Thor Andersen

Mr. Dorman

Advanced American Lit.

May 13, 2001

East of Eden There Is No God

     "It would be absurd if we did not understand both angels and devils, since we invented them" (133). What would also be absurd would be if we chose to believe in them. The Bible is written like any modern day novel, it is written as though it is real. Of course, in a novel coming from a shepherding people, the all-powerful God character prefers sheep to fruit of the land. John Steinbeck’s East of Eden—a retelling of the Cain and Abel story—helps explain many of the reasons why backwards religious ideas are clung to and the faults behind them. Through his characters, Steinbeck explores human nature to reveal the emotional need for religion and the situations in society that foster it.

     In society, people cling to conformity. It’s an easy way to avoid trouble or ridicule. Cyrus explains this to Adam when he’s describing life in the army: "you’ll do things because the others do them. You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever—a danger to the whole crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men." And what happens when someone doesn’t conform? "The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference." (25)

     For many people it’s much easier for them to not think for themselves. They let the group, society, or their leaders think for them. One example of this is the massive following that religious leaders have. People are taught to have faith, that believing is seeing and not the other way around.

     When Adam finds out that his father—a character who represents God to Charles and Adam—was a fraud he chooses to not believe it: "I believe in the war he did just what he said he did and was just where he said he was." What about the proof—the papers? "I believe they are wrong. I believe in my father" (70). So Adam chooses to believe in his father, even though there is proof that his father was a fraud, a lie, and refuses to even look at the papers.

     But why not look at the papers? What keeps Adam from facing facts? It is because "papers are no match at all for [his] faith in [his] father" (71). He has faith to protect him, closing your eyes to reason and looking with your heart instead. But this is beyond faith; this is blind faith—believing without seeing, trusting without reason.

     Many people in society live their lives this way. Like Olive Hamilton, their acts are "based on feelings rather than thoughts" (149). The Bible gets emotional sympathy for its Jesus character; it gets faith for its promise of an afterlife; and, for those people who need to be followers, it has the ultimate ruler—God.

     Many people are like Olive Hamilton when it comes to reality. "External realities of a frustrating nature she obliterated by refusing to believe in them" (150). When reality is too real people need an escape. Some people prefer to be backed in their own beliefs than to be enlightened to new, harder to handle emotionally, ones. Lee has a good understanding of this. Repeatedly throughout the novel Lee explains to people if he "can offer an honest opinion or whether it is better to reassure you in your own" (376). When Aron learns of his mother being alive he immediately comes up with an excuse to make her dead in his mind. Aron is not strong enough for the truth; he just wants easy answers. "It is one of the triumphs of the human that he can know a thing and still not believe it." (452)

     The most important emotion that people need met is love. In the Bible, it says that its followers are given love. Both God and Jesus love everybody unconditionally, comparable to that of a pet dog. Steinbeck says of love:

It is most likely this need for love, above all else, that people blindly put their faith into the hands of an unseen god.

     It was jealous love that led Cain to murder his brother. It was for the love of the goddess Inanna that the farmer Enkimdu murdered the shepherd Dumuzi in the ancient Sumerian story that Cain and Abel was later based on. Love is a powerful theme that recurs often in literature. It has the power to make people laugh and cry. It also has the power to make people feel wanted, to be a part of something.

     When people are told that this love is true it is hard for many people to reject it. They are told that they can be a part of an ultimate brotherhood. When people are raised on such "truths" it becomes real to them.

     To Aron, Adam is built as "the center, the foundation, the essence of truth" (429). It doesn’t matter to Aron that Adam is lying about his mother—it wouldn’t make sense to him. Similarly, God is also built as the central truth. Religious disbelief even seeps into the language. When Adam tells Cal of his time in jail "Cal tried to absorb this heresy. ‘I don’t believe it,’ he said" (454). A belief different from the accepted belief of a church is associated with untruth.

     The painful truth is that life and all happiness associated with it comes to an end. Steinbeck parallels life to a story. "What’s the world’s story about?" Good and Evil. And when it ends, "there is no other story" (413). There is no afterlife. There is no invisible God who loves you.

     Sure, if you ignore a few burned books and stake burnings, you could argue that much good has come out of Christianity. Very similar to "Adam, the most rigidly honest man it was possible to find, living all his life on stolen money . . . and Aron, whose purity was a little on the self-indulgent side, living all his life on the profits from a whorehouse" (583). Some good people live their lives based on ancient myths and fairy-tale lies.

     Why even question life?