East Of Eden By John Steinbeck Analysis

In chapter 12 of “East of Eden” (1952), John Steinbeck implies that it is futile to try to predict what the future has in store. Steinbeck emphasizes this idea through the juxtaposition of the ideologies of three different men; the first man believed that the past was perfect, “the old time, the gay time” (127), and that the future could never live up to it, “sweetness was gone, and virtue too” (127); the second man believed that the past was imperfect and horrible, “To hell with that rotten century” (128), and that the future would be clean and fair, “clean new hundred years” (129); the third man, Steinbeck, has experienced the future the first two men are talking about, having written the book fifty years after the date the first two men