East of Eden Innocence Quotes

Looks like Adam has got a bad case of love-blindness. In this case, his innocence is in the form of the fact that the real Cathy hasn't been revealed to him yet. If Adam were a little more perceptive, he might see the little hints that Cathy isn't all sweetness and rainbows, but the fact is that Adam doesn't want to see the bad side of Cathy. So his innocence is a bit of his own doing too.

What the heck is this thing Samuel is talking about? From the looks of it, it sounds like he's referring to Adam's blind infatuation with Cathy. He is being really prophetic here, which make sense because his biblical namesake Samuel was a prophet. And what is he prophesizing exactly? That Adam has some serious heartbreak on the horizon. As a good friend, he should break through Adam's innocence and show him all of the reasons why Cathy isn't as great as Adam thinks she is. Ironically though, being a good friend would mean destroying Adam's happiness, so Samuel lets Adam keep his innocence—for the time being.

Samuel is using the metaphor of medicine for the truth—a truth that will shatter Adam's innocence, and that he may or may not be ready to hear. Later, after Adam runs off into the bushes, Lee comments that Samuel's medicine acts like poison. But remember what Samuel said earlier about how if he were a good friend he would ruin Adam's image of Cathy and save him a world of trouble? Well now he's being a good friend, so to speak. It's medicine in the sense that it draws back the veil that has been covering Adam's world, and now he can move on.

Poor Abra—she is down with sex, even if Aron isn't. It's also really naïve of Aron to string Abra along in a relationship when he is the one who wants to remain celibate. The point is that he can't imagine someone as "good" as Abra (we used scare-quotes because he's the one who envisions her as good) having any sexual desire, since he himself doesn't really have any. Again and again we're going to see Aron not realizing that he is not the only person in the world. Mature it is not.

Wailing about the so-called dirtiness of a place like Salinas isn't exactly mature, and Aron is way too old to be throwing tantrums. What's more, he clearly doesn't know what he's talking about. As Lee points out, Salinas isn't any cleaner or dirtier (dirtier in this case refers to morality, not to dustiness) than any other run-of-the-mill city. So this is not exactly an encouraging sign that Aron will do well in the real world.

Abra is playing Freud here and pointing to a more G-rated version of Aron's Oedipus Complex. Clearly Aron, who is freaked out by sex in general, doesn't want to literally have sex with his mom; but she is someone he wants, in the sense that anybody wants a mother. And whose fault is it that mommy is gone? Aron's certainly not about to blame his beloved and long-lost mother, since she is everything good and a bag of potato chips as far as he's concerned, so naturally it must have been mean old daddy who sent her away.

Not to knock Stanford or anything, but it's not exactly heaven, and college students are about as far away from saints as you can get. No wonder Aron is miserable there. Later in the novel, Abra says to Cal that Aron had to have the story about his mother go the way he imagined it and only the way he imagined it. Same goes for the story he created about what college would be like. Rather than accepting or adapting to it, Aron just resents it for not being what he wanted.

Whoa—wait a second. When Abra first suggested that the two of them go live on the ranch, Aron was totally not down with the idea. But now that college hasn't turned out to be the heaven he thought it would be, he is making the ranch into his new heaven, complete with perfect trees and virtuous women. Seriously, compare his ideal vision of college with this ideal vision of the ranch—you'll notice that they are pretty much the same. Is Aron ever going to find a place like this? We know the answer, but Aron clearly doesn't.

As an older, wiser, more experienced man, Adam can still be pretty innocent. Here we see him oblivious to the fact that Aron is pretty resentful of him and probably doesn't want him to be at the train station cramping his style. In fact, what Adam is doing to Aron is pretty similar to what Adam did to Cathy: he is seeing what he wants to see, which is a mature, intelligent, devoted son. And no offense to Aron or anything, but he is none of those things.

Imagine a child who throws a fit when things don't go his way, and you're pretty much imagining Aron. An adult, however, at some point recognizes that not everything can go his way, and learns to deal with it. That's Cal (he takes the knowledge of Kate's profession in stride) and Abra (she recognizes that Aron is probably not the best material for a mate).