Week 5 East of Eden

East of Eden by John Steinbeck

Week 5

Carrying on from last week, a grand continuation of the ramblings and great complexities of the book that is East of Eden.  So, I think I will continue from where I left off last week, but slightly ahead. I am going to skip my wanting to rant about how stupid the people are for listening to a man who only saw one battle in his whole career in the military, (which was all of a few months.) , and had to have his leg amputated.

Where I will pick back up is when Adam comes back from the military, (I don’t think you want to read about how Adam got an STD from the camp’s local whore…) Adam somehow was not found out by his higher officers that he wasn’t actually shooting the enemy. Adam hated the fact that he had to kill some one, he found no point to it. I actually kind of admire Adam for that kind of thinking. It takes guts to actually stray from direct orders to kill on sight. Then again, maybe it’s not. Anyway, Adam was actually exchanging letters from his brother back at home, (Charles is his brother’s name…. I had to look it up in the book..)Charles actually had expressed his excitement for Adam to come home, for at that time their father was away doing his own wacky business out in Washington D.C. and was actually making a living for himself out there by giving his lame advice. What I found weird is that Adam actually didn’t go back home at all. He jumped right back into the military life, the absolute last move I thought Adam would make especially since he hates the military with his very existence.

                Five more years pass and this time the two brothers actually hardly exchange letters, this time that doesn’t surprise me at all. I mean you ran out of coming home to a more sane brother without even telling him what you were doing. Yeah. Adam didn’t tell his brother he was going back into the military. What a slap to the face, although, I don’t know if I would be ready to go back home to him, and after five years of having a structured life for so long you would kind of forget how to live without that structure, so going back to what he knows best seems more natural I suppose.

Another 5 years passes and the book doesn’t really go into depth about what happens to Adam or Charles back at home, only that you have to assume that Adam again is disobeying orders and is hating every minute of his next five years. And even after he gets out this time he doesn’t go right back home! He takes forever to get home, at least a year I believe. What he did was he traveled around on the west coast and down south and just a bit up north. Until he got picked up by the police for being a hobo, Adam escapes and later gets picked up again on the same charge and then, once again, gets away. If you really didn’t want to go home, just say so and don’t go home!!!!