Juxtaposition Between the Trasks and the Hamiltons: East of Eden's Essential Success Nirja Trivedi 11th Grade

Through East of Eden, John Steinbeck told the story of two families living in the Salinas Valley of California: the Trasks and the Hamiltons, the real-life family of Steinbeck’s maternal grandfather. Multiple generations of the two families reenact the story of biblical characters and develop Steinbeck’s message on the relationship between good and evil. Six years after East of Eden was published, literary critic Peter Lisca published The Wide World of John Steinbeck, in which he claimed, “the Trasks and Hamiltons pursue separate courses and nothing results from their juxtaposition” (Lisca). Although the Trasks and Hamiltons do not interact with each other many times in the novel, Peter Lisca was mistaken when he wrote “nothing results from their juxtaposition” because the contrast between the two families helps define what good character is (Lisca).

The importance of a motherly personality is well-defined due to the contrast between the Trasks and the Hamiltons. John Steinbeck started East of Eden by narrating the story of the first generation of Hamiltons and then transitioned to the story of the first generation of Trasks. Peter Lisca alleged that Steinbeck wrote such shifts between the two families “with no apparent purpose...