Mark André ’s Reviews > East of Eden > Status Update

Teachers rarely lasted very long in the country schools. The work was so hard and the proposals so constant that they married within a very short time.

They were handsome girls and they carried with them the glow of their descent from the kings of Ireland. [...] No one ever thought of them as deserving pity. Samuel raised a distinctly superior breed. They were better read and better bred than most of their contemporaries. To all of them Samuel communicated his love of learning, and he set them apart from the prideful ignorance of their time.

Well, a man’s mind can’t stay in time the way his body does.

Uisquebaugh—it’s an Irish word—whisky, water of life—and so it is.

Let’s close it like a book and go on reading! (...) A man will have clean hands once we get the lid slammed shut on that stinking century. There’s no rot on this clean new hundred years. (...) It’s not stacked, and any bastard who deals seconds from this new deck of years—why, we’ll crucify him head down over a privy.
Oh, but strawberries will never taste so good again and the thighs of women have lost their clutch!

She’s no more a wife than an alley cat.

Her fingers were pink and soft, but the skin on the back of her hand seemed to have an underbloom like a pearl. Adam chuckled with delight. Her breathing stopped and he became electrically alert—then her throat clicked and the rhythmed snoring continued. Gently he worked her hand and arm under the cover before he tiptoed out of the room.

I hated to do it,” he said. “I had to. And I think it did her good. She seems like a changed girl to me. Maybe we haven’t bent the twig enough. We’ve spared the rod. Maybe we were wrong.” And he knew that although his wife had insisted on the whipping, although she had forced him to whip Cathy, she hated him for doing it. Despair settled over him.

There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. The one thing that may not be forgiven a witch is her ability to distress people, to make them restless and uneasy and even envious.

He liked everything you brought him. He didn’t like me. He didn’t like anything I gave him. Remember the present I gave him, the pocketknife? I cut and sold a load of wood to get that knife. Well, he didn’t even take it to Washington with him. It’s right in his bureau right now. And you gave him a pup. It didn’t cost you a thing. [. . .] They shot it after the funeral.