East Of Eden Literary Analysis

Parental Favoritism Everyone feels as though their parents love them better than their brothers or sisters. Sometimes that may not be true and the parent loves both kids equally, but other times it may be true. Parental favoritism does not seem too serious of a topic, but it can have a long term negative effect on the non-favored child. The non-favored child might feel unfairly treated and try to gain attention in other ways that might prove to be dangerous and out of the ordinary. In John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden, we experience the dynamics of a father-son relationship, especially the father favoring one son over the other, which oftentimes was the case in my household. From the very start of the novel we are introduced to Cyrus,
This type of parenting carried with him when he raised his twins Aron and Cal. At first he did not care for either of his children after Cathy had left, but once he began to take interest into his kids, he found his favorite. Aron had a charm in him and everybody seemed to love him, even his brother Cal had noticed: “Everybody does [like him better]…everybody loves Aron” (623). Similar to how Charles felt jealous of Adam, Cal has the same type of envious jealousy of Aron. For example, Cal wants to give Adam $10,000 as a birthday present, but Adam does not accept this because he feels Cal took advantage of farmers during war-time. Now remember when I said some non-favored children try to gain attention in dangerous ways? Cal did exactly that by taking his anger out on Aron. Unable to contain his jealousy, Cal took Aron to their “Kathy’s” brothel, which tore Aron apart. His discovery of his real mother leads him to join the army and eventually get killed in
This can emotionally scar the non-favorite kid and can lead to many long-term emotional issues. Studies show that sibling rivalry is much greater when one of them is favored over the other. This was the case in both Charles and Adam and also Cal and Aron. Charles was jealous of Adam and beat him up because of it several times. Further down the line Cal broke Aron’s heart by taking him to the brothel out of anger and jealously. I was placed in a similar situation as Charles was when I was younger. My parents liked everything my brother had given them and dismissed anything I gave them. In the novel East of Eden, we see parental favoritism very often, and my life experiences of this were kept in mind as I read this