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Setting
Definition of Simile
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like" or "as," but can also... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often use the connecting words "like... read full definition
A simile is a figure of speech that directly compares two unlike things. To make the comparison, similes most often... read full definition
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Spaniards:
In Chapter 1, Steinbeck sets up the basis for his "creation myth," centering the story in Salinas, California. In this creation myth, he uses metaphor and simile to describe the various different people groups who occupied the region:
Then the hard, dry Spaniards came exploring through, greedy and realistic, and their greed was for gold and God. They collected souls as they collected jewels. They gathered mountains and valleys, rivers and whole horizons, the way a man might now gain title to building lots.
Evangelism was one of the driving forces of colonial occupation, providing moral justification for geographic expansion. European powers could justify such expansion and violence to their populace by marketing imperialism as an opportunity for missionary work. Using simile and metaphor, Steinbeck outlines this connection between geographic/economic colonialism and religious colonialism. For the Spaniards and other European colonial forces, these systems were linked to one another: "souls" and "land" were acquired and colonized the same. These European powers thus considered indigenous "souls" a form of property, like jewels—something to hoard, buy, and sell. This rationale would extend to chattel slavery.
The Spaniards colonizing California also seize entire landscapes—a phenomenon Steinbeck compares to "[gaining] title to building lots." Ironically, this implies that the lands were justly and fairly handed over to colonizers, which was simply not the case.
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Chapter 3
Explanation and Analysis—Leopard:
Throughout East of Eden, Steinbeck contemplates the process of dehumanization: how does a person come to view another person as lesser than themselves, or subhuman? Or, on the opposite end of the spectrum, how are certain individuals elevated and esteemed to the point of being considered "above" humanity? This hierarchization of life occurs throughout East of Eden. Take, for instance, the following excerpt from Chapter 3, in which Adam elevates Charles above him through the use of simile:
Adam saw his half-brother Charles as a bright being of another species, gifted with muscle and bone, speed and alertness, quite on a different plane, to be admired as one admires the sleek lazy danger of a black leopard.
Adam compares Charles to a leopard, revealing that he considers his brother inherently dangerous—a natural predator, born into violence. Charles can plan and execute violence perfectly, something that a young Adam views as admirable because of Cyrus's constant veneration of the military. Adam's father has conditioned him to view violent behavior as a positive affirmation of masculinity and value.
As Adam ages, he begins to abhor violence; and his brother, like his father, comes "crashing down" in Adam's head. When he begins to view both Charles and his father as flawed human beings again, they lose their place in the imagined hierarchy over him.
Chapter 5
Explanation and Analysis—Peacock:
Difference does not always come at the cost of alienation, and in East of Eden, Samuel Hamilton is proof of that. In the following passage from Chapter 5, Steinbeck uses simile to describe Samuel's gradual but eventual acceptance into the Salinas Valley community:
Samuel belonged to the valley, and it was proud of him in the way a man who owns a peacock is proud.
Like a peacock, Samuel is an exotic oddity to his Californian neighbors. He is different from the others, he stands out—but instead of being alienated, Samuel is paraded around like a showpiece. After his oddity is deemed the non-threatening kind, it becomes a point of interest for his neighbors. Eventually, Samuel becomes an essential part of the community, as much a fixture in the Salinas Valley as any of the others who came before.
It is important to note that in East of Eden, Samuel often serves in a prophetic role—fitting, given that Samuel from the Bible is a prophet of the Lord. Sam Hamilton stands out amongst his peers; this alludes to the fact that, as a prophet, the biblical Samuel was distinguished from his contemporaries and set apart from them by God.
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Explanation and Analysis—Tom Hamilton:
In Chapter 5, Steinbeck describes each of the Hamilton children, characterizing each of them and highlighting what makes them unique from one another. Tom Hamilton's introduction is one of the most interesting: he is an unconventional child and abhors the rules and restrictions placed on him by society. Steinbeck uses imagery and simile in the following passage to achieve Tom's characterization:
[Tom] was born in fury and he lived in lightning . . . . He lived in a world shining and fresh and as uninspected as Eden on the sixth day. His mind plunged like a colt in a happy pasture, and when later the world put up fences he plunged against the wire, and when the final stockade surrounded him, he plunged right through it and out.
Imagery and simile both play important roles in the above excerpt. The image of Eden and the events surrounding it run throughout the passage, as if in attempting to escape society's restrictions, Tom is attempting to escape God's rule-bound garden paradise itself.
Tom has a unique way of looking at the world, through fresh and inspired eyes. He approaches every new thing with childlike wonder and hedonistic enjoyment. Like a young colt, he pushes the boundaries of normative society, straining against his enclosure. Eden could not hold such a young boy in its enclosure for long.
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Chapter 6
Explanation and Analysis—Men and Loneliness:
The particular brand of loneliness that Charles experiences is deeply intertwined with the way he views and treats women. Steinbeck demonstrates this in Chapter 6, using metaphor to describe the women Charles kept company with while Adam was away:
Charles began to keep one slovenly woman after another. When they got on his nerves he threw them out the way he would sell a pig. He didn't like them and had no interest in whether or not they liked him.
In this metaphor, Steinbeck compares Charles's views on the "slovenly women" he "keeps" to his views on pigs. In Charles's mind, women are commodities, intended to be bought and sold and traded in for a new model when they break. He doesn't enjoy their companionship, not really—to him, these women are not really human beings, but simply other living things to keep in his general vicinity. Charles's relationships with women, in other words, are shadowy facades of real companionship.
It is Charles's mindset, then, first and foremost, that forces him to remain mired in loneliness. He considers women beneath him, no better than pigs. This patriarchal, misogynistic worldview prevents Charles from forming deeper, more emotionally fulfilling connections with those around him.
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Chapter 8
Explanation and Analysis—Cathy and Gender:
In the following excerpt from Chapter 8, the narrator dwells on Cathy's appearance, giving one of the first visual descriptions readers receive of her as a younger child. Through both imagery and simile, Steinbeck paints a picture of Cathy's visage intended to unsettle readers:
As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence. . . . Her body was a boy's body, narrow-hipped, straight-legged, but her ankles were thin and straight without being slender. Her feet were small and round and stubby, with fat insteps almost like hooves.
Cathy presents as an interesting figure, gender-wise. The narrator likens her body to a boy's, implying that she defies gender in some potentially transgressive way that makes her stand out. Steinbeck uses this imagery to illustrate for readers Cathy's deviation from normative expression and understanding of gender/sexuality. She views these aspects of herself as potential tools of manipulation rather than components of personal identity. Though she is not what modern readers might consider a queer character, Cathy is capable of thinking about gender and sexuality as societally-imposed constructs, external to herself.
Steinbeck caps off his initial description of Cathy with a Satanic simile, likening Cathy's feet to hooves and evoking common devil imagery.
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Chapter 10
Explanation and Analysis—Burning People:
In the following passage from Chapter 10, Adam describes the bodies of indigenous people with smallpox that he was forced to burn in the army. He uses simile for this purpose:
Adam's eyes were pained. "We piled them up like they were logs, over two hundred, arms and legs sticking out. And we piled brush on top and poured coal oil on."
Adam compares the bodies to logs, perpetuating the dehumanization of indigenous people by the U.S. military and government. Clearly, this action troubles him—Adam is a man not meant for military action. Interestingly enough, Adam has his own way of dehumanizing indigenous people, specifically indigenous women. Earlier in the novel, when speaking to Charles, Adam mentions an indigenous woman he slept with while in the army:
“Some of the boys in the regiment used to keep a squaw around. I had one for a while.”
Charles turned to him with interest. “Father would turn in his grave if he knew you was
squawing around. How was it?”
“Pretty nice. She’d wash my clothes and mend and do a little cooking.”
Adam views this woman as an object, an accessory—much like the way he later views Cathy. While he isn't burning her body, he is using it for his own emotional, sexual, and domestic fulfillment.
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