Internal Inconsistencies In The Thematic Development Of East Of Eden

East of Eden is a novel of John Steinbeck, which has been widely regarded as a successful failure by many literary critics, such as Peter Lisca and Howard Levant. Those critics argue that despite Steinbeck's mature craftsmanship in this novel, he still has some problems. And among all the studies of those critics, Howard Levant's research is the most attractive. Levant thinks that Steinbeck has some problems in grasping the structure and materials. He proves his idea from many perspectives, such as the narration, the handling of the characters, the structure, the thematic design and the basic tone of the novel. However, Levant's research is too general. In order to give a much more detailed and specific research of this novel, this M.A. thesis focuses on analyzing the thematic design of East of Eden.This thesis proposes that the theme of East of Eden is to celebrate human beings' free will. Steinbeck uses the biblical myth of "Cain and Abel" to explain human nature. He thinks that human is the combination of both good and evil. Also, he suggests that human beings have free will to choose between good and evil. Steinbeck expresses this dominant idea through three methods: the definition of the Hebrew word "timshel', the statement of the narrator "I" and the contrasts between the main characters and their archetypes. Steinbeck proposes that "timshel" means "thou mayest", which endows human beings with a sense of choice. Besides, through the narrator "I", Steinbeck expresses his opinions about the importance of human beings' free will to readers. Furthermore, he uses Cain and Abel as the archetypes of the protagonists in East of Eden, to show that human beings can choose between good and evil, to perfect themselves.Steinbeck's thematic design is explicit and well-manipulated. Nonetheless, this thesis points out that during the thematic development, Steinbeck has also created some inconsistencies. Those inconsistencies, to some degree, have hindered readers' exploration of the theme. This conclusion is obtained by analyzing the plots, the characters and the tones of East of Eden. This thesis points out that some plots are episodic and useless. They do not serve but delay the development of the theme. And some characters contradict the theme. Moreover, Steinbeck expresses two contradictory views in this novel: pessimism and optimism. The thesis argues that although the thematic design aims to create prevailing optimism in East of Eden, pessimism is too strong and sometimes it even overcomes optimism. The conflicts between the spontaneous pessimism and the imposed optimism create an inconsistency against the theme.Introduction reviews the past criticism of East of Eden and proposes the argument of the thesis. Chapter One analyzes the thematic design of this novel. Chapter Two and Three analyze the inconsistencies which appear in the thematic development. And the last part is conclusion, in which the main idea of the thesis is concluded, and the originality and significance of the thesis are pointed out. Also, the deficiency of the thesis is pointed out in the last part.