Doesn't want to join the army but goes along with it anyway.
Should be discharged for his behaviour but isn't because his dad is a military "hero".
Tells Charles he is returning then changes his mind, without telling Charles, amd rejoins the military even thoigh he claims to find killing repugnant.
Drifts around for years without telling Charles. Suddenly calls him asking for money to get home. Forgets to pay him back.
Willingly accepts his fathers ill-gotten fortune. Openly decieves himself while dismissing Charles' guilt over it.
Gets irritable and starts fights with Charles while Charles does all of the work on the farm.
Takes in a strange woman (Cathy), disregards his brothers misgivings about her.
Is aware of how much Charles misses and needs him but bails with Cathy anyway and doesn't send letters.
Projects an angelic image onto Cathy, doesn't listen to her or try to really see her at all.
Has children with Cathy when she is clearly unwilling and unfit to be a mother, dooming his kids to a motherless upbringing.
Hires Lee to do everything around the ranch when he could do most of it himself.
Won't name the children or acknowledge them after Cathy leaves. Sleepwalks through life for 10 years while his kids grow up, Lee takes care of everything and the ranch falls into disrepair.
When he finally comes back to life (sort of) he favors Aron by projecting an agelic image on him just like he did on Cathy. This creates guilt in Aron and resentment in Cal.
Nearly blows all their wealth on the lettuce idea, ignoring Wills advice and tarnishing the reputation of his children.
Rejects Cals gift before he even knew where it came from. When Cal tells him, he is disgusted despite he himself only being rich thanks to profits of war from his own father.
His final words in the book are borrowed wisdom from Lee and Samuel from over a decade earlier. Only does anything decent when decent men like Lee or Samuel beat him into it.
Adam is not a good man at all. He is lazy, self-centred and disengaged. His kindness seems to come more from weakness. His goodness is just an absence of obvious malice, but is his passive disregard for the pain he has caused in others much better?
by BruiseHound
26 Comments
I know right!
Did you forget the part where Charles tried to kill him? He had nowhere to go. He didn’t like the army but didn’t want to return to the brother who tried to kill him. Only after the dad was dead that he felt safe to return to Charles.
Also don’t forget the kids are Charles’, not his, and Cal looks like Charles.
It was so difficult for me to get into the book because Adam was awful, and yet somehow presented as a good hearted protagonist? I didn’t really get into the book until Cathy was introduced because she is such a well written villain/ sociopath! Adam is just insufferable.
Adam is so terrible that I was actively rooting for Cathy
I think we’re meant to not like him. Besides Abra, I think we’re supposed to have more sympathy for the ‘C’ characters.
I’m a Cathy apologist 💅 so what if she’s the devil? At least the devil had a *job,* at least she was *active* in the *community*
I couldn’t even finish that novel lol
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I think our ability to criticize Adam is one of the main points of the book.
the book is all about how everyone is good and bad. that no person is truly evil or angelic. every one is grey and “thou mayest”
I can’t love this post enough. Although it’s been about 10 years since I read the book, I remember not liking Adam at all. It was weird though because after I finished I remember reading comments on Reddit about the book and everyone was just hating on Cal and loved Adam. I thought Adam was a horrible father and was far more to blame for Aron’s outcome than Cal. I couldn’t understand the hate for Cal considering he was only like 16 when he was making his poor choices. Unless I’m not remembering correctly, but I thought he was just a teenager. And for whatever reason Aron was extra sensitive and had to be sheltered from the truth which Adam withheld from him, but his outcome is framed as Cal’s fault?
I honestly never found Adam to be redeeming whatsoever. Again, it’s been a very long time since I read it, but I remember being perplexed as to why it felt like readers were supposed to harshly judge teenage Cal for his choices but feel sympathy for grown man Adam.
I’m assuming you’re young. Read it again in ten years.
People have flaws.
I really liked the book. Obviously Adam is flawed but look at his childhood… not many would turn out well from that
one of the best parts of the book eat my BUTT
Adam Trask is a piece of shit human being and I will die on that hill.
I mostly agree but I would argue that he is a well-intentioned man with his heart in the right place, but he also happens to be an idiot.
Definitely a flawed guy; definitely makes plenty of mistakes; obviously short-sighted about a number of things—all that being said, I cannot get behind this reading at all. At the end of the day, Adam has a good heart and (after stumbling about and receiving a bit of help from his friends) always gets back up and keeps moving forward.
We are Adam.
I didn’t even read it yet, but if the book is called East of Eden and a character is named Adam, he probably won’t be that good of a guy
It’s been quite a long time since I read this book but I believe it’s a retelling of Cain and Abel (which I didn’t see mentioned in the comments I read here) so these are definitely flawed characters meant to tell us how to live and not to live. I remember loving this book.
I share same feelings but for Ayn Rand for fountainhead
I took away from this book that some people are born evil, some are made, some learn and grow at different rates, others decline. The peace that a person has internally is earned through hard work. Adam was broken and abused as a child and young man and rather than do the work internally looked for people and things around him to do the work for him. Adam is a sad and pathetic human who couldn’t break the cye of abuse. Samuel is the opposite.
I agree with a lot of this. Now I can understand him being hesitant to go see Charles after Charles tried to kill him. And one rather worrying letter from Charles. But the rest of it I 100% agree. I cannot stand Adam. Or Aron by the end of the book.
I want to think that we’re not SUPPOSED to like Adam but it kind of feels like we’re supposed to see him as wise and innocent. But I just can’t stand him. I wanted to slap the many over a dozen times throughout the book.
I’m late to the party but my take is the novel emphasizes Jesus’s commandment to be wise (some translations say shrewd) as serpents and innocent as doves (Matthew 10:6).
If you end up on either extreme of that equation, you end up being a bad person.
This is akin to Aristotle’s golden mean. An excess on either side of a virtue is a vice.
Shrewdness without innocence (Cathy) leads to people getting hurt.
Innocence without shrewdness (Adam) leads to people getting hurt.
The choice of timshel is not only between good and evil, but also between qualities that in their isolated extremes lead to suffering.
It’s also worth noting in the Genesis story, Adam is a passive NPC that lets others choices rule his life.
“ So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her husband who was with her, and he ate,” (Gen 3:6)
When God asks him why he ate it, he further abdicates personal responsibility, blaming both God and Eve for his actions:
“The man said, ‘The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate,’” (Gen 3:12)
You aren’t supposed to like him. It’s a retelling of Cain and Abel, to make you consider which one is the better human. It’s about free will and our ability to and our need to make our decisions, however flawed they might be.