Flowers Of Good And Evil In Eden Blooming On The Earth

John Steinbeck is a famous American realistic writer in the twentieth century. In 1962, he won the Nobel Prize. In his long creative career, Steinbeck completed twelve novels, two collections of short stories and two collections of reportage, which cover many commonly concerned issues, including society, culture, war, politics and humanity. On the one hand, he depicted American peasants' resistance and struggle in his works, unfolded their impoverished and miserable life, and revealed the dark and shameful reality of modern America. On the other hand, he continually delineated the glamorous places in his works. Eden, the ideal homeland of human, shows up in his works again and again. Steinbeck's works disclose the social cultural crisis of modern America and people's decadent thoughts.This thesis which consists of three chapters mainly analyses Steinbeck's view of good and evil embodying in the novel East of Eden.Chapter one tries to comprehensively analyze the origin and evolution of good and evil, and introduce their important position in western literature history, then analyze Steinbeck's view of good and evil by discussing the influence of religious consciousness on him.Chapter two particularly discusses Steinbeck's view of good and evil embodying on the three figures in East of Eden. The theme of this novel is the conflicts between good and evil. So, the writer's view of good and evil completely embodies in this work. Eden in the Bible is the general image of human's fine homeland. By describing the seeking and reconstructing Eden and the failure of Eden's reconstructing, Steinbeck disclosed the people's miserable life and spiritual crisis in modern America, which regards material benefits as its core. This also reflects the writer's longing for happy life and fine homeland. The three figures' final choices of good and evil confirm that Steinbeck is a person who pursues good all his life. Chapter three resorts to the theory of ethics to discuss Steinbeck's view of good and evil in the ethics perspective. Good and evil is the basic pair of concept of ethic thought, so, it's beneficial for us to comprehensively analyze the writer's view of good and evil by discussing the good and evil in Christian ethics and Normative ethics.In East of Eden, Steinbeck utilized moral criticism to discuss the relationship between good and evil. The writer's description and analysis make us clearly penetrate humanity's weakness and social culture crisis at that time as well as its harm on human heart. What's more, the novel also suggests Steinbeck's thoughts on human and social issues. Hence, this thesis surveys Steinbeck's view of good and evil from the perspective of ethics, and tries to understand the writer and his thoughts well on the basis of this study. Furthermore, it's very significant to study Steinbeck's view of good and evil in ethics horizon, because it's useful to us to make the correct choice when we face good and evil.