John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Cycle 03 — Novel.

Framing

A short public-facing blurb for this reading goes here: why Steinbeck’s American retelling of Cain and Abel earns the cycle’s literary seat alongside Aristotle and Justin Martyr — what timshel (the Hebrew “thou mayest” at the novel’s moral center) is doing in conversation with Greek virtue ethics and early Christian apologetic.