Lee’s Function in East of Eden Essay

1. Introduction As Shimomura(1982) points let out, Steinbecks non-teleological thinking and the Taoism, which was put forward by the ancient Chinese philosopher named Lao Tzu, share a huge deal of similarity, in that both of them view hu opus beings from a detached and holistic sales booth. It is not clear turn inn how Steinbeck, who is certainly a product of his time and his American milieu, came to be acquainted with and interested in Lao Tzus philosophy, but in Journal of A Novel, he appreciates Lao Tzu so exceedingly that he places Lao Tzu beside Plato, Buddha, Christ, Paul, and the Great Hebraic prophets.It might safely be said that there m old(a)iness have been a seedbed in his indigenous thought where a seed of Lao Tzu was sown, germinated, and at utter approximately(a) bloomed into a beautiful and fragrant flower so attractive for the Oriental reader. Thus, the purpose of this paper is scratch line-year to focus on leeward in eastern hemisphere of paradise, then t o make clear the relationship amid non-teleology and the philosophy of Lao Tzu, and finally to show how closely Lao Tzus philosophy is related to the belief of timshel.2. lee side as a consideration and philosopher As is well known to his reader, Steinbeck creates three Chinese characters passim his novels from the first, Cup of Gold, to the last, The Winter of Our Discontent. To list them, they are Lee Chong, who is an owner of a grocery store, a flip-flopping old China macrocosm who is not identified by name in Cannery Row, and Lee, who appears in East of Eden. railway yardgh these Chinese characters may respectively perform significant federal agencys in their own rights in their stories, the one who particularly warrants capacious attention among these characters is Lee, who is more active and more influential in determining the fates of the major characters in the novel. More everyplace, it is noted that Oriental philosophy, which is a deciding factor in the upshot of this novel, is conveyed to the reader through the blab out of this Chinese character, who is in truth thought to be a spokesman of Steinbeck himself.Though Lee makes his first appearance in chapter 15 of East of Eden as a faithful servant to the family of Adam Trask, it is when he first meets Samuel Hamilton by chance in the later scene that he turns out to be something more than a guileless servant and also begins to carry his own significance in the novel. This scene should acquire large importance, in that Lee first clarifies his general view of life as a spokesman of the originator. Even in the first conversation he has with Samuel, Lee is instinctively aware that Samuel is a person whom he can trust. proficient after exchanging a few haggle with him, Lee quits speaking in pidgin English, as if he cast away his protective shell into which he has secretly retired until then. And in the course of the conversation, he spontaneously confides to Samuel his composition on what it is the alike to be a servant I have ont know where being a servant came into disrepute. It is a refuge of a philosopher, the food of the lazy, and, properly carried out, it is a put cut of power, evening of love. I cant understand why more intelligent mountain dont take it as a career learn to do it well and reap its benefits. plainly a good servant, and I am an excellent one, can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, Finally, in my circumstances I am unprotected. 1 This philosophical view on servantship which is uttered through the mouth of a Chinese character apparently reflects the authors basic view toward life, for it is easy to remember that Steinbecks appearance of describing the predominance of servantship over the mastership oozes from the idea of relativity which he attained as the outcome of his favorite non-teleological thinking.The idea tells the reader that any standard, as far as it is built around the by artificial means co ntrived system of value, loses its significant validity when seen in the light of non-teleological standpoint. According to this view, a person in a socially reputed position of power cannot avoid the possibility of losing his power when seen through another antithetic peep-hole. And it is possible that in fact a low and unrespected person may gain predominating influence upon the people who are ranked far above in the so-called social status.Furthermore, another interesting point in this relation lies in the passiveness of much(prenominal) a low position. A person in a low position is unprotected by himself, but by becoming a servant to another person in a higher position he begins to play a function in his own right and at last controls his master. This master-servant relationship uttered by Lee reveals that formerly he has gotten employ custodyt by his master, even a helpless person who has little social function by himself not only begins to fulfill his own function but als o gains predominance over his master.Consequently, this means that in this relationship a master is no longer a master and a servant is also no longer a servant. Eventually in this work this relationship results in the fact that Lee actually controls Adam in every situation. 3. Lee as a spokesman of Lao Tzus philosophy Similarly in the Lao Tzu, a collection of wise-sayings which were written by a person named Lao Tzu somewhat in the fourth century BC(Fukunaga, Hachiya, Takahashi), the alike topsy-turveydom in the sense of values can be found in one of the eighty fragmentary writings. In chapter 78 it saysIn the world there is nothing more submissive and weak than water. Yet for attacking that which is hard and absolute nothing can surpass it. This is because there is nothing that can take its place. That the weak overcomes the strong, And the submissive overcomes the hard, Everyone in the world knows yet no one can put this knowledge into practice. Therefore the sage says, sens ation who takes on himself the humiliation of the state Is called a ruler worthy of offering cave ins to the gods of earth and millets Straightforward lyric Seems paradoxical. 2In this characterization quoted above, Lao Tzu explains the victory of the submissive and the weak over the hard and the strong, just in the same way that servantship finally achieves victory over mastership. Clearly enough, there is a great deal of similarity between Lees general attitude toward life and Lao Tzus precept of holding fast to the submissive. Needless to say, the common belief which underlies their paradoxical view stems from the idea that semisynthetic values are nothing but relative, and this relativity is resulted from their attempt to rest their standpoint on a place which is asfree from gentle-centered arrangement as possible.There is no doubt about the idea that Steinbeck created Lee as a deciding factor of the outcome from this novel framed with a good and curse story, and it is not too much to say that Lees appearance reveals the authors strong consciousness of the relativity between good and crime. This becomes clear when Lee encourages Adam by saying, What your wife is doing is neither good nor blue. Theres no springboard to philanthropy like a bad conscience.3 Additionally, there is another similarity between them also in their tact of describing much(prenominal) relativity. Both Steinbeck and Lao Tzu clarify the interdependence between the weak and the strong by accentuate the predominance of the former over the latter. This is because they think that the weak is more closely related to the natural processes of the humans than the strong is. That is to say, in the philosophy of Lao Tzu there is nothing like water that follows the way that the tao is and on the other hand, according to Steinbecks non-teleological thinking, Lee occupies an ideal position in life.Based on the supposition that the Lees view of life involves such relativity in itself as a main factor, it is quite convincing that the word timshel, which means thou mayest in English, is introduced through the mouth of Lee in the novel. Probably one of the most impressive scenes in the novel is where Lee, Samuel, and Adam meet together to break up on names for the twins. Located almost in the center of this long novel, this naming scene actually shows the reader a certain turning point from which East of Eden meanders between good and evil all the way to the final scene.In this scene Samuel reads a long passage from the Old Testament. This passage includes the Cain-Abel story, and they eagerly talk about the views of the original sin which Cain committed by killing Abel. Lee is so strongly struck by this story that he feels that it is a chart of our souls. Though he never refers to them on this scene, deep in his mind remains the Lords word to Cain after rejecting his sacrifice And if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, a nd thou shalt rule over him. This naming scene, where Lee is exposed to the Cain-Abel story, effectively leads to the scene in chapter 24 where he puts a new interpretation on words of the above passage. 4. Timshel interpreted from the Oriental viewpoint Chapter 24 in East of Eden warrants the most careful attention first because it develops the motif of the Cain-Abel story discussed in the previous scene, and also because it crucially affects the instruction of this work. This chapter reveals that Lee has given his thought to the story for almost ten years since his proficient discussion he had with Adam and Samuel.A certain part of the Lords words to Cain has fazed this Chinese for such a long period. It is thou shalt over him. In the course of these years he went to the head lodge of his family association and asked for Chinese scholars to take on the study of Hebrew, in rear to find the more curb reading of the part. And finally in this scene he excitedly explains the impo rtance of his finding in the comportment of Samuel Lees hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his down in one gulp.Dont you see? he cried. The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a name in Thou Shalt, meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word the timshel Thou mayest that gives a choice. It might be the most important word. That says the way is open. That throws it right moxie on a man. For if Thou mayest, it is also true that Thou mayest not. Dont you see? 4.The above-quoted apocalypse made by Lee vividly reflects his idea of relativity between good and evil. To begin with, Lee, who has been bothered long by Thou shalt, reaches the conclusion that it never lightens the burden imposed on the shoulders of a man who suffers sense of sin. The chief reason why Lee turns his back to Thou shalt lies in the assumption that finally it is not completely f ree from a human-centered viewpoint. When the Lord says, Thou shalt to Cain, the most fundamental idea that strongly supports the words on the back is that of love.But the love, though it is thought to be more public and crucially different than human love in quality, is not entirely free from mans viewpoint as far as the Lord in Christianity is a personified god. Basically such love, like one side of a coin, is inevitably sustained by hatred on the other side. Therefore, it follows that even when thou shalt is thrown to man through the mouth of Lord, his conduct has been already judged evil, more or less, by the artificially contrived standard of value which unavoidably lacks in the idea of relativity.When seen from another different angle, such conduct may appear to be good, because there might be good in it. afterward all, thou shalt works the salvation of man only in the teleological manner. On the other hand, Lees new interpretation shows an utter indifference of the Lord to human conduct. It does not definitely order man to overcome evil nor involve any promise in it. Actually such symptomatic of his interpretation may perhaps plunge man into desperation because superficially it seems to lack love and function to guide him to emancipation from the sin that he has committed.But Lee thinks that it is such an indifferent attitude that leads him to actually salvation of his soul. Timshel, which is evidently a product of Lees assiduous study of the Cain-Abel story, is based on the idea of relativity just as are non-teleological thinking and Lao Tzus philosophy. This is clearly exemplified by the fact that thou mayest is always supported by the opposite prerequisite, thou mayest not. In other words it means that there is neither good nor evil in every human conduct, and at the same time, what is more important, it also means that there is both good and evil involved in it.Thou mayest only allows man to say, This is relatively good and that is relatively evil. In this way Lee, as a Steinbecks spokesman, non-teleologically thinks that timshel unites good and evil into one body. Steinbecks notion of good and evil shown in East of Eden begins with the idea that both of them fundamentally derive from the same state, and, no doubt, it is a product of his favorite non-teleological thinking. He never believes in a logical theory such as laws of the excluded middle where good and evil are orderly and clearly distinguished from each other.He usually places his main viewpoint in a chaotic place where there is neither good nor evil, and applies such a viewpoint to human conducts, with the ultimate result that an evil person should be saved in the same way a good person is saved. Though the optimistic attitude of his indigenous thinking has been repeatedly attacked for its lack of serious consideration toward evil, Steinbeck thinks that good and evil are relative, and, as a result, evil is nothing but a negative state which is lacking in good it is more appropriate to say that it is merely a paradoxical state which is devoid of a strong consciousness of good.When employed as the framework of East of Eden, his non-teleological idea of good and evil crystallizes into the new interpretation of the Cain-Abel story, and the word timshel, on one hand, thoroughly awakens Adam, an allegoric figure of Abel, from his vain dream to sober reality, and, on the other hand, it emancipates Caleb, an allegorical figure of Cain, from the thralldom of sin. This manner of treating good and evil, needless to say, has great similarity to the philosophy of Lao Tzu, who writes the good man is the teacher that the bad learns from And the bad man is the material the good works on.5 As Steinbeck views the world from the detached standpoint of the infinite whole, so Lao Tzu has created the notion of the tao to eradicate a human-centered view of the world out of his philosophy. This attempt has brought about the same result as Steinbeck has achieve d. That is to say, they have both reached the same conception of mans true place in the universe, and his relation to the world about him, which enables both of them to place an furiousness on the relation of individuals to the whole and treat individuals for their own sake.Such treatment of individuals is summarized by saying that everything is an big businessman of everything else6 and that The heavy is the root of the light. 7 Finally, the quintessence of Steinbeck as a novelist undoubtedly lies in the avocation of non-teleological thinking as the frameworks of his novels. The adoption of this method does not allow him to achieve invariable success in his literary works, but, at least, it can be said that it enables him to view human conduct from the broadest and highest standpoint possible, which Lao Tzu paradoxically describes by adopting negative terms such as Nothing and The Nameless. Notes 1. antic Steinbeck, East of Eden, p. 190. (Penguin Books, 1976), exclusively cita tions from Steinbeck are from Penguin editions and will be noted by page numbers following the citations. 2. D. C. Lau, Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching, p. 140. (Penguin Books, 1963), All citations from Steinbeck are from Penguin editions and will be noted by page numbers following the citations. 3. John Steinbeck, East of Eden, p. 434 4. John Steinbeck, East of Eden, p. 349 5. D. C. Lau, Tao Te Ching, p. 84. 6. John Steinbeck, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, p. 259 7. D. C.Lau, Tao Te Ching, p. 83 . plant life Cited Fukunaga, Mituji. Roshi (On Lao Tzu ), capital of Japan Asahishinbun-sha, 1968 Hachiya, Kunio. Ro-So wo yomu (A Study of Lao Tzu and Zhuang Tzu). Tokyo Kodansha, 1987. John Steinbeck. The Log from the Sea of Cortez, Penguin Books. 1976 -. East of Eden, NewYork Penguin Books. 1976 Lau, D. C. , trans. Lao Tzu Tao Te Ching,New York Penguin Books, 1963. Shimomura, Noboru. A Study of John Steinbeck Mysticism in His Novel . Tokyo The Hokuseido Press, 1982. Takahashi, Susumu. Roshi (On Lao Tzu ), Tokyo Shimizu-shoin, 1970.