EAST OF EDEN
I'm not reading any more of this book. I got 4 bleak chapters into it and felt miserable and angry. I flipped to the end and skimmed the last two chapters, looking for a glimmer of hope and found none.
If there is no promise in a book, I will not read it.
If there is no hope, I will not read it.
If there is not a glimmer of victory for anything right and or just, I will not read it.
The more I read and realize that I'm affected by the stories, the more careful I am about what I pick up. Am I saying that my decisions should be the norm and the what-for for everyone? No, hardly. We're all in different places. This is where I'm at.
My point is, (and my reading preferences stem from the fact that) life in Christ is victorious. We are victorious warriors. I want to read books and soak up stories that promote this mindset. I want to read things that are funny, deep, lighthearted, thought provoking, vacation reading FUN. What makes me laugh and sigh? I want to be entertained, but I want to be entertained in a good way. When I snap the book shut after reading the last few sentences, I want to smile or sit and think. Not be RELIEVED that the horror is finally over.
Therefore I'm not going to read East of Eden. I'm curious to hear what others thinkg of it, but I'm going to spend my time on something else.
Again, this is my own preference (and husband encouragement) and not something I think is a black or white issue. This is just where I'm at and what I'm trying to be careful of for myself.
I'll play with everyone else next month, I guess! ;)
posted by Carrie @ 2:35 PM
5 comments
5 Comments:
Um.....
no offense, but I don't think that counts as finishing the book first.
;)
=D No it doesn't. OH WELL!
You missed the core of the book, which has the promise, hope and victory. It is a story of redemption, of hope that you can go from being one type of person to another, that there is victory over yourself by choice.
But you missed all of that, and all of the humor, which is in the anecdotes and personal stories that Stienbeck brings to the book. Like his questioning of why place names are what they are at the beginning, or his story about his grandmother going in the new fangled flying machine.
You also missed one of the best discussions and disections of Genesis 3 that there is. Is the word must or is it may?
The central question of East of Eden is, are you what you are born as or are you what you choose to be?
Anyway, I think you are making a mistake, and missing out on a brilliant, funny, serious, classic book.
But that is my opinion.
After reading Carrie's review, when I was about halfway through the book, I had some thought of leaving off, but decided to go ahead and finish it just to see what happened. It was bleak, dreary, and hopeless, and I'm not sure I'd ever recommend it to anyone.
That being said, it was well written. It used rich language and good grammar, and was written in an engaging, captivating style overall. And it was obviously interesting enough to keep me reading through the end.
But the pleasantness of the scenery could not begin to make up for the depressing emptiness of the plot. The characters were overdrawn, melodramatic, and undeserving of sympathy. Toward the latter parts of the book, I felt as if I were reading a Shakespearean tragedy, considering the number of tragic deaths and the corpses littering the figurative stage.
I felt that the Genesis message was a bit blasphemous. We are made to sympathise with the Cain-figure, and are left puzzled as to why Adam (the God-figure) rejected his very generous, very sincere offering. Why on earth would Adam spurn his son's hard-earned bean profit? We don't know the details of why God rejected Cain's offering, but we do know that He had good reason to do so. This book does not treat religion at all reverently, either, linking churches on a social level with brothels and depicting all the religious people as kind but naive or hard and ignorant.
Most disturbing of all to me was the depiction of the whore-houses. I don't know the historical accuracy of the book, but I would hope its description of debauched frontier morals a bit exaggerated. According to Steinbeck, brothels were an accepted social institution, visited by every single male character in the book except for Samuel Hamilton. Very disturbing!
The book left me feeling rather depressed. I don't think I really gained anything of beauty, interest, or quotability from reading it. So I certainly won't read it again, nor be inspired to read any of John Steinbeck's other works.
=) heh
I DID read the beginning of the book, Will, with all the descriptions of the land. My first thoughts were, "Hmm....maybe this won't be so bad after all!" But once we hit the family stories it was just slogging through.
Seriously, and I'm not backing down from this (for the present) - books have incredible power over my emotions. That's just a fact and not somethign I can change. I have had some of the bloodiest dreams *ever* since reading The Iliad and it wasn't worth it!! So, for now, I'm going to bypass anything that is rather down and dreary.
Jonathan got a head start on The Things They Carried and he wasn't interested in my reading it so I'm going to show a little respect here and pass for him and for myself!
However, like I said -- this is just ME. I wouldn't recommmend that everyone else do the same because different material effects us in differnt ways, right? So this isn't a "The Christian Thing To Do is To Not Read It" type of statement!!! NOT AT ALL!! Please do not interpret it as such.
This is a "Carrie needs to avoid this stuff right now." And that is all that it is.
Happy reading. Well, happier reading (perhaps)! =)
Thanks, Rose, for your comments. That settled things a bit in my mind.
Post a Comment
<< Home