Dee’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

Lying high against the pillows, she studied her face.
The rest had done wonders. Pain makes you set your jaw, your eyes grow falsely bright with anxiety, and the muscles over the temples and along the cheeks, even the weak muscles near to the nose, stand out a little, and that is the look of sickness and of resistance to suffering.

The difference in her rested face was amazing.

{chronic pain imagery}

Cal wanted to throw his arms about his father, to hug him and to bel hugged by him. He wanted some wild demonstration of sympathy and love. He picked up his wooden napkin ring and thrust his forefinger through it. "I'd tell you if you asked," he said softly.

"I didn't ask. I didn't ask! I'm as bad a father as my father was."

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is.”

“In uncertainty I am certain that underneath their topmost layers of frailty men want to be good and want to be loved. Indeed, most of their vices are attempted short cuts to love. When a man comes to die, no matter what his talents and influence and genius, if he dies unloved his life must be a failure to him and his dying a cold horror.“

“Humans are caught-in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hungers and ambitions, in their avarice and cruelty, and in their kindness and generosity too-in a net of good and evil. I think this is the only story we have and that it occurs on all levels of feeling and intelligence.”

Cal’s prayer just broke me ….