East Of Eden - Passages of Note

• "Well, here's your box. Nearly everything I have is in it, and it is not full. Pain and exitement are in it, and feeling good or bad or evil thoughts and good thoughts--the pleasure of design and some despair and the indestructable joy of creation. And on top of these are all the gratitude and love for you. And still the box is not full" (Steinbeck 1).
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  This quote, nearly the first line, sets the stage for the book, telling how the story will play out in that the writer of the letter--"John"--will probably fall in love with the recipient--"Pat"--and have his heart broken by her.
• "To Adam who was an instrument, who saw not the future farms but only the torn bellies of fine humans, it was revolting and useless. When he fired his carbine to miss he was committing treason against his unit, and he didn't care. The emotion of nonviolence was building in him until it became a prejudice like any ither thought-stultifying prejudice. To inflict hurt on anything for any purpose became inimical to him" (Steinbeck 35).
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  Adam did not want to join the army originally, and as time goes on, he becomes disgusted with harming his "enemies." I see this quote standing out because it shows the transition from Adam simply disliking his job to flat-out refusing to kill.
• "Monsters are variations of the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident has a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange" (Steinbeck 72).
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  This passage stands out to me because it rings with truth. A real-life example of this is the relationship between children in middle school. If one child is different and challenges the status quo, other children will shun him or her as "wierd," while the shunned child and his or her friends whould consider him or herself "normal."
• "In all such local tragedies time works like a damp brush on water color. The sharp edges blur, the ache goes out of it, the colors melt together, and from many seperated lines a solid gray emerges. Within a month it is not necessary to hang someone, and within two months nearly everybody discovered that there wasn't any real evidence against anyone" (Steinbeck 89).
  --------------------------------------------------------------------------
  This passage is important because it is a window into the mindset of the town. From this passage, I see that time will move on and people's troubles and daily lives will get in the way of an ethereal "murder" with little or no evidence.