Ethical Confusion And The Road To Salvation In East Of Eden

East of Eden is an important work written by American writer, John Steinbeck in his later creative period. The novel tells a story about three generations of the Hamlitons and the Trasks. In the novel, Steinbeck creates a variety of ethical themes by analyzing the characteristics of the main characters and describing the complex of characters and family relationships, such as ethics taboos, ethical confusion, and ethical choice and so on. However, Steinbeck does not make judgment about those ethical problems. On the contrary, he creates several opposites such as good and evil, love and hate, loyalty and betrayal in the novel, and highlights that the ethical confusion of the main characters is caused by their own ethical choice, and then tries to interpret their final end. This article adopts the approaches of Close Reading and Ethical Literary Criticism to interpret and analyze the main characters Charles, Cathy and Cal’s ethical confusion. Going back to the historical period of the story occurring, the article tries to analyze the causes of their ethical perplexities in the context, and then combines with the redemption in western Christianity to interpret the main characters who finally gain the salvation through death, the power of love and nature after they experience sin and punishment. This thesis is divided into five parts:In the part of introduction, the author tries to introduce John Steinbeck and his works briefly, to analyze the researches on Steinbeck at home and abroad and to make a brief introduction to the approach of Ethical Literary Criticism; The first chapter is divided into three parts, which mainly analyzes Charles, Cathy and Cal’s ethical confusion that they are facing and to explore a series of tragedies which are caused by the changes of their ethical identity. Among them, the first section analyzes the ethical perplexity of Charles, namely, the conflicts between his brother Adam and his father Cyrus; the second section discusses Cathy’s ethical Confusion. That is the ethical choice that Cathy has done for the pursuit of freedom and the change of her ethical identity; the third section is mainly about Cal’s ethical confusion that is the conflict happens between Cal and Aron. The second chapter analyzes the reasons for the formation of the main characters’ ethical confusion. The first section mainly elaborates family education caused Charles, Cathy and Cal’s ethical confusion; the second section analyses the ethical confusion of the main characters is due to the rebellion against the patriarchy and betrayal of the family and marriage; the third section is the interpretation of the main characters who make ethical choice for the pursuit of free will. The third chapter combines the spirit of salvation in Christianity to interpret the main characters who are eventually saved through death, love, and living harmony with nature. The first section is about the death of Charles and Cathy which makes them gain relief and calmness; the second section interprets Adam gains redemption through friends’ and neighbor’s love, then Adam’s and Lee’s love lets Cal have new hope for life; the third section tells that man and nature live in harmony; Cal goes back to the farm, in the embrace of nature he finally relieves and gets peaceful. The conclusion part summarizes that Cathy, Charles and Cal’s ethical confusion is caused by their ethical choice which makes the change of their ethical identity and finally results in a series of tragedies. In the fight between good and evil, good is bound to defeat evil. At the same time in his work we can see Steinbeck pays attention to the complexity of family ethics and ethical concerns of human existence. He warns people that any age has its specific ethical and moral standards, as long as we live in that era we will accept the era’s ethical and moral constraint, or we will be punished.