(Image from Wilkepedia)
Educate children and you won't have to punish men (Pitagoras)
1 Discuss Protagoras' idea together with the following one: If rejection could be avoided, perhaps there would be less jails
Read this fragment from East of Eden and comment on to what an extent, in your opinion, Steinbeck's story is related to Cain and Abel's story
2 Point to some details that connect each of the siblings to one particular trade.
3 Comment on preferences about storytelling in Lee's view?
4 What is the greatest terror a child could feel, according to him? Why?
God accepted Abel and rejected Cain. I never thought that was a just thing. (.../...)
Wouldn't the god of shepherds find a fat lamb more valuable than a sheaf of barley?(.../...)
why did God condemn Cain? That's an injustice. (.../...)
God liked lamb better than vegetables. I think I do myself. Cain brought him a bunch of carrots maybe. And God said, 'I don't like this. Try again. Bring me something I like and I'll set you up alongside your brother?' But Cain got mad. His feelings were hurt. And when a man's feelings are hurt he wants to strike at something, and Abel was in the way of his anger.”(.../...)
Adam said. “I can't get over a feeling that Cain got the dirty end of the stick.”
“Maybe he did.” said Samuel. “But Cain lived and had children, and Abel lives only in the story. We are Cain's children. And isn't it strange that three grown men, here in a century so many thousands of years away, discuss this crime as though it happened in King City yesterday and hadn't come up for trial?”
(.../...)
And, of course, people are interested only in themselves. If a story is not about the hearer he will not listen. And I here make a rule -a great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last. The strange and foreign is not interesting -only the deeplyh personal and familiar.”
Samuel said, “Apply that to the Cain-Abel story.”
And Adam said, “I didn't kill my brother-” Suddenly he stopped and his mind went reeling back in time.
“I think I can.” Lee answered Samuel. “I think this is the best-known story in the world because it is everybody's story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I'm feeling my way now -don't jump on me if I'm not clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved, and rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt -and there is the story of mankind I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all there -the start, the beginning.
(John Steinbeck's East of Eden, p 270-271, Penguin Bookds)
