#BookView (2/2) — EAST OF EDEN

And I don't even have a problem with a book being symbolic, but everything in this book is so obviously symbolic that I could constantly see the machinery behind it. Steinbeck will introduce something and I'll immediately think, oh okay, I see what this represents, and then he'll explain what it represents, and then he'll explain it again, and I'm just sitting there like okay please I understand you don't have to explain it again. The whole thing feel so preachy and didactic to me because I could feel what he wanted me to think. Everyone feels like they were created to fit the metaphor first and be a person second just like what I said. They have to behave a certain way because they represent something, they have to suffer because their suffering means something, they have to make certain choices because Steinbeck needs them to demonstrate some huge statement about human nature, and I couldn't unsee it. I want characters to surprise me or contradict themselves, or make stupid decisions, be selfish, be kind, cruel, etc etc. I want them to feel like people before they feel like ideas but unfortunately I never really got that here. I kept having this moment of oh okay I see what Steinbeck is trying to say here and that just my entire experience of reading the book. I wasn't discovering anything through the characters anymore because I was just decoding what they were supposed to represent. Well ok that's probably the point and what Steinbeck wanted, but understanding what a writer is trying to do doesn't automatically mean I think it works. I know the book is trying to talk about huge things like human nature, morality, free will, whether we're doomed to inherit the sins of the people before us, whether we can actually choose who we become, and those are interesting questions, but I don't think Steinbeck needed to hold my hand through every single one of them. So yeah that's my review, I wanted Cathy to be a person and more than evil woman. Imagine if I hated Cathy but also understood her and couldn't decide whether I pitied her and imagine if there were moments where she was something and then did something horrible anyway, that would have been interesting to me, but instead I just kept thinking okay she's evil we got it. And the frustrating thing is that Steinbeck's writing itself is beautiful. He really can write, but beautiful writing doesn't automatically make me care about what you're saying. By the end I was more impressed by the writing than I was actually moved by the story which is probably not what a book this long should leave me feeling. But yeah I probably wasn't the right audience for it and expected something completely different because everyone kept telling me this was this incredibly profound American epic, but I finished it and mostly thought that's it? I can see why people love it, I can understand what Steinbeck was trying to do, and I can appreciate the writing, but it never became the complicated good thing everyone told me it was. It's a long beautifully written biblical allegory where the characters were being sacrificed for the metaphor. That's probably my biggest frustration with the entire book. And don't start with “you just don't get it” because I really hate that argument when people talk about books. I do get it. I understand the Cain and Abel parallel, I understand what Steinbeck is saying about free will, I understand the symbolism, I understand why Cathy is written the way she is, I just don't think understanding what a writer is trying to do means I have to like how he did it. A reader can like and hate a book. So yeah this is just a honest opinion from someone who read it. I'm not saying East of Eden is objectively bad and I'm not trying to invalidate anyone who thinks it's amazing, I just read it and didn't feel the thing everyone else seemed to feel. Good night.