East Of Eden Is A Tale That Is Remarkably Stoic.

East of Eden is a tale that is remarkably Stoic.

So far, I think this book is a masterwork. Just thinking about it makes me weep. It's a contemporary Stoicism story with a sprinkle of everything else tossed in for good measure: Nihilism, Absurdism, Existentialism, and so on. John Steinbeck has just become one of my favourite authors. At one point in the book, one of the characters fondly flips through Meditations. Some quotes: “You're going to pass something down no matter what you do or if you do nothing. Even if you let yourself go fallow, the weeds will grow and the brambles. Something will grow.”

“We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the neverending 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.”

“I believe that there is one story in the world, and only one, that has frightened and inspired us so that we live in a Pearl White serial of continuing thought and wonder. Humans are caught - in their lives, in their thoughts, in their hunger 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. Virtue and vice were warp and woof of our first consciousness, and they will be the fabric of our last, and this despite any changes we may impose on field and river and mountain, on economy and manners. There is no other story. A man, after he has brushed off the dust and chips of life, will have left only the hard, clean questions: Was it good or was it evil? Have I done well - or ill?” “The Hebrew word, the word timshel - 'Thou mayest' - that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open... Why does that make a man great... He can choose his course and fight it through and win... I have a new love for that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed - because 'Thou mayest.”