Yesterday I finished East of Eden.
It had been on my list for quite some time, and I've been reading it slowly. As it is Steinbeck's magnum opus I did my best to pace myself and allow each chapter to receive its proper attention.
For those who are unfamiliar with the story, it is a modern retelling of Genesis - namely, the stories of Adam and Eve & Cain and Abel - presented through the lens of Steinbeck's own family history in WWI-era California.
As with any great novel, innumerable themes and big ideas and narratives course through the tome. In the immediate aftermath of the tale, though, the idea that's sticking with me is that of reality versus fantasy, human truth (and thus fallibility) versus idolization. To what extent does love allow honest appraisal of one's beloved? Do humans unavoidably cloak one another in garments sewn of broad expectation and imagined particularities?
Adam Trask crafts a vision of his wife Cathy in that same way their son A(a)ron ultimately builds the perfect woman in the skin of his adolescent love, Abra. Both Cathy and Abra, of course, repel from the men who love them so dearly -- for they find it deeply limiting, lonely, and haunting, even, to be someone's perfect creation, instead of being loved for their unique individuality.
"It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it," writes Steinbeck. And though Cathy and Abra indeed possess human faults, their men view them as infallibly pure. Are Adam and Aron utterly ignorant to the happenings of reality? No. No, I don't think so.
Rather, their desperate creation of and grasping onto their ideas of love and the beloved provide security and stability unavailable in the human realm. People are not so easily distilled into simplistic dualities of right and wrong, good and bad. We're layered and beautiful in our complexity. And how sad it then is, if we all construct fictions of one another, for we miss the frustratingly lovable imperfections that constitute the identities of each of us. But, maybe, it's easier to do otherwise -- to love the fantasy.
And how lonely a place it is, to be the beloved who knows that she has become a creation, who recognizes that the emotions and gestures meant for her are aimed toward a ghostly presence haunting the heart of her other. How can we do right by others, if we isolate one another in castles built upon the sands of imagination and longing? How can we choose to face virtuously the biting reality of human nature, both in ourselves and those we love?
Lee, Adam Trask's live-in helper with all things tangible and intangible, tells us the story of timshel, the Hebrew verb used in the Cain and Abel story. In one copy of the Bible, Lee finds that Jehovah says to Cain, "And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him," thereby promising the conquering of sin. In another version Lee finds a different translation -- "do thou rule over him," thereby ordering Cain and not promising a thing. After a bit of rabbinic research Lee discovers that timshel actually translates to "thou mayest," implying the choice and the freedom to choose.
And here, Lee believes, we have found the glory of humanity. For it is in this choice to fight for virtue that we achieve greatness -- it is neither promised to us nor commanded of us.
This is also where we find, I believe, the glory of human interconnectedness. The choice always remains, whether idly to create another and allow oneself to be created, or to face the gritty truth of the human condition and the delicate, painful, beautiful intricacies that define the individual and the self -- and to honor and love this reality. We can recognize the fantasy and still choose the better, the real. It is only when we recognize the unavoidable faults of ourselves and others, when we cast off the ghost of constructed perfection, and nonetheless choose to love that, I think, goodness can begin to blossom.
I feel that a man is a very important thing -- maybe more important than a star. This is not theology. I have no bent toward gods. But I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed -- because "Thou mayest."
L
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