John Steinbecks East of Eden - The Character of Adam Trask :: East Eden Essays

The Character of tour Trask in East of Eden   In Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language, the word love is defined as a profoundly tender, passionate affection for another person. Love can bring two people together besides it can also have got a person be spurned by another because of love. In the novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the main character, ten Trask, confronts a feeling of love throughout the whole book but he either rejects the love of people who care about him or has his love rejected by the people that he cares about. When ten was a young man in the beginning of the novel, his father, Cyrus Trask loved him but Adam did not love him jeopardize and when Adam went into the army he did not come back home until his fathers death. Later on in the story Adam really loved his wife, Cathy, but she didnt love him back and so when she tried to leave him and he would not let her, she shot him. Even though Adam survived he was demoralized for nigh of his life because he still loved her. Through Adams experiences of love in the novel, John Steinbeck shows that Adam Trask has an inability to handle love.   When he first appears in the novel, Adam Trask is a young man who is not loved by his brother or mother but only by his father. Cyrus had punished Adam onwards and had tried to teach him to be a soldier and so Adam hated him for that and when Cyrus told him he loved him, Adam did not accept his love. Cyrus tells Adam, I approximate youre a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. This may be a bad thing to tell you, but its true. I love you better. Else why would I have given myself the trouble of hurting you? (Steinbeck 28). Cyrus is telling Adam that he has always loved him and that the only reason that he punished him is because he loved him. He wants Adam to go into the army because he knows that Adam would be courageous and since Cyrus was in the army, he wants to pass on the legacy. When Adam came home from his discharge, his brother and him were talking about their father and Adam told him the truth.