East of Eden

Every person on this planet past and present is entirely unique in their own way, but every person on this planet is the same in one way. All people, whether they choose to admit or not, want to be loved and have a need to be loved. In the novel East of Eden

Steinbeck utilizes the characters to show the reader how love affects even the coldest most sadistic person. The theme of mankind’s inborn desire to be loved is represented in the novel through Aron’s yearning for a mother’s love, Charles competition with Adam to gain their father’s love, and Cal’s desire to feel love and affection from his father.

Aron feels a strong yearning for a mother’s love throughout his lifetime in the novel. When Aron and his brother Cal were newborns their sadist mother left her sons and father and went away after shooting the boy’s father, Adam, in the shoulder, because of this the boy’s grew up not knowing what a mother’s love feels like. Aron is the more passionate and emotional of the two brothers and it is through his thoughts and actions that the reader sees his constant yearning for a mothers love. Aron longs for a mother more than his brother because of how emotional he is, Aron feels a great deal of emotion and sometimes gets confused when his emotions run amok. Unlike Cal who has the ability to bottle up his emotion and not let them cloud his though, Aron feels emotions a great deal stronger so he cannot contain them and because he has no mother to comfort him. Despite being very emotional and expressive he limits his expressiveness so he does not become vulnerable to his brother, but when Aron first meets Abra he immediately falls in love with her and begins to spend more and more time with her because he has finally found someone he can confide in without having fear of being vulnerable. One of the times when they are together, Aron asks Abra if she could pretend to be his mother and she agrees. Abra begins to speak to Aron as if he was her son and Aron abruptly bursts into tears and cannot stop himself: “�Come my baby, put your head in Mother’s lap. Come my little son. Mother will hold you.’ She drew his down and without warning Aron began to cry and could not stop”. (420, Steinbeck). Aron’s uncontrollable crying demonstrates his yearning for a mother’s love because it shows the release of emotion he feels from Abra merely pretending to be his mother, this gives the reader a definitive sign that Aron desperately longs for and needs a mother’s love.

Charles was secretly desperate to feel loved by his father and frequently exerted his frustration of not being loved by his father on his brother Adam. From the moment the reader meets Charles it is easy to see he feels a great deal of contempt for his half brother Adam. Almost immediately after Charles is introduced the reader becomes aware of Charles secret desire for his father’s love and his competition with Adam for their father’s love. The brothers father, Cyrus, does not show any outward signs of emotion or affection towards the boys at all, but it is the subtle actions that make Charles jealous and contemptuous of his brother Adam. Charles believes it is unfair that he should love his father without limits and his father does not love him nearly as much in return, but Cyrus loves Adam very much while Adam does not feel anything for his father but respect and admiration. Charles is very frustrated by this fact and he consistently expresses his frustration violently on Adam to the point that he almost kills Adam. Before Charles brings Adam to the brink of death, however, he finally reveals to Adam the source of his jealousy and contempt towards Adam: “Charles cried �You’re trying to take him away! I don’t know how you’re going about it. What do you think you’re doing.’”(29, Steinbeck). This gives the reader a definitive example of Charles’ jealousy of Adam and the love Charles thinks Cyrus has for Adam. At the root Charles’ jealousy and fury is his unwavering desire to feel love from his father. Adam’s sons Aron and Cal have a similar rivalry to that of the childhood Adam and Charles.

Similar to Charles in his childhood, Cal desperately wants and needs to feel loved by his father. Cal and Aron are Adam’s and his sadistic estranged wife Kate, a mere week after their birth Kate shoots Adam and leaves him and the boys alone. What Adam does not know however, is that the boys are biologically fathered by the equally sadistic to Kate, Charles. As the boys are growing up it is easy for the reader to see in Cal the darkness and evil of his mother, Cal has many of the same talents as his mother, such as being an exceptional manipulator and having the ability to draw in all emotion and become invulnerable to an emotional attack. It