Motifs

Through reoccurring motifs, Steinbeck shows the negative impact of spontaneous decisions of people, proving that in the end man is to blame for his own destruction. By portraying broken throughout his books, Steinbeck creates characters, who are so busy dreaming about the future that they don’t notice what is right in front of them leading to their poor decisions. Adam, from East of Eden, is clearly one of those characters because all he wanted was a family to complete him in the future that he didn’t notice what was corrupting him right there and then, which also led to his dream being destroyed of a having complete family in the end. Adam met his one true love but she in contrast does not love him back. Adam met Cathy Ames, when she first wandered onto his farm, bloody and beaten, so he takes care of her and then after a while he marries her but she, does not really marry him. Adam is overjoyed with happiness that he doesn’t see Cathy for who she is but who he wants her to be. Even though Cathy shows that she does not love Adam back, he doesn’t notice it because he is too focused on achieving his dream of complete family. Cathy even goes and sleeps with his brother showing that she is rejecting Adam's love for her and that she is just filled evil intentions. In the end Cathy decides to leave Adam right after she gave birth to twins, telling him that she doesn’t love him and she was going to leave him, but Adam couldn’t let her go so to escape him she shot. Adam's inability to grasp onto reality and face what was in front of him instead of living in a dream caused Cathy to shoot him because he could not control his love for her and that it almost cost him his life. Not only did Adam lose his only love of his life but also his twin sons would have no mother. Also there is Curley’s wife, from Of Mice Men, who is only known as Curley’s wife, who lost the path to happiness and ended up with marrying someone she doesn’t love and living a miserable life. Curley’s wife dreamt of being a movie star and regrets marrying Curley. When she was fifteen, she met a man, who claimed to be an actor and told her she was a natural in acting. She always wanted to make some achievements and loved attention, so she believed the “actor”, who promised her that he will make her famous. After their encounter, they parted ways and on that same night she met Curley. After her encounter with the actor she was hoping she would receive a letter from him and fulfill her dream of being an actress but when no letter came from the actor, she decided to marry Curley. Even though Curley and his wife are married they don’t have a relationship that is built on trust. They are always looking for each other and he starts fights with others, who he believes has something going on with his wife. This shows very little trust, because all he does is go around and accuse her of cheating. * Also when Steinbeck writes about broken characters he bases it off of his believe that “man is the only kind of varmint, who sets his own trap, baits it, then steps in it” clearly implying that man himself is the worst enemy. Ex: George and his lies, * Also the characters are too trusting and make poor judgments, where they tend to rely on others more than themselves leading the reliability to be a vulnerability that leads to their downfall. Ex: Danny relying on his friends, * Also they characters tend to encounter problems that they no power to solve.