East of Eden Narrator

459 Words2 Pages
One of John Steinbeck’s most famous novels, East of Eden, is a story of Steinbeck’s family history. The narrator in the book is Steinbeck himself, the grandson of Samuel Hamilton and the son of Olive Hamilton and Ernest Steinbeck. While the narrator does not have any particular significance to the events that occur in East of Eden, he is present for all of them due to his family connection. The novel uses third person omniscient, third person limited, and first person points of view. In East of Eden, John Steinbeck not only tells his own family history, but also “tried to merge a double plot” (pg viii) and add the history of the Trask family, which makes the choice of narrator a hard decision. The narrator adds information on the Hamilton family and events, such as the Thanksgiving where all the Hamilton children decide to ask Sam and Liza to stay with them so Tom can take over the farm. However, the narrator provides details about and the thoughts of all other characters as well, such as Lee, Abra, and the Trask family, which makes the narrator more than just the first person. Many critics do not like the narrator because Steinbeck uses it inconsistently throughout the novel, using the first person in the chapters about the Hamilton family or the filler chapters, but using an omniscient perspective in the chapters about the Trask family or about Cathy. The narrator refers to himself very infrequently in the novel, and some details he adds to the novel as the narrator are very strange. For example, when describing Una, he writes, “I never knew Una. She was dead before I remember, but George Hamilton told me about it many years later…” (pg 276). This statement does not add a lot to the chapter, and is an example of how inconsistently Steinbeck uses the first person narrator. However, there is also a chapter that is entirely about the war and how the
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