Srushti Karra 9/25/12 East of Eden Essay John's Steinbeck's East of Eden is about two families that help

reenact the famous biblical story of Cain and Abel. When Adam Trask comes to California to start a new life in the Salinas Valley with his seemingly perfect pregnant wife, Cathy, he hires a Chinese cook and housekeeper, Lee. Lee is a very educated, philosophical man who is a source of stability for the Trask family. While he seems like just a humorous side character, Lee's one of the most important characters in the book. The thing about Cathy is that she leaves a week after giving birth to twin boys and shoots Adam in the shoulder for trying to stop her. She then goes into town and joins a brothel. Adam goes into a depression because of Cathy's disappearance and neglects his children, leaving Lee to take care of them. Eventually, Samuel Hamilton and Lee hammer the truth that she works as a whore into his head, and he chooses to not tell the boys, Caleb and Aaron, when they're old enough. When Cal eventually finds out after roaming in town because of stray rumors, Lee confronts him with absolute reassurance that Cathy's abundance of evil isn't in Cal, and that he could be whomever he wanted to be. Lee specifically says, "It's too easy to excuse yourself because of your ancestry...Whatever you do, it will be you who do itnot your mother." Lee tells him that he will only end up worse with such a notion that everything is predestined because of the identity of your parents. In this case, truth really is the best medicine that will help Cal try becoming a better person. During the course of the book, Lee wants to leave once the Trask family is settled in the Salinas Valley to start a bookstore. Leaving a fairly confident Caleb (Cal) who thinks he'll return

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soon enough, Lee departs. A week later he returns to the Trask household, imbedding himself into the normal lifestyle once again. When Adam asks Lee what happened, he replies, "Adam, I am incomparably, incredibly, overwhelmingly glad to be home. I've never been so god-dam lonesome in my life." It seems that one does return to their true family no matter the obstacles. Lee has grown to become a part of the Trask family and loves them as a family as well. Later on in the book, Abra Bacon sees Lee as the father she had always wanted and Lee sees her as a daughter he never had. True family knows no boundaries of blood relations. Lee seems to be a reservoir of truth, wisdom, and reason that grounds the characters in the book. For example, when Adam rejects Cal's gift/offering of $15,000, Cal feels utter rejection. Lee tells him, "I told you once when you asked me that it was all in yourself. I told you you could control itif you wanted." Overcome with hatred and jealousy, Cal shows Aron the truth about their mother. What Lee also helps show here is that sometimes the truth can be painful as well. Many people would love to think that Adam loves his sons equally, unlike his father Cyrus who loved Adam more than his brother Charles. But, the sad truth is that Adam walked in the same footsteps, knowingly or unknowingly, and favored Aaron(Aron) more than Cal. And because of such a grave mistake, Cal indirectly caused a death. Throughout John Steinbeck's East of Eden, Lee display such fantastic characteristics that make him such an important character. From showing Cal the truth that Cathy didn't rule his life because they shared the same blood, to returning to the Trasks and Abra after momentarily leaving to pursue his dreams, back to his true family, to consoling Cal with the painful fact that he could control the hatred coming from Adam's rejection of Cal's gift if he chose to and that history repeats itself in continuous cycles of favoring and neglecting. All in all, Lee indeed portrays the characteristic of being truthful with most, if not all, of his being.

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Work Cited Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. New York: Penguin Group, 1952. Print.