East of Eden thoughts
I’m new to reading more classic literature and I mostly picked East of Eden because it was so popular on tiktok but I really enjoyed the novel. The central themes forced me to confront some aspects of my own life. However, I was kinda annoyed by the navel gazing musings and philosophy queries. They felt contrived, like I feel that there are more seamless ways to express that in your writing. Like don’t pose the question, make me pose the question and then give me the answer. I also loathed his portrayal of female characters… Im willing to reserve criticism for some of his more harmful depictions of certain characters due to the time period. But it seemed like every female character was reduced to a rigid archetype with no nuance or growth. Liza was a religious zealot, cathy/kate was a literal supervillain with no true nuance besides contrition at the end of her life. I feel like abra’s character was more realized but not entirely. I’m skeptical of picking up another steinbeck novel.