aron can’t see the world for what it truly is, his “good” quality ends up being his downfall.

Aron’s twin brother, Caleb (or Cal) Trask is a central character in Part 4. As the novel’s ultimate protagonist, Cal embodies the honest struggle between good and evil—which he resolves by embracing timshel. Much more layered than his father, Adam, Cal is in constant self-reflection about his place in the world and his effect on it. He knows he can be mean but doesn’t want to be. His meanness comes out of his hurt. Growing up motherless and largely fatherless because Adam left the childcare to Lee, Cal spends most of his life unaware of what it feels like to be loved. He’s darker than Aron and resembles Charles, which aligns him with Cain. Cal loves deeply and hates fiercely, unlike his counterparts Charles and Cathy. Cal wants to do good in the world but has difficulty managing resentment. He finds love in Lee, in Abra, and eventually in his father, Adam. Cal’s character arc represents the potential for human development. Cal is the novel’s most relatable character, as he struggles with self-hatred, shame, humiliation, and the desire to assert control over his life. He exemplifies all the novel’s main themes—and the actions and reflections that allow the story to reach its climax and resolution.