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Tone
Chapter 1
Explanation and Analysis—Indigenous People:
While Steinbeck's narrator serves as a contemplative and critical voice, largely meshing with the voice of the author himself, neither the novel's author nor its narrator are entirely objective. While many statements of fact made by the narrator are rendered with an air of irony or satire, there are a few passages in East of Eden that feature unironic, questionably factual statements. One such unreliably narrated statement occurs in Chapter 1, as Steinbeck sets the scene of his creation myth:
First there were the Indians, an inferior breed without energy, inventiveness, or culture, a people that lived on grubs and grasshoppers and shellfish, too lazy to hunt or fish. They ate what they could pick up and planted nothing. They pounded bitter acorns for flour. Even their warfare was a weary pantomime.
In this passage, the narrator clearly makes certain unreliable statements about indigenous people that should not be taken at face value. It is unclear in this particular passage whether or not the narrator's tone is satirical or ironic, making it unlikely that Steinbeck intended to criticize mainstream American narratives on indigenous people. Here, indigenous Californians are depicted as primitive and lazy, eventually to be contrasted with "industrious" American colonizers moving west.
Related Themes:
