What Are The Psychological Impacts Of Trauma Depicted In 'East Of Eden'?

This impacts how we view Timshel, the psychological work to break a cycle of trauma that affects each family member differently. The scenarios above highlight that Caleb is basically searching for his father’s approval because of his very tragic belief that his mother had abandoned him. Steinbeck gives us so much insight into how life affects us until we are able to make decisions to change our behaviors and that change has to begin with us; that we have the capability to break this cycle of trauma, in all its disgusting forms, and to forgive. Not to forget that the other family members have also been negatively affected by the exact same set of circumstances but in different ways.

Adam Trask is also a character affected by great trauma, and his trajectory follows in much the same way to that of Cal’s. The experiences of betrayal by his mother and the horrors of war have a hollowing out effect upon him, so that he moves through life in a kind of trauma-induced daze until finally he is shot by Cathy and goes into a coma-like state of passivity. Like Cal, his greatest trauma is the inability to form a relationship with his two sons, and this is largely due to his own withdrawal from life. He is unable to connect with them on an emotional level, and thus in many ways they are as alone as he is. The greatest impact of trauma upon this family of men is a sort of emotional paralysis which keeps them from fully engaging in life.

Trauma leaves many psychological scars and Steinbeck has brought them all to life. It’s a big book about people struggling to come to terms with very difficult things that have happened to them. And it’s also a big book about the fact that people are complex and have contradictory feelings. Cathy is the most extreme example of this but, as we have seen, she is also a product of unspoken trauma. The Book shows how Cathy’s past has created her to be a ruthless and heartless killer but it also hints at the pain she must be feeling. In many ways her psyche has fragmented into a number of different people, none of which are happy or at peace. Her greatest fear is human contact because it holds the greatest threat of pain. And she is able to avoid this by becoming a monster. Rather like Cal who believes that he is a “bad seed” and is a complex and troubled character whose greatest pain is that of his own guilt. His psyche is made up of two separate people: the loving and virtuous son and the evil and destructive son. And the turmoil and pain which he feels is as a result of the constant struggle between these two opposing forces.

This takes me back to “bearing witness,” a function Samuel Hamilton fulfills for his friends, seeing their pain, and this is a huge part of the novel’s portrayal of the impact of trauma. And it’s not just that it’s unseen, it’s also that it’s invalidated. So, for example, Adam not wanting to look at his troubles with his sons, or Charles’s father telling his sons to stop their rivalry – these are all ways in which seeing the other’s pain isn’t facilitated. Lee does this for Cal in the novel, he offers a choice, but it’s not an easy one, it’s the hardest psychological work of all – to choose not to be controlled by your earlier experiences of trauma. This is a function of a good therapeutic relationship – bearing witness to another’s pain without judgment.

Meh, I really need to re-read this, though my take on it from college would probably be super superficial after having lived a little more. The only thing that really sticks with me from this novel is the weight of it all and the word "timshel." Maybe I’ll re-read it with this question in mind.

It’s also really effective in portraying how lots of people’s biggest trauma comes from a slow drip of poison, usually of some kind of conditional love. So for example Charles’ jealousy of Adam, and subsequent almost killing of him, came from the trauma of his father’s favoritism. Charles’ whole life has been defined by a sense of comparison and rivalry to try and better Adam. Cal’s trauma is mostly interpreted by him. So his biggest trauma is that he was the son of Cathy. This is perceived to be a huge moral stain. Also, lots of characters in the novel are living out their own personal tragedies.

Another major character who doesn’t experience the full brunt of trauma is Lee. For the majority of the novel, Lee comments on the traumatic actions of others, yet his experiences of trauma stem from completely different locations. He is able to observe humanity and serve others throughout the novel, pulling for each character in very different ways. In Lee, we see another example of deep-seated pain. Here, however, that pain does not stifle Lee’s deep compassion for others or his growing sense of identity. He is able to work through his various psychological troubles in very productive ways. In many ways, his approach to dealing with his inner turmoil is the model of deep and healthy grief and even healing that the novel points towards.

I don’t know how to list this, because the whole novel feels like it will fit this issue, but I was wondering whether the way the novel portrayed the California landscape (lush, irrigated land of “Eden” versus difficult, arid hills of the Hamilton farm) had anything to do with the psychological states of the characters. I was thinking about how Adam’s Eden would be sterile and unsustainable because it refused to acknowledge the harsh, real, and painful life that is his family and his sons. And that the way he tries to keep a lock on his perfect paradise (his family) is a beautiful prison which the serpent (Cathy) created long ago and which he invited into his yard.

A major part of Steinbeck’s portrayal of the inter-generational transfer of the family trauma is to show how the emotional vocabulary of the relationship with his father, rejects and is emotionally distant to Adam, is also the emotional vocabulary of his relationship with his two sons. Trauma creates a kind of inter-generational emotional wall that is passed down long after the original event of trauma has been forgotten. His own struggle with his fathers disapproval and with his own feelings of inadequacy were and are fought out in terms of grand and often disastrous attempts to demonstrate his love for his two sons and in his general silence and inability to bring himself to really connect and show real love to his two sons.

I have my doubts about the value of “timshel” as a psychological solution to trauma-related problems. While it’s powerful to know that you have the power to choose to have compassion for another, it is a very difficult thing to do when much of a person’s psychology has been shaped by trauma. For Cal, for example, to choose to not be shaped by the hurt he feels as a result of his parent’s rejected actions would require a fundamental shift in the way he thinks about himself and his place in the world. It would require a fundamental change in the neural pathways that have been developed as a result of his experiences with rejection and hurt. It is not something that can be thought into existence.

This brings me back to an observation I made about how characters in Steinbeck novels lose the ability to appreciate joy. As was the case with Adam after Cathy had left, the characters cannot fully relish in happy moments, because they have always been laced with anxiety or melancholy. In this sense, pain is a suspect thing and trauma can fill a person’s life with a profound sense of hurt. This is so true for many people with deep trauma. They can’t fully enjoy happy moments because their nervous systems are always on the lookout for the next fall. In our novel, this is especially evident in a moment of pure joy that Cal experiences giving his father the money he had salvaged from the ruin of the Monarch Saloon, only to have it rejected by his father with humiliation.

Physical manifestations of psychological pain? Adam’s continued weakness in his left side long after he’s been shot is more than a plot point. It is physical proof of the psychological wound he is suffering. Similarly, the massive size of Charles and the tremendous violence he is capable of is a physical manifestation of his own deep emotional and psychological pain.

So much of the therapy and coming-to-terms with their pain in this novel is through storytelling. Lee helps the other men come to terms with their own pain by discussing Chinese philosophers who help him understand the ‘other’ story behind the physical crisis that caused the original trauma of their ancestors, including that of Cain and Abel. In this long central conversation of the novel, a whole new meaning is found in the old story of the original trauma of their ancestors, namely ‘timshel’ (you may). The simple act of talking through their pain, coming to terms with it and reconciling themselves to it is of immense psychological value to all of the characters. The act of storytelling is therapeutic in itself, it’s a vital part of coming to terms with and dealing with trauma.

I was struck by this portrayal of Cathy as potentially a victim of trauma herself. Yes, Steinbeck portrays her with a great deal of understanding and knowledge of the way in which she has become a woman who destroys others before they can destroy her. But he leaves open the possibility that she is also a woman who has been deeply hurt, who in response to that pain has chosen to become a predator, in order to avoid ever again being the victim of another’s pain. It is a chilling portrayal, but a powerful one as well, for it suggests that such trauma can totally remake a human being into something remotely unrecognizable to other human beings.

There is another parallel to note in relation to the above. This is the destructive impact of discovering that the foundational narrative of a person’s identity has been a lie stemming from their family’s trauma. This is what has happened to Aron. As he sets off to die in war, it is not the wrath or vengeance that one might expect in response to having such a terrible secret about his mother revealed to him. In fact, what has been destroyed is his entire idyllic and pure world of superstition and idealism. His psychological reaction to this, it seems to me, is a profound collapse of meaning, such that he can only find solace in the most abstract of pursuits: war.

This is really believable. Same trauma (the mother). Same house. Completely different ways of dealing with it. Cal internalizes his perceived ‘badness’ and constantly searches for ways to prove his guilt to others. Aron on the other hand idealizes his mother and then proceeds to create an equally phantasmic ideal of his father. Both are idealized to the point of horrible collapse when reality is brought to their attention. Again, this speaks to the individuality of trauma and the different ways in which a person can respond to similar environmental poisons. Genetics, temperament, birth order- all can affect a person’s response to trauma.

Searching for a worthy container to hold our own and each other’s wounds is often at the heart of how we attempt to deal with our trauma. Once again we come back to Adam’s inability to hold his son Cal after a long time. Even Lee can hold Adam after all these years. I mentioned earlier that Samuel succeeded with Adam after a long time too. I realize now that the deepest wound of all is to have to carry our own and others’ wounds in isolation. Steinbeck helps us see this and also shows that the only way to start to deal with our own trauma is to have another representative of fully functioning human beings draw it out of us and into the light of their compassionate and stable presence.

I just have to reference the extremely painful dinner table scene after Cal gives his father the money. This scene really highlights the trauma being worked out in real time amongst the characters. We get to see Cal’s hopeful attempt at making amends. We get to see Adam’s unyielding morality. We get to see how that unyielding morality in the face of the vulnerable causes Cal to finally cave in and utterly collapse. And in one of the most breathtakingly unsympathetic moments of the novel, we get to see the callous Aron lash out at his brother in a bolt of malicious cruelty. To me, this scene really underscores the trauma being perpetrated from one generation of unresolved and unhealthy relationships to the next. And how each member of the family reacts to the other based on their own pre-existing psychic wounds, often in hurtful and even hurtfully destructive ways.

I think it would be an amazing novel to use for a study on attachment theory because of how their early relational trauma affects their current attachment style and how that impacts their current relationships and even how they interact with others in conflict. And I definitely agree with you that Cal is a prime example of a child who had formed a “trauma-bond” with his father and how that anxious-preoccupied attachment style has affected him throughout his life.

The existential loneliness and unknownness of Cal’s true self to his father could be even more traumatic for Cal than his other psychological problems. The deep fear and hurt that Cal must feel at not being seen by his father in his true, flawed, struggling self to have such a strong impact on his psyche and to drive him to seek such extreme connections is in itself a very great and possibly even the greatest psychological problem that Cal has to face in the novel.

There is also humor in the novel and it is used to show a way of dealing with pain. Lee and Samuel are able to discuss their problems and make light of their suffering in their search for meaning in the tragedy around them. Their use of humor in the novel shows how a mature person deals with trauma. He or she is not immune to suffering, but finds ways of dealing with it in order to retain his or her humanity. The characters of Lee and Samuel are able to hold on to their humanity even in the face of suffering.

The novel focuses on characterological trauma rather than on symptoms of PTSD. The way in which this one traumatic event has shaped the personality of each of the major characters to become part of their life long character structure and how this determines their behaviors, fears and ways of relating to others both positively and negatively is of interest to Steinbeck. Cal’s never having flashbacks to that terrible event is more indicative of the traumatic experience having become part of his identity and the way he relates to the world around him than not.

The truer insight is that, while we are damaged by our experiences, we are not predetermined to repeat them. In The Member of the Wedding, this is the hope of still being able to “break the cycle” of historical “trauma” as Lee chooses to successfully raise two sons of his own in a remarkably devoted and wise manner while, in contrast, Cal refrains from killing his brother in a fit of jealous rage (as Cain did) while also taking the ultimate self-sacrificing step of going home to care for his very broken and dying father. This “Timshel” (as he chooses to call it) is perhaps the most hopeful psychological insight of the novel.

Another brilliant observation re: the long lasting power of sorrow in this novel. We see how long lasting it is—how the secret guilt and the unresolved grief of years can drain the life out of a man. We see this in the qualities of Adam Hamilton and his father, Charles. While the sorrow of the lives of the Hamiltons is indeed difficult to manage, they endure it in a spirit of hope and love for each other. Their poverty and the tragedy of the loss of children is endured in the context of deep love for one another. It is a contrast to the other families portrayed in this novel.

I think this speaks to a really important and complex point in Steinbeck’s novel. An analysis I read described Cathy’s evil not as innate but rather as the ultimate expression of a certain kind of trauma: a repudiation of the vulnerable self. Thus, Cathy has been so hurt by experiences of connection that she annihilates the part of herself that is vulnerable in order to maintain her own survival. In this sense, her is a fortress of will and control with no inhabitant. This characterizes a sort of end point of the trauma and its effects on a human being. As opposed to Cal’s extreme self-consciousness about his own problematic self, Cathy has gone to the other end of the spectrum and annihilated her own self in order to effect her will upon the world around her.

This also brings up an interesting point with regards to moral development. Cal believes that he is evil because of his mother and this is what makes him behave badly. This is his self-concept and the way that he perceives himself affects his moral behavior. The fact that he believes he is evil means that he expects to fail, which is what he does. On the other hand, Aron has developed a very moral personality but it is based on black and white thinking. He believes in good and evil and he has developed a very rigid set of moral codes. However, this also makes him very vulnerable as he has a very brittle morality. In both cases their trauma has affected their moral development. They are both behaving badly but for different reasons.

Yeah, Lee is my favorite character. He has this quiet strength that is so nice to read about compared to all the other turmoil going on around him.

The novel uses biblical allegory, or rather a free paraphrasing of the biblical stories, in order to bring out the full meaning of the family’s suffering. In steering a course between the personal and the universal the author is describing a human story and at the same time raising it to the mythic status of Cain and Abel, of Adam and Eve. For those left to deal with the aftermath of the event, such as Cal, or for those who are even more remotely connected, such as Samuel, the story of their physical and psychological suffering can be seen in a totally new and redeeming light. They are not alone in their fear of being different from others. Other people have been before them with the same sort of personal scars and there is the hope that, although the damage has been done, they too can somehow recover from it.

Finally – the contrast to the profound trauma and harm being perpetrated by the characters of Steinbeck’s novel by the actions of his evil mother, Catherine Ames, in contrast to the awful but completely different kind of psychological effect that the traumatic events and hardships of the lives of the struggling members of the Hamilton family have on them in the novel. Rather than creating extremely damaged, isolation-prone, obsessed characters who are unable to connect with others in healthy ways, Steinbeck depicts a family of strong, hardy, people who endure great hardship and suffering, but are able to draw upon the love, support, and sustenance of each other to get through the very difficult times that they experience.

The core trauma for so many of these characters is the trauma of abandonment. Cal and Aron were abandoned by their mother, Cathy. Adam feels that his father has preferred Charles over him and thus abandoned him. Charles, on the other hand, feels that his father has abandoned him and prefers to give his love to Adam. As a result, their way of relating to others is based upon the deep-seated fear of being abandoned that this trauma has created in them. Cal’s way of trying to get someone to love him and remain with him is to cling to that person. However, his desperate attempts for connection have the opposite effect. Adam, on the other hand, has become a hardened and very emotionally removed person. This abandonment has created a great deal of insecurity in both of these men and greatly affects every relationship that they have been in.

Is most of Cal’s trauma self-included by way of the story he has created to explain himself to himself? The factual event of his mother’s having been carried by his father in sin is traumatic enough in itself, but the psychological impact is increased a hundred fold by the way that Cal interprets it (i.e. he is his mother’s son therefore evil). The story that Cal tells of himself is one that Lee helps him to change in the final pages of the novel – i.e. to see “timshel” instead of believing that he is innately evil as he had always believed.

Silence as a carrier of trauma: By not speaking out the deep seated hurt or secret that Cathy represents to both Adam and the boys, the silent trauma is carried by all of the family members. Each member of the family imagines the worst about each other in the silence left by the unspoken hurt. The unspoken secret of shame carries the hurt of the trauma long after the fact. It is only by finally speaking out the unspoken secret that the character can begin to heal from the deep seeded pain.

The land is so part of the novel that one reads Steinbeck’s portrait of the Salinas Valley and its microcosm of family with the realization Steinbeck is also describing the human psyche in a war with harsh unforgiving desert-like reality. The bottom of the Valley which is so fertile must constantly be guarded against the dry unforgiving hills. So too must the human psyche be constantly irrigated with love and truth in order to build a garden of life in this harsh world. And just as constant attention is required to keep the Salinas Valley alive so too is there constant need for the work of irrigation in the psychic realm in order to protect the garden of life from being over-run by harsh unforgiving reality of trauma.

The guilt vs. shame arc is another area in which Steinbeck shows deep psychological insight. Cal believes he is by nature evil and as such is frozen into his present state of suffering, unable to become another person. Adam, however, feels guilty for a wrong that he can, in theory, rectify via an apology. The major thing that Steinbeck highlights, in this respect, is that guilt can be cured, but shame is an eternal wound that ha-mileless individuals carry with them forever. Thus, part of Cal’s journey is to transform his shame-based neurosis into a guilt-based one, one in which he acknowledges that he did something horrific but can also attempt to make amends for it.

East of Eden is a novel about fathers and sons. One of the key ways in which trauma is passed down from generation to generation is through the failure of blessing. In terms of the biblical symbolism that Steinbeck drew upon, a father’s blessing was everything. And here, Cyrus fails to bless Adam properly and so that trauma gets passed down to his sons. And then Adam fails to bless Cal properly and so nearly destroys him. There’s a sense in which the two men are starving to death of a lack of a paternal blessing and they’re wandering around the desert looking for a place to stay. And in fact the only place where they can get a paternal blessing is from Lee, and so Lee becomes the patriarch of the two boys.

It also possible that Steinbeck was portraying suffering in such a way as to make it seem noble. This would be to link interesting characters to difficult situations. As opposed to making the hard working and kind Hamiltons interesting as well, Steinbeck chose to focus on the dysfunctional Trask family. Their suffering is so epic in scale that it must be worth reading about in order to compare to their normal, non-traumatized counterparts. This is a meta-psychological comment on the impact of trauma in literature.

I thought this was a really hard book to understand in high school. But after going through some family stuff myself, I can definitely see why this is a “great” novel. The way that unhealed pain is handed down from generation to generation through family lines is just so powerful.

My main way of looking at this novel is to say that it ends on a hopeful yet cautiously optimistic note. While Cal’s father is permanently damaged by his own unresolved conflicts with his father Adam is killed by Cathy in a fit of rage over 30 years after she abandoned her children. Salinas Valley is in a state of drought and the two eldest children of the two families at the center of the novel are forever affected by the devastating effects of this mother’s actions. But Cal chooses to stay and to care for Samuel and Abba even though they can be very difficult at times. He has come to understand that he is not alone in his trauma and that he has the ability to choose to heal and move forward rather than becoming consumed by it as his mother was.

I also get really mad at Adam. Most of the damage he does is because of his passive withdrawal from life. He expects Cal and Aron to become adults when he doesn't. He lets Cathy run wild on his sons. But this is also a really great portrayal of how non-violent trauma can be just as harmful as violent trauma. His biggest fear is that Cathy will return and do something terrible to the boys. This abject fear of abandonment keeps him from ever being able to have a real relationship with anyone. His is a silence and retreat that slowly starves the children of a father.

Not too surprising in terms of modern trauma theory that Steinbeck could have written this up so long ago and have it be so contemporary. (The intergenerational trauma, for example, the way that stories of the past affect the present, the body keeps score, the ways in which beliefs about oneself and how one relates to others are affected by trauma—yes, this is all still good, and in many ways is a very good novel that could still be useful today in terms of how it addresses these issues).

A minor observation – I found the minor characters far more interesting than the Trask family. Joe in the brothel for example, survives by cunning in a tough world of exploitation and abuse. His ‘trauma’ is that of survival rather than angst. He has no room for ‘internal search’ in his daily life of coping with hard people. His psychology is simple: his internal state is primarily that of a boy trying to survive in a hard world. In stark contrast, his physical circumstances of class and externals would suggest the reverse of Trask’s traumas in terms of effects on his psychology.

Appreciate this post. The novel is so hopeful in the end. The characters who are affected by the most trauma are the ones who are the most in interesting (and are where Steinbeck wants to explore the deepest human pain). And their suffering is in interesting because it is so opposite to the other family members in the novel (i.e. the perfectly functioning family of Hardy and Clarissa Hardy). They have suffered great pain but are trying their best to be good people.

Interesting analysis. I might just have to come back to this and re-read East of Eden after all these years!

A big part of why East of Eden is so great is the structure of the book. It’s not a short story where a person deals with their traumatic experience and then gets on with their life. As Cal notes late in the book, his dealing with his traumatic experience with his mother takes years and years. Indeed, much of the book is a long, slow, lingering look at the experiences of the characters long after the events. Steinbeck takes his time to work out the ways in which trauma shapes a life, impacting that person’s core beliefs and the way they interact with others. The structure of the book mirrors the psychological impact of trauma on a character.

I was surprised by this as well as how monotonous it feels to read about, although fascinating as that reading material is for others. How much of that repetitive thinking that leads to the same arguments within oneself, with others and essentially engaging in the same behavior, time and time again, stems from trauma and its psychological affect on a person and their life? The everyday struggle of these people and their trauma is mere boredom, and for that reason their more profound, momentary epiphanies seem even more precious and useful.

What can be said of Steinbeck’s portrayal of trauma is that, ultimately, it is a story of the deep struggle of love against fear. All of the main characters struggle with love and fear in one way or another: Cal wants to love Adam but fears rejection, Adam wants to be able to love Cal and Aron but fears the pain that Cathy brought to his family, Aron wants to loveidealistically and pure but fears complexity, and Cathy has feared the most universal thing of all: vulnerability. In the end, it is Lee and Samuel who are the healthiest of all the characters in the novel, and their greatest fear is probably that they will give in to their negative impulses, but they are working to let love be stronger than their fears.