![]() ![]() Despite his intelligence and capacity for labour, Samuel’s family can never escape the threat of poverty that clings to them. He is also clever, inventive and hardworking able to innovate solutions to several obstacles but without a mind for business to profit from them. A big man, but delicate, Samuel is a laugher, a soother, a peacemaker, a man people open up to. The narrator’s grandfather, Samuel Hamilton, arrived in California’s Salinas Valley neither rich nor poor, but with all the best land taken, he settles for the dry foothills that have little topsoil. Those who arrive poor will only be able to afford the most difficult land to work with and remain poor. Those who come with money, probably from selling land elsewhere, will get the best new land and remain wealthy. Land is still plentiful but it is not of equal quality. So much so that I did not have to read far before I began to wonder if this novel would become one of my favourites.Įarly in East of Eden, the narrator explains a misconception of America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century as being the same country as frontier America, with plentiful land where a newcomer can make a new life, work diligently and aspire to provide a more prosperous life for his children. Steinbeck’s epic American family saga, East of Eden, played out in rural California between the Civil War and the First World War, is full of beautiful writing and tragedy. ![]()
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