The Fallow Garden

So, this is the paper that almost killed me and then kind of brought me back to life. I'd like to make it better, but even if I can't I'm glad I wrote it.

The Fallow Garden: “Soft Determinism” in East of Eden

The moral philosophy of John Steinbeck is inextricably connected with his landscapes. As a California author, he is an example of Jan Goggans’ theory, “Because of California’s highly dramatic and highly volatile relationship with the landscape, and a population as large as it is diverse, California literature is generally unable to escape some kind of mark left by the environment.” Steinbeck’s landscapes are as detailed and accurate as they are impressionistic and symbolic, and they play an integral role in the lives of his characters. Literary critics have expressed both amazement and frustration with how his personal philosophy of man’s connection with nature appears in his novels. In particular, his advocacy of “nonteleological” thinking, or seeing what “is” rather than what is “desired,” has been identified within landscapes throughout his oeuvre. John H. Timmerman observed that, “Nonteleological thinking also forms a sort of premise for Steinbeck’s environmental ethic, since it requires that one see the thing as it is, disinterestedly, rather than through the framework of personal, or interested, use” (320). However, the undeniable impact of the physical and social environment on Steinbeck’s characters poses a thorny question: does the environment reflect his characters’ agency or take it away?

In “Steinbeck on Man and Nature: A Philosophical Reflection,” Richard Hart called Steinbeck’s philosophy “soft determinism” and identified it as “stemming from nonteleological thinking.” He explains that “In Steinbeck’s work we witness the intersection, the complementarity, of the determinism of nature and man’s freedom of existence…philosophically and aesthetically, Steinbeck can be both an environmental determinist, broadly construed, and a “humanist” whose characters illustrate strong ethical qualities of choice and action” (49). Steinbeck’s “big book,” East of Eden, throws into sharp focus the “nonteleological thinking” and “soft determinism” he espoused. Because so many of Eden’s landscapes are agricultural, they provide ample opportunity to analyze his depiction of men’s relationship with the land. As the most continuously present character in East of Eden, Adam Trask’s relationship with his farm is a valid case study for Steinbeck’s overarching presentation of the conflict between environmental determinism and moral agency. This paper will analyze two aspects of that presentation: first, Steinbeck’s placement of Adam’s relationship with the land in the context of actual nineteenth century farmers, and second, Steinbeck’s use of other characters’ relationships with their farms as a foil for Adam’s. An analysis of both stylistic choices clarifies that although Adam’s failure as a farmer reflects the influence of the social and physical environment, it also reveals mankind’s potential to direct their own destiny.

Many of Adam’s failings as a farmer allude to and are emphasized by social and economic issues incidental to agriculture in the Salinas Valley during the early twentieth century. In particular, his initial Edenic idealization of California and subsequent absentee-ownership of his land, his failure to access water resources, and his attempt to ship refrigerated lettuce all deal with contemporary agricultural dilemmas in the Salinas Valley. It might seem that by attributing to Adam failures experienced by a significant percentage of Salinas Valley farmers, Steinbeck is suggesting that he was swept off his feet by history and never had the chance to succeed. However, Steinbeck repeatedly demonstrates that Adam’s inability to succeed parallels environmental dilemmas, it stems from his personal decisions. Adam has many apparent advantages as a farmer and still does not succeed. In the end only barely manages to create an opportunity for someone else by passing the land to his son Cal. Adam’s failings as a farmer may at first appear to be simple historical criticism; however, they are in fact a powerful and integrous validation of the human spirit.

Adam Trask’s desire for Eden parallels that of many early twentieth century migrants to California in that it is socially induced and ends in dismal failure. However, Steinbeck clearly illustrates that Adam’s disillusionment with his land stems not from any weakness in the environment but his inability to separate his personal dreams from the reality of the Salinas Valley. The reader is introduced to the popular myth of California agriculture’s Eden-like qualities in chapter two, as Steinbeck narrates, “When people first came to the West…and saw so much land to be had for the signing of a paper and the building of a foundation, an itching land-greed seemed to come over them. They wanted more and more land—good land if possible, but land anyway” (12). Steinbeck’s description closely parallels that of a 1974 geographic survey, which commented, “[California] is the never-never land of contemporary American mythology…the California lifestyle has been sugarcoated, packaged, and marketed to the world as a thing part, a destiny with a difference” (452). Tellingly, the ideal of California includes “destiny,” a direct contradiction to Steinbeck’s advocacy of nonteleological philosophy. It seems logical, then, that Steinbeck’s portrayal of Adam seeking such a deterministic future is followed by the negative consequence of his dreams’ implosion.

The “itch” for California’s “destiny with a difference” comes to Adam in chapter ten as a distraction from his failed attempts to develop a close relationship with his brother Charles. Quoting mythic hearsay about the Sunshine State, he tells his brother that the solution to their loneliness and frustration is to move to California: “Look, Charles, things grow so fast in California they say you have to plant and step back quick or you’ll get knocked down”(102). Louis Owens succinctly diagnosed the root of this idealism when he wrote, “Like Adam Trask…Steinbeck’s characters often fail to see the real world they inhabit, being at least partially blinded to the actual landscape by the dreamscape of their own illusions. In Steinbeck’s fiction Eden becomes the primary metaphor for the illusions that cut man and woman off from the fallen world where lives are actually lived” (78). Owens accurately suggests that Adam’s desire for the “Eden” of California has blinded him to the reality of his own life. To appreciate the level of Adam’s delusion, the reader must consider that he has never taken full responsibility for a farm; on the contrary, after five years as soldier he re-enlisted rather than return home. He does not even appear to understand his own motivations, as evidenced when he cannot answer Charles question, “Sure you can raise [wheat]. But what will you do with it?” (102). If Adam’s teleological thinking is his own responsibility, he must also be responsible for its danger. This is foreshadowed in the following exchange: when Samuel Hamilton, a figure of wisdom and an experienced farmer, presents the paradoxes of agriculture in the Salinas Valley—for example, the soil is fertile but cannot retain water—Adam only wants confirmation that it will be a “pretty good place to live.” When Samuel predicts the valley’s bountiful future says, “You make it sound like a good place to settle. Where else could I raise my children with that coming?” Again and again, Adam displays a desire to know the “fate” of the land rather than what it would require to succeed there; when Samuel begins to discuss an ominous “black violence” that he senses in both that land and its people, Adam displays obvious distress at the implication that his Eden might fall, and quickly leaves the conversation to return home (145). The absence of a specific motivation for his Adam’s dream reflects a visionary blindness endemic to the wave of would-be landowners who flooded California in the early twentieth century; however, Steinbeck’s illustration of Adam’s illogical optimism is personal rather than social.

Further emphasizing the personal nature of Adam’s dream is his willfully ignorant identification of his wife, Cathy, as the “Eve” to his Eden. Cathy is clearly not a virtuous woman; in fact, Steinbeck’s portrayal of her resembles nothing so much as a devil. Her behavior points to a serpent much more than Adam’s devoted counterpart. Discussing Cathy Ames’ appearance, Louis Owens wrote, “Cathy’s resemblance to a serpent must be obvious to anyone reading such a description, and to ensure that we do not miss the satanic suggestion, Steinbeck adds: Her feet were small and round stubby, with fat insteps almost like little hoofs” (East of Eden, 63-64)” (Mirror, 20). Steinbeck draws clear parallels between Adam’s refusal to consider the logical drawbacks of his plans for the ranch and his unwillingness to see beyond Cathy’s dishonesty—when introduced to his first neighbor in California, Samuel Hamilton, Adam justifies what Samuel calls “indulging [himself] with water,” by saying, “Look, Samuel, I mean to make a garden of my land. Remember my name is Adam. So far I’ve had not Eden, let alone been driven out,” and describes Cathy’s role in his vision, exclaiming, “You don’t know this Eve. She’ll celebrate my choice. I don’t think anyone can know her goodness” (167). Samuel recognizes the danger of the blind love behind Adam’s wild and uniformed passion for the ranch, and comments that as a friend he should “hold it up to you muck-covered and show you its dirt and its danger. I should ask you to think of inconstancy and give you examples” (169). But Samuel cannot yet bring himself to destroy Adam’s illusion, and so it remains powerfully intact. It is only halfway destroyed when Cathy shoots Adam in the shoulder and leaves home, her twins crying for food. Here, what Owns referred to Adam’s “dream-like” relationship with the land becomes apparent once again: just as Adam cannot quiet leave his dream of Cathy, he cannot quite leave the ranch. He becomes instead “that fallow man” who lets his land go untended and become degenerate along with his soul (293). It is only when Samuel reveals Cathy’s, now Kate’s, job as the mistress of a whorehouse that the Adam’s idea of her godlike nature is pulled into ugly mortality and he can leave his love for her, and the ranch, behind. Because Adam’s love for the ranch is informed by his idolatrous view of Cathy, when he loses his illusion of her he also loses any affection for the land. Soon after the revelation of her wickedness Adam moves his sons into town and begins a new, farmless life.

The choices Adam makes that allow his land to either prosper or die are further illuminated through Steinbeck’s illustration of contrasting attitudes towards farming in Cal and Charles. Adam’s close association with these characters reveals that his choices are not inevitable: faced with similar dilemmas, Charles chooses a different form of self destruction and Cal symbolically leaves the novel with the potential to both develop a productive relationship with the ranch and become an enlightened nonteleological thinker. Through the foil of these character’s relationships with the land, Steinbeck develops the pursuit of enlightenment through a harmonious relationship with the landscape described in a critical review of David Wyatt’s “The Fall into Edenic Landscape and Imagination in California”: “Not that his work is dominated by local” the review explains, “rather, it is consistently and deliberately concerned with drama that is uniquely human. Yet, he portrays his characters as constantly seeking—but almost never finding—the possibility of “shared ecstasy,” and he typically images this impasse as the failure to share love in a garden (p.126). The pursuit of “love in a garden,” or a fulfilling relationship with the land based on an acceptance of moral agency, shapes Adam’s interactions with his brother and his son.

Charles’ loveless loyalty to his fathers’ farm demonstrates that although deterministic thinking can result in a materially productive relationship with the land, it will be emotionally unfulfilling. Charles’ behavior towards his farm displays a paradoxical desire for love and inability to claim it. Although he makes the land more productive than it has ever been, he repeatedly expresses his loneliness, spends none of the money he earns and refuses to clean his own house. When Adam suggests that he capitalize on the fruit of his labors by traveling or making the farm more comfortable, Charles yells, “I want you out of here! I want you off the place. I’ll buy you or sell you or anything. Get out, you son a bitch—I guess I don’t mean that last. But goddam it, you make me nervous” (105). This outburst comes in stark contrast to Adam’s longing for travel; however, it also contrasts with Charles’ previously expressed passionate desire for company and unhappiness with his situation. Charles’ self-limiting behavior suggests that although he is not blinded by the illusion of Eden, he is afraid to accept his ability to determine his own destiny. His lifestyle of “savage filth” may very well enable him to avoid acknowledging that he could be loved but chooses not to. In this light, his inability to enjoy his immaculate farm parallels his faithful trips to anonymous prostitutes. He clearly needs a woman in his life, but is “abysmally timid of girls,” and so takes his women as a physical commodity rather than a potentially committed relationship (44). Charles’ willingness to work long hours and perform difficult physical tasks may mask an inner terror that his expectation of rejection will be fulfilled, and thus a lack of confidence in himself that prevents him from making the leap to a nonteleological worldview.

This interpretation of Charles’ “savage filth” and continuous farm-work is supported by his reaction to rejection as a child. Steinbeck initially introduces the reader to Charles from Adam’s perspective: physically intimidating and powerful but mortally afraid of his own weakness. When young Adam wins an inconsequential game and Charles gives his brother a brutal, remorseless beating, Adam realizes that “he must never win unless he was prepared to kill Charles. Charles was not sorry. He had very simply fulfilled himself” (East of Eden 23). Violence and superiority are such integral parts of Charles’ identity that when his father begins to favor Adam he loses all self-control and, with it, self-confidence. After describing Cyrus’s dismissal of a birthday gift from Charles and display of joy over a less expensive gift from Adam, Charles exclaims, “You’re trying to take him away! I don’t know how you’re going about it,” and unleashes a torrent of mindless violence towards his brother. The source of this violence, a mortified realization that his father does not love him as well as his brother, ultimately leads Charles to conclude that his is unlovable. Here Steinbeck’s allusion to a biblical parable illustrates the dire consequences of teleological thinking. As suggest by Wright, Cyrus, like God in the account of Cain, was motivated by Charles’ violence: “Rather than deal with Charles’ behavior directly, Cyrus begins showing Adam signs of preference, behaving gently toward him, punishing him no more” (39). However, rather than questioning his father’s wrath, Charles appears to feel hopelessly condemned. He chooses not to confront his father about the situation, and instead spends the rest of his life on the farm convinced that is not capable of being loved.

Ironically, the sacrifice of his own life to the false God of his father’s condemnation further illustrates Charles’ ability to make his own decisions: In Richard Hart’s article on Steinbeck’s philosophy, he includes a quote from Conder cited in an article by Bloom,

Man’s possession of instinct roots him in nature [makes him part of nature], but he is different form other things in nature, as Steinbeck makes clear by describing in Chapter 14 [in The Sea of Cortez] man’s willingness to “die for a concept,” as the “one quality [that] is the foundation of Manself…distinctive in the universe.” And this emphasis on man’s uniqueness in nature, so inextricably related to his will, in turn limits the scope of the novel’s historical determinism. (48)

In order for Charles to continue supporting his protective illusion of qualitative difference, he must sacrifice his own life to environmental determinism, and accept what his father and the land give him without acknowledging the possibility that he could be loved.

Adam’s bequeathing of the ranch to Cal and Cal’s passion for the land demonstrate that negative historical context can only be overcome through an acceptance of personal responsibility. Like Adam and Charles, Cal must decide whether or not his fate has been determined: in this case, whether or not he will become his like his violent and wicked mother Cathy. He is so afraid that he is, metaphorically speaking, cursed by his parentage, that he comes very close to the futile self-destruction experienced by Charles and Adam. His desire to re-make himself outside of the mold of his mother and feel loved by his father results in his well-intentioned misuse and eventual successful reclaiming of the ranch in the Salinas Valley. Although Cal originally intends to work the land himself, representing Steinbeck’s theme of moral individualism, Will Hamilton capitalizes on the boy’s desire to prove he is worthy of Adam’s love and convinces him to enter into a business deal that profits at the expense of other Salinas Valley farmers. In doing so he falls victim to what John H. Timmerman describes as the antithesis of Steinbeck’s environmental ethic: “Nonteleological thinking also forms a sort of premise for Steinbeck’s environmental ethic, since it requires that one see the thing as it is, disinterestedly, rather than through the framework of personal, or interest, use” (320). Also like Adam and Charles, Cal is disillusioned by experiencing rejection: when the money that he earns by misusing the land buys not his father’s love, but condemnation, it temporarily destroys Cal’s hopes of becoming good and loved. In a rage comparable to Charles’ when he beat Adam, Cal forcibly shows his rigidly innocent brother Aron the truth about their mother. In the ensuing chain of events, Cal temporarily loses all connection to the land and humanity. However, unlike Charles, Cal’s story does not finish with self-imposed torment, and unlike Adam, Cal’s ability to acknowledge the desires for both cruelty and kindness allows him to move beyond his disillusionment. Despite Adam’s abandonment of the ranch, Cal repeatedly comments that he would like to live there and make it fruitful. He displays affection for the land that encompasses more than Charles’ unhappy productivity or Adam’s unrealistic ambition, particularly when he visits the ranch with Abra, the girl that he loves, and celebrates its beauty by laying plans for a lifetime of work and pleasure. In the final chapters of the novel, Cal achieves the possibility of a successful ranch and finally gains the redemptive knowledge that his father wants him to choose his own destiny. Adam has lost his ability to farm, but he does not destroy the land’s inherent potential: when, on his deathbed, he bequeaths the land to his son Cal, he symbolically “passes the torch” nonteleological thinking and its potential to make the ranch successful. In forgiving Cal for causing his brother Aron’s death and simultaneously giving him the ranch to make things grow, Adam sacrifices his sense of loss at the death of his son and restores new life to the potential of a choice-driven man-and-nature relationship. In The Fall Into Edenic Landscape and Imagination in California, David Wyatt explains, “A garden made, given and marred in the receiving has to be redeemed by an act of sacrifice that transvalues the human capacity for acceptance and the very nature of the gift.” Thus, Adam’s destruction of Eden must be repaired by abandoning his former way of thinking and living and finally embracing nonteleological thinking to the extent that he can accept his son’s potential for both good and evil.

Adam’s failure to make his land grow represents a failure to let his life grow; however, just as he is the precursor to his son’s farm, he is also the precursor to an independent, non-teleological life. Although his defeated by his own propensity for the blind idealism so popular in early twentieth century agriculture, it is a personal rather than a collective defeat, and when he returns the land to his he ensures the survival of both the land’s potential and the ability to recognize it. However, despite the fact that this analysis suggests a significant amount of thought on the part of Steinbeck, its value for the reader must be clarified.

At the very least, the connection between nonteological thought and agriculture offers an increased understanding of Steinbeck: an insight into the philosophy Kenneth Pellow describes in his review of Wyatt’s Fall into Eden:

Literature of the West, but especially that of California, is controlled by the “experience of landscape.” California writers are even more captivated by a “sense of place” than most, and they return to this “garden but briefly held” in repeated patterns of simultaneous discovery and fall (42-43).

Undoubtedly the landscape of East of Eden is significant, and Pellow succinctly identifies Steinbeck’s use of the landscape in the novel. However, Steinbeck himself records in his Journal of a Novel that although landscape was part of the novel, it was never the purpose: “It was my intention to give an impression of the valley rather than a detailed account—more a sense of it than anything else. This book is not about geography, but about people” (15). What, then, is the value in understanding man’s relationship with the land? The answer is found in the beginning of chapter 13, in a manifesto that Keith Farrell identified as the appearance of Steinbeck’s motivation for describing what man’s relationship with nature could and should be. Following a description of the “glory” Adam finds in his flawed vision of Cathy, Steinbeck writes,

I don’t know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and eliminate all other thinking…some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea God. This in my time is the danger. And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the human individual human is the most valuable thing in the world (130-31).

These lines mark Steinbeck’s tangible declaration that men’s relationship with the land, with the source of his sustenance, is the root of his relationship with God and, more significantly for Steinbeck, the root his relationship with himself. The potential fruits of the nonteleological worldview are the ability to see the reality of land and the moral courage required to take ownership of one’s life.

Works Cited

Farell, Keith. The Voice of the Land. New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1986. Print.

Owens, Louis. “The Mirror and the Vamp: Invention, Reflection, and Bad, Bad Cathy Trask.” East of Eden. Writing the American Classics. Ed. James Barbour and Tom Quirk. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990. 235-56. Web. November 2010.

Goggans, Jan. “California at the Point of Conflict: Fluvial and Social Systems in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Joan Didion’s Run River.” Interdisciplinary Studies of Literature and the Environment. 17.1. 2010. Web. 5-22. 10 December 2010.

Hart. Richard E. “Steinbeck on Man and Nature: A Philosophical Reflection.” Steinbeck and the Environment: Interdisciplinary approaches. Ed. Susan F. Beegal, Susan Shillnglaw, and Wesley N. Tiffney, Jr. The University of Alabama Press, 1997. Print. 43-53.

Heavilin, Barbara A. “Steinbeck’s Exploration of Good and Evil: Structural and Thematic Unity in East of Eden.” Steinbeck quarterly 26.3-4. Muncie, Indiana: Department of English at Ball State University, 1993. Print.

Owens, Louis. “A Garden of My Land: Landscape and Dreamscape in John Steinbeck’s Fiction.” Steinbeck Quarterly. 23.3-4. Muncie, Indiana: Department of English at Ball State University, 1990. Print. 78-88.

Pellow, C. Kenneth. “David Wyatt, The Fall Into Edenic Landscape and Imagination in California.” Steinbeck Quarterly. 22.1-2. Muncie, Indiana: Department of English at Ball State University, 1986. Print. 42-44

Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Centennial ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Print.

Steinbeck, John. Journal of a Novel. New York: Viking, 1969. Print.

Timmerman, John H. “Steinbeck’s Environmental Ethic: Humanity in Harmony with the Land.” Steinbeck and the Environment: Interdisciplinary approaches.