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JOHN STEINBECK AND HIS EAST OF EDEN 

 

Vusala NABIYEVA  

Qafqaz University 

[e-mail] 

 

The Nobel Prize writer John Ernst Steinbeck is one of the greatest American writers of the 20th Century. His mother, 

Olive Hamilton, was a teacher and he received his love of reading from his mother’s inspiration. He was born in Salinas, 

California, and that’s why California is a descriptive part in many of his stories and novels. As an example we may see “Of 

Mice and Men”, “Tortilla Flat”, “East of Eden” etc. His works incorporate both realism and naturalism. He generally 

depicts in his works “powerless” people in society, poverty, problems of immigrants, and their working condition. In other 

words, he was the voice of working class of America.  

“East of Eden” is a delightful family saga. It’s his one of the best-known and most ambitious novels but by critics this 

novel was not accepted smoothly. “East of Eden” was first published in September 1952, and became number one on the 

fiction best-seller list exactly in the same year. Steinbeck considered “East of Eden” to be his masterpiece. He stressed that: 

“It has everything in it I have been able to learn about my craft or profession in all these years.” He further claimed: “I think 

everything else I have written has been, in a sense, practice for this… If “East of Eden” isn’t good, then I’ve been wasting 

my time.” Steinbeck did not embellish reality he spend approximately five years in the process of writing a novel and read a 

lot of sheets of local newspapers. Steinbeck devoted this book to his sons, Tom and John. Steinbeck wanted to describe the 

atmosphere of Salinas Valley in details for them. “East of Eden” is partly fiction and partly personal history, and that’s why 

it is considered to be semi-autobiographical novel. It tells the story of two generations of American families living in 

Salinas. One of them is Steinbeck's maternal grandfather Samuel Hamilton and another fictional family, The Trasks.  

The idea of the novel is gorgeous. Vivid characters, great descriptions of nature make this novel powerful. And the 

main feature and artistism of John Steinbeck is that he created a lot of characters in this novel and each of them  without 

restriction are main or minor, teaches us to something, this something sometimes fascinates us and sometimes disturbs. In 

this book he touch constant problem of the human beings. Struggle between good and evil, forgiveness, love and hate, 

danger of isolation, sin, self-destruction, guilt etc.  With his distinctive manner he tried to decode “What is man?” One of 

the crucial points in this novel is contact with the Bible. Steinbeck as a great master built moral bridge turning our attention 

to the “First Bloody War of Human” and how Cain committed the first murder by killing his brother Abel. History repeats 

itself in this novel too. And here he emphasized that every person has his/her truth and driving with this truth generally has 

different, sometimes fatal consequences. Here he wanted to stress other factor like that you may kill someone indirectly 

hurting him/her emotionally. The result could be the same.