SPEAKER_03 0:00

From the McGrath Institute for Church Life and OSB Podcast, this is Church Life Today. I'm Leonard DiLorenzo. There's an old story we keep telling because we cannot stop living. A brother brings his offering and it is received. Another brings his and it is not. And in the space of that difference, something curdles. We know how it goes. We have felt the heat rise in our chests when someone else is favored, praised, chosen, when the good that lands on them seems, by some dark arithmetic, to be subtracted from us. Cain rises up against Abel in a field, and the first human death is not an accident, but a killing born of comparison. Why does this story refuse to stay in the past? Perhaps because it is not really about two men long ago. It is about the fault line that runs through every family, every generation, every heart, the temptation to believe that another's blessing is our loss, and that the answer is to strike. John Steinbeck understood this. In East of Eden, he takes the Cain and Abel motif and lets it echo down through generations, refiguring it in new fathers and new sons, as if to say, This is the inheritance, this is what we hand down. But he also found, buried in the ancient text, a single word that breaks the spell. Tim Shell. Not thou shalt, not thou must, but thou mayest. You are not fated to strike. You may yet choose otherwise. That word is where despair and hope divide. And it is where a great novel becomes a school for the soul. My guest today is Michon Mathiason, associate teaching professor in the Department of Theology at the University of Notre Dame, who read East of Eden with her undergraduates in a course on the theology of envy. She returns to the show to help us see what Steinbeck saw, how the oldest sin keeps rewriting itself across generations, and how a single word might set us free. Michon, welcome back to the show.

SPEAKER_02 2:49

Thanks so much for having me again.

SPEAKER_03 2:50

It's great to have you. So we're going to talk about this wonderful novel in our uh conversation today, East of Eden. And I was almost shocked, but delightfully shocked, when I learned that you had assigned this work, John Steinbeck's East of Eden, in an undergraduate theology course that you taught on the theology of envy. And the reason I was surprised is because it's actually quite a long book. You know, and I'm thinking about, gosh, how do you organize this and and uh put it on the syllabus in the right way? And then can you really expect uh students to read the whole thing? But sounds to me like from a previous conversation, students seemed to actually read this and got into it. So I'd love to just start by uh asking you to tell us a little bit about your students' uh reaction to or encounter with this novel.

SPEAKER_02 3:41

Yeah, sure. It I think it was either uh terribly courageous or foolish to put it on the syllabus. Um but I have to say that I was delightfully uh surprised. Um I mean, an over 600-page novel, right, in a semester. You could spend a whole semester actually uh on the novel. But the way I set this up in in terms of opening them up to uh the question of envy and whether or not and what might be uh a remedy for it, um they they fell into this story, which they could see was actually their story as well. Steinbeck has a has a wonderful gift of being able to universalize this story, even though it takes place in this one 50 mile valley in in uh Central California and involves his own family, right? Um he was able to universalize it. And yeah, I found that the vast majority of them were very absorbed. And sometimes they didn't even keep to the seven chapters that I had them read for the day. They would keep going.

SPEAKER_01 4:58

They left it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:00

Obsessed is what some students say. I'm I'm obsessed with this book.

SPEAKER_01 5:03

So wow.

SPEAKER_02 5:04

Um Yeah, it's it's Steinbeck's um Steinbeck's gift of drawing them in. And I think uh perhaps also because it takes place on our soil in the United States, that um it has also a meaning for them. And also because Steinbeck, as you know, at various chapters, uh turns into a philosopher and reflects um right on these big questions of good uh and evil and and love and hatred that uh it kept them thinking and questioning the whole semester. Right.

SPEAKER_03 5:44

And for any who have read East of Eden, they will know that what your students were encountering over and over again in one way was the Cain and Abel uh biblical narrative presented and represented, and sometimes consciously presented, because they're talking about it within the narrative itself, but also the sort of drama between um characters across multiple generations is also a sort of almost like a phenomenological study in Cain and Abel to move around uh that base narrative and to see it in different orientations.

SPEAKER_01 6:19

Right.

SPEAKER_03 6:20

Um I don't know if if we talk about your students' uh reaction to Cain and Abel or if we just sort of launch into thinking about that base narrative uh in this narrative. Did they did they have particular encounter with that or thoughts on that? Um they were fascinated because we had already studied the Cain and Abel uh they were sort of primed to see it. Good. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 6:45

Right. Um in Adam and Charles, right? Uh the two brothers in which it first uh appears uh fairly early, right, uh, in the novel. Um and then uh later on, of course, between Adam's sons.

SPEAKER_03 7:00

Uh Aaron and Caleb.

SPEAKER_02 7:02

Aaron and Caleb.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

He's not totally subtle about this, right? It's an A and a C in both generations, right? Yes.

SPEAKER_02 7:10

Right. But also, right, he he nuances it uh as well. Um but at the heart of uh the repetition of uh the Cain and Abel uh theme is this uh theme about um the fear of love being rejected, right? Or being rejected by one that one loves.

SPEAKER_01 7:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:37

And if we think about the Cain and Abel story uh in those terms, I think that's I think it's precisely spot on.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 7:47

Um sometimes in in The Church Fathers, uh Cain doesn't um seem to uh well he seems to appear that he's already fallen before, right, before he kills his brother. Yeah. But I mean there must be something lacking, right, uh, in Cain before he even rises up to murder his brother. But I think I think a more generous reading, and actually from my from my reading of uh rabbis, uh the rabbinic tradition on this, um Cain isn't so much angry as he is hurt, right? Um, that God has rejected his gift. Um Cain clearly has a heart that loves God and and feels rejected um by God. And unfortunately, when God comes to him, which God does, he appears to Cain and and why why is your continence fallen? Why why are you why are you sad? If you do well, and the better translation in the in the Hebrew is if you do well, you will be lifted up. You don't need to be sad uh about this. But Cain doesn't um doesn't turn to God and speak to God, but he just stays right within. And this is what Envy does to us, right? He just stays within his own uh shell, so to speak. Um so um we could turn actually in in the text to where um the Cain and Abel story is actually uh read aloud when they're thinking about naming, finally naming uh the twins.

SPEAKER_03 9:43

Finally naming the twins, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 9:45

So the Bible is pulled out, and uh Samuel Hamilton, that wonderful character who I love, um suggests sort of offhandly, well, you're Adam, maybe you should name them Cain and Abel, and everyone's like, no, not you know, we're not gonna go there. Um but then Samuel actually reads aloud the the 16 verses uh of this um tale and this narrative in Genesis 4. Um and then uh we hear Lee, the Chinese servant uh of Adam, um, begin to reflect upon this story and to to universalize it. So I'm on page 270.

SPEAKER_03 10:27

So this is most editions I think follow the same pagination, page 270. But in case it didn't and you were looking for this, it's in chapter 22, it looks like. Right. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_02 10:38

And um Lee is trying to describe how a story uh that is lasting is one that's going to be deeply personal and familiar to everyone. So towards the bottom of the page, um when Samuel is explaining this, um I think this is the best known story in the world because it is everybody's story. I think it is the symbol story of the human soul. I'm feeling my way now. Don't jump on me if I'm not clut clear. The greatest terror a child can have is that he is not loved. And rejection is the hell he fears. I think everyone in the world to a large or small extent has felt rejection. And with rejection comes anger, and with anger some kind of crime in revenge for the rejection, and with the crime guilt. And there is the story of mankind. I think that if rejection could be amputated, the human world would not be the human, I'm sorry, would not be what he is. Maybe there would be fewer crazy people. I am sure in myself there would not be many jails. It is all three, the start, the begin. It is all there, yeah. It's all there, right? Uh the start, the beginning. One child refused the love he craves, kicks the cat, and hides his secret guilt. And another steals so that money will make him loved. And a third conquers the world and always the guilt and revenge and more guilt. So this seems to be the universal story, and my students and I spend a lot of time uh asking ourselves if Lee was correct that if rejection could be amputated, the human would be different, and that there wouldn't be envy.

SPEAKER_03 12:48

So there's both rejection and then the feeling of rejection. Sometimes they're coincident and sometimes they're not.

SPEAKER_02 12:55

Right.

SPEAKER_03 12:56

Right?

SPEAKER_02 12:57

Um And then the reaction against the rejection.

SPEAKER_03 13:00

Right. Right. So in the so we can talk probably at one and the same time about the Canaan Abel narrative, but also as it is presented here. Would that would that perceived wound or wound, wound or perceived wound, have been so deep and so uh obvious to those who bear it, had there not been another alongside them? So in other words, if there had not been the pair of Adam and Charles, if there had not been the pair of Aaron and Caleb, um, Caleb who bears the wound because of Aaron's uh sort of natural belovedness, right? Like he he's not deserving, it just happens, right? Um had there not been an able for Cain uh to see.

SPEAKER_02 13:49

Right. No, I think that's very perceptive.

SPEAKER_03 13:52

So what are they so as this becomes envy, what are they seeing, or what are what are um what is their way of seeing?

SPEAKER_02 14:02

Someone is receiving the love that they most desire. And um part of that is yeah, it's not it's not a reaction of anger, but it's reaction first of sorrow. Um and then as uh you know the country Christian tradition has said again and again, um envy turns into a self-contempt as well. Um and if you add guilt onto that after one acts out of their sorrow, um then it's it's just it's just a mess for the human being, as as we see. Right. Right. Um particularly in Caleb.

SPEAKER_03 14:53

In Caleb, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I also think about especially in East of Eden, which maybe it's maybe it's Steinbeck's reading or curiosity about the biblical narrative, or I don't know, but in East of Eden, the fathers, the two fathers, bear significant responsibility that they don't bear well, right? Um they in some ways have created the conditions um of envy among their their sons. Um or they have not they have not been present enough to attend to it. Um is this something that I don't know in your class or in your own reading you've thought about, um especially relative to envy here, that the ones who help to create these conditions.

SPEAKER_02 15:47

Um yeah, we we did address that topic about um how responsible are those who create the envy in others. Um Cyrus Trask is actually pretty aware of what he's doing. And he he's pretty forthright about he doesn't love Charles in the way that he loves, um, certainly in the way that he loves Adam. And um his rejection of Charles's gift, the knife, is what leads to Adam almost being beaten to death. Um Adam is also, I think Adam is even slower than his father, Cyrus, to to realize what's happening with his own sons. Um there's the beautiful scene when uh Caleb has ended up uh in jail because he was at the wrong place at the wrong time, right? Um and when Adam comes to bring him home and their city and in the kitchen and this intense uh scene between the two, um Adam and and Caleb finally look at one another, right, and really see one another for the first time. Do you do you remember when, excuse me, Steinbeck says that um Caleb looking into the eyes of his father sees not only how beautiful those eyes are as if he hadn't seen them before, but he sees himself too, right? There he is, there I am in my father's eyes. And there's this identification that's so important to Caleb who um can't figure out who he is, and he doesn't, and he longs for the love that his brother receives, as you said, gratuitously, it seems. Um so that's just such an important moment. And Adam begins to realize that he doesn't know his sons at all, right? And um doesn't understand the differences and um whether one is good or what whether one is bad, but he just he just doesn't know his sons, and he begins to think, I'm repeating what my father was like in some ways. Um but even with that, I don't know uh how you feel about this, but even with that sort of um awakening in Adam, he still doesn't understand entirely what it is that that Caleb needs from him. Um I mean he clearly continues to shower his affection upon Aaron, and he says he trusts Caleb, um, particularly about protecting him from um his mother, right? The the knowledge of his uh mother. Um But then when Caleb gives him the gift, we're like, oh, Adam.

SPEAKER_03 18:58

Adam has blown it. Well, yeah, that gosh, that scene in the kitchen between the two of them. Yeah. And as you as you recall for us, Caleb's what is it, Caleb's epiphany, his awakening to his own, not only his own love for his father, which he he seems to, it it's drawn out of him. It's there before, but it's drawn out of him, but also seeing himself in his father's eyes, a a recognition of his father's love or the possibility of his father's love for him. And that starts in the narrative for Caleb a quite noble kind of quest and way of living to give something of great value to his father, and particularly to support his brother. This is and this is what in the end, the the money that he earns through his own ingenuity um that he gives to his father that his father rejects, the rejection of the gift. And I wonder, so just to bring this back to you, and Adam's uh coming quite late to see his sons, but does seem then to try to see them at that tragically decisive moment when he rejects Caleb's gift. It seems that he's fallen back into um not just not seeing his son, but far too quickly uh assuming that he has seen Caleb, that he has seen where this that it's not a gift, that this was some kind of contrivance, that um he sees only the wads of cash, but does not see the sacrifice and longing of his son in that.

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Right.

SPEAKER_03 20:37

Right.

SPEAKER_02 20:37

Um Caleb wants to give a gift to his father because he loves him and he wants to make up for how much he suffered and and and actually the financial loss too. That's it, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:48

Right. His terrible lettuce plan. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 20:52

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 20:52

So that I mean, in that way, money, which we often uh look very negatively upon, in this way, like Caleb has actually made the money into something quite beautiful. Um but his father can't or won't see that. Um, even if he weren't to take it, he seems to just close, close off the meaning of that for Caleb, really sacrificial gift.

SPEAKER_02 21:19

Right.

SPEAKER_03 21:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:20

And even the line, I'm not gonna remember it exactly, but you know, why can't you be more like I mean, just the worst, the worst possible thing to think.

SPEAKER_03 21:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 21:30

There's the comparative uh right situation right there. Um but can I just say, yeah, one uh back to the kitchen scene. Um when when Caleb goes to make coffee for his father, and he's realizing that how how much the love of his father can transform him. He no longer feels hatred towards anyone, yeah, even his mother, you know, his mother. And it's just it I really want students to see this. This is what this is what charity. This is what love, right, uh can do. It does have a transforming, right?

SPEAKER_03 22:04

I mean, it it quite literally motivates him. It is his motive. And his action for the time afterwards is is driven by that, right?

SPEAKER_02 22:15

And this dark figure, right, suddenly becomes light and Lee's wondering have you found a girlfriend or what's going on? You know, you're throwing your hat up in the air and he's transformed by it.

SPEAKER_03 22:25

And then the shift, and this is part of the tragedy, right? The shift in the motivating force, the motive in Caleb after the rejection of the gift. It's that rejection that then becomes his uh the scheming, you know, at the heart of the scheming that he involves himself with, which comes pretty, you could say, naturally or instinctively to him to create um to create a set of conditions that will lead to his brother's downfall.

SPEAKER_01 22:56

Right.

SPEAKER_03 22:56

Yeah. Whereas before that money was for his brother's good. So his brother could go to college.

SPEAKER_02 23:02

Go to study.

SPEAKER_03 23:03

Yeah, no, remarkable thing. And I suppose like one of the things that I find myself fascinated by, maybe in this most recent reading, because I just, as I told you, I read this recently after I heard that you read it again after I heard that you assigned it to your students. I was like, yeah, I'll go back and read that. Um, it was thinking even more about the fathers. Um maybe this is my, you know, the first time I read East of Eden, I was in high school. Um, and so I was much more one of the brothers, but this time uh as a father myself, thinking about the responsibility of the parent, and in this case, in this narrative, the responsibility of the fathers. And the response to, on the one hand, the gifts of your children, on the other hand, just the particularity of your children. Um, and moreover, the relationship of children or those that you mentor, your students, to others in their peer group and how and the responsibility that one who helps to shape others has in that kind of setting.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Um and the danger of showing favoritism to anyone. Yeah. Right?

SPEAKER_03 24:10

How about not a coat of many colors for your favorite? I mean, that's another, right? Where the father uh in the Joseph cycle, uh, Jacob, bears his responsibility poorly at the beginning, right? Um He is blind to the dynamics of his own family. Of course, these others are have their eyes set in a negative light against your favored chosen one, who at that point has done nothing to earn that favor. He just is favored, right? Because why? He is his mother's son. He resembles his mother, which going back to East of Eden, um Isn't it true at the end that Caleb he he comes to a determination about why Aaron is so favored in his father's eyes? It's because he looks like his mother's mother, yeah. The great wound in in his father Aaron's life is the loss, uh, or his father Adam's life is the loss of his wife, uh, or the rejection of his wife, his wife's rejection of him.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

But it's fascinating that he never stops loving her. And that therefore never stops loving. Yes. Um I mean, his his reaction to hearing about her death, I mean, yeah, tells us that uh in spades. But um yeah, he's always wanted her to be who he has imagined her to be.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

Right, right.

unknown 25:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 25:36

But you're right, that's an important moment when you feel this, oh and yet, like, isn't it true?

SPEAKER_03 25:40

Like Adam having confronted her, Kate now, yeah, as the madam, um, having actually gone to see what she has become well after she has left him, has seemed in a way to be able to move on with his life. I mean, he he definitely does. Like, that's where he when he turns towards his children, that that's when he comes out of his catatonic state and like he's able to engage with the world again. He's free, as he puts it. He's free. Yeah. And he's genuinely free. Nevertheless, uh, there is uh a remnant pull, like this remaining pull back to her. And I love the way you put that, who he wanted her to be, not who she was, definitely not who she was.

SPEAKER_02 26:19

Um Well, you remember when uh Steinbeck um has that uh reflection on how uh it was she, or at least his the way he saw her, that brought out the glory in Adam, right? That that brought him alive, that that transformed him, that made him think in creative ways and to become a human being, really, a full human being.

SPEAKER_03 26:43

He was sacrificial, he was industrious, he had ambition. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:46

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:47

Yeah. And it's interesting. I mean, his son, Aaron, does a similar but different thing with Abra, which is that how you say her name, Abra Abra. Okay, Abra. Um, which is that when he goes away to college and he's writing back to her, he has, she said, you know, these letters are in some ways incredible, and he's not writing to me. Yeah. Right. He has created an image of me, um, and he loves that image. He doesn't love me, right? It's interesting, like the kind of blindness that we see in uh Adam relative to his wife gets replayed in a different way in his blindness, temporary blindness, willed blind whatever towards his children, a lack of seeing. And then it's uh passed along, it seems, to Aaron, his favorite son, who also has this kind of blindness towards another. Um, anyways, all these are ways of seeing, which is right, interesting, right? Right, which has to do uh as you as you pointed out in our previous conversation on envy. Envy does have to do with seeing. In fact, it comes from from the Latin word for seeing that has to do with that. Um not all those ways of seeing that we're just mentioned are envious, but they are failures of vision, lack of correction of vision.

SPEAKER_01 28:14

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 28:16

Interesting to think about that. So um how do you have you thought about or or what are saying, maybe if you have reflections on the different positionings of Cain and Abel uh within the East of Eden narrative? Like what do we what does and perhaps let's put this especially when it comes to envy, like what do we see or what are we given to reflect on relative to envy, maybe in one iteration of the Cain and Abel narrative in one generation? What do we see in another? Because we clearly don't get everything about envy in this book, but it nevertheless is a it gives us a way of of seeing or having revealed for us that which is often concealed.

SPEAKER_02 28:58

Right. Um I think it may be important to think about the setting of the novel, right? In the uh Salinas Valley in Central California. Have you been there before? Yeah. Yeah. It's gorgeous. Oh yeah. Yeah. But the way that Steinbeck sets it up at the very beginning, and uh, there's some hints of it later on. Um, but that this is a valley which has great potential for goodness and abundance, but at the same time for death and destruction uh and evil. Um and it's all there, right, in in this one valley. And it's meant to be um for us, right? An indication that um this is true of every valley, right, everywhere. Um so that the possibility of um Cain and Abel and Cain, the possibility of Cain actually not reacting the way he did, right, to rejection is a real possibility. And this is why I use this novel in the Envy Course, because uh, even though Steinbeck himself isn't um ostensibly a religious man, he's definitely a scriptural man. He knows scripture very well. It comes up in all of his written work. Um he wants to retail this story in a way that um exhibits the possibility that envy is not inevitable. Right. Um and that that this, as as Lee will say, is actually um the glory of the soul that we have this possibility to to not react towards rejection uh in the way that we do, to see differently, right? To see differently. Um so that um I don't know uh if you want to move uh to the to this.

SPEAKER_03 31:08

It's the right time.

SPEAKER_02 31:09

Yeah. So um Lee comes uh after much discussion with uh some elder wise people back uh in San Francisco to uh to the conclusion that the heart of the the story uh of Envy, sorry, of Cain and Abel um is the realization that God says to to Cain that while sin is lurking at your door, thou mayest, thou can conquer it, right? This feeling of rejection, this feeling of inferiority, this feeling of um right, not being seen by the father, uh can um does not have to inevitably lead to violence, right, against the one who has been receiving receptive of the blessedness, right, uh, of the father. Um so uh the word for that this is on page 303, 304.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Chapter 24.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Yeah, so maybe we could just uh start in the middle of page 303.

SPEAKER_01 32:32

Let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

Lee's hand shook as he filled the delicate cups. He drank his own down in one gulp. Don't you see, he cried. The Americans standard translation orders men to triumph over sin. Thou must, right, triumph over sin. Um and you call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in thou shalt, meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshell, thou mayest, that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open, that throws it right back on a man. For if thou mayest, it is also true, thou mayest not. Don't you see? And right, this goes on and on, right? Um, but man and the human being is not determined to react the way that Cain reacted. In fact, we are free, thou mayest, as the Lord says, um, respond in a different way. Right.

SPEAKER_03 33:48

Yeah. And it's so then played out in the narrative. Lee, I mean, clearly, Lee, in many ways from the beginning of their lives, is the father that uh Aaron and Caleb do not have in their own father, especially when he is just utterly absent. But even after, after you could say Adam's awakening, you know, after he's confronted uh Kate and he's kind of returned to life, Lee still remains the one who seems to see and know those boys far better. And you see this especially in the way he sees and knows Caleb, and he can almost read to Caleb's heart and is trying to counsel or coax him towards this, right? Like actually claim you need not become your mother. You need not become Cain. You um, you may, thou may, right? Um it's a remarkable thing Steinbeck does. Like he in most novels, we would bristle at this. Like you're getting a kind of lecture, almost a homily, right? Right. Uh, and then you get the narrative to show it, but he's actually woven it into the narrative in such a uh a beautiful uh way that we're able to receive the the sort of sermon and then kind of watch it take place.

SPEAKER_02 35:05

Right. Yeah, yeah. No, I mean he helps both of those boys and he sees when Caleb begins to spiral down, right, uh into the cycle uh of envy, into the malice of envy. He knows what's going on, right? And um tries to pull him out of it and tries to pull Aaron out of his view that you know Salinas is a horrible, evil place, and I need to get away from it.

SPEAKER_03 35:36

Aaron is, you know, in the end, just far more infuriating to me.

SPEAKER_02 35:41

Oh, the students had that same reaction. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 35:45

I think I got to that point. I don't know if that was my, you know, on my first reading when I was a teenager, if that's the way I felt about Aaron. Um but this time it's like, you know, he can't. I mean, what is it about Aaron? He can't or refuses to deal with complexity. Um he's lusting after pristine things, a pristine idea, um, wholeness, goodness, uh ideas, nevertheless, right? Not fully in the soil of the world, if you will.

SPEAKER_02 36:17

Yeah, I mean, Steinbeck um I think creates a little sympathy for him in the fact that um he has this longing for a mother's love and a mother's comfort that he just is not gonna have. And then he tries to make Abraham that. And um so I mean, in in some sense, the fact that love is a certain kind of love is lacking for Aaron makes him who he is. But again, he doesn't have to, you know, he doesn't have to be this.

SPEAKER_03 36:53

Thou also mayest.

SPEAKER_02 36:54

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:55

Yeah, right, right, right, right.

SPEAKER_02 36:56

Right.

SPEAKER_03 36:56

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 36:57

And that's the, yeah, as Lee says, that's the glory of the human soul, right? The human soul can't finally be determined or destroyed because you have the choice.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

Right. I mean, and it is absolutely true that neither of them, Caleb or Aaron, is complete unto themselves. Aaron feels very deeply uh that not just loss of a mother, the lack of mother. He's never had mother. His mother left as he uh almost as soon as she could. Um Caleb lacks the sort of natural belovedness of Aaron, who receives love and uh sort of ador the adoration from others effortlessly. Right. It will never come to Caleb that way, right? Um thinking back to a previous conversation we had on envy. Um, and we were even talking about this after the episode. Um, that insight from Gregory the Great you brought forth that if we did truly believe in the body of Christ, what belongs to another also belongs to me as a member of that body. I share in it. It's a participative good, not a competitive good. Um it makes me think, as you said, you know, Steinbeck is not a religious man, he's not, this is not on the doctrine of body of Christ. But nevertheless, like you could almost see the way to the healing of those, those wounds in each of them. In some ways, it's in embracing the other for who he is. Caleb embracing Aaron for precisely for his belovedness and receiving it with him. And Aaron in some ways, I don't know, pr receiving from Caleb his um his confidence, his courageousness, his um his ability to see. To see, to deal with with hard things. Yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

So yeah, I mean it's interesting that they're twins, right? So that this this complementarity that you are you were suggesting. Um and I'm remembering this scene in which Caleb, you know, has been planning to give this gift on on Thanksgiving to his father. And yet, you know, his father's so excited about Aaron coming home, and he's like, no, maybe I should just, you know, not do this and let Aaron have his day. And he probably should have listened to that voice. Right.

SPEAKER_03 39:21

Um But then it's also I mean, he makes the determination like Aaron can't have this also. Isn't that isn't that part of the motive, right?

SPEAKER_02 39:27

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:29

So he he makes that really fateful decision to give the gift on that day out of a competitive mindset. That's really interesting, too. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 39:37

But he does struggle to put put to put Aaron first and then yeah.

SPEAKER_03 39:42

The gift is to put Aaron first, and yet at the same time, the situation is not going to call for that. Yeah. That's right. Um very good. This this work that that you've been doing with your students and that you also do in your own scholarly work, I just want to kind of zoom out here for a second and think about this of turning to toward literature specifically as you're working on the theology or the retrieval of an understanding of envy. What is it that literature is enabling, gives to us or enables you to do, or enables us to see that we oftentimes don't find elsewhere. What are the resources here?

SPEAKER_02 40:20

Yeah. Um just a word about uh envy itself. Um, it's it's of all the sins, it's the most concealed, right? No one, no one likes to confess uh to being envy. And why not? Because it suggests that they are inferior, right, uh, to this other person. It puts all of that out on the table. But also there's there's this sense that, you know, human beings should not really be envious, right? Even though it's ubiquitous right now. Um there's still there's still this sense that uh there's something wrong, right, with with envy. Um but literature takes us inside, I think, the heart of the one who is envious. And it shows us sort of an anatomy of envy, how it begins, how it develops, um, how it manifests, um, and also the the great damage and and destruction, right, that that envy carries with it. Um yeah, the sort of the working title title of my of my project is unveiling envy, the the great anti-life sin, right, and its liturgical um remedy. But the sense that it's so anti-life and it and it carries destruction, right, uh, in its midst. I think, I think writers show clearly, right, how it fragments relationships, how and how it really leads to the to not just the spiritual death of characters, but actually the physical death often enough of characters. So uh I think the way I understand what I'm doing in in terms of bringing uh literature and theology into conversation, particularly on envy, um, comes from a thinker, philosopher, uh Paul Ricœur. Um and he speaks about the religious element uh in literature um being that literature presents us a world um which is out in front of the text and invites us into it, into a horizon which is something uh different than we can experience um here in this life. And that the task of the reader is to surrender to that world on the horizon that um the text gives us. So uh I think um I mean uh a work like uh Steinbeck's East of Eden shows us a possibility that maybe we can't see without stepping into this literary world, right? Without without caring about the characters, without seeing how they're gonna react and the choices, et cetera, that they make. But if we I mean, this is one of the few, I'd I'd say optimistic uh works about envy, literary works about envy.

SPEAKER_01 43:46

Yep.

SPEAKER_02 43:47

Um but right Steinbeck is showing us right the possibility of of the greatness and the glory of the human being who. chooses not to surrender to the envious inclinations that that seem to be a part of humanity. Right. I mean they're they're there in Genesis 4. Right. I mean it it's not it's not that they I mean I mean there's some theological discussion about um you know it's it's interesting that this is the sort of the first sin after the original sin, uh after pride is this sense of of of envy because we've ceased to look uh at God, the giver with thanksgiving and have now begun to see simply laterally right uh looking at one another. Um but anyway um that that's sort of the sort of the philosophy behind how literature can help us see anew and give us um give us a sense of hope that yeah yeah this vice is not inevitable in in human life.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

Yeah, yeah yeah and the sense of hope um that's so well put part of that it would seem has to do with being able to actually follow the trail. So as as you so clearly noted envy conceals itself. Like we don't show our envy in fact we hide it. It's embarrassing in a way it's not so it wouldn't be socially acceptable, right? We conceal it. And therefore the the happenings in our relationships in our society, we can almost never fully trace them back to uh if not the source being envy or some you know having some major role in envy because it's that cause or that motivation has been hidden. But as you mentioned the the literary landscape allows for the possibility of moving into and out of the the hearts the the um the inner life of the characters. And so here in East of Eden or I know another uh where you treat it is uh Francois Mariak's The Viper's Tangle you can go in inside and to the outside um and it allows you to sort of follow the trail as I put it um and I wonder if that is part of the training or the therapy of good literature like this is making us familiar with the way these things happen when we can see a little bit more of the full view so that we have the kind of literary imagination that we can apply to our world outside of literature to recognize the signs.

SPEAKER_02 46:39

I don't know how do you Yeah no no no I like that yeah um but you're right sometimes um we don't know what has caused the downfall of others around us but um even the early fathers uh spoke about the envious as being experts at belittling others right it sounds like we're praising them when we're really right uh belittling the backhanded compliment right um it's a low-level skill but you do it well yeah yeah yeah but that's also part of why right envy is so death dealing not just to communities and you know the families but uh to the individual because um they they they almost self-strangulate right uh in this um one of the one of the favorite images that um both Cyprian and and basil use is it's like you know you're putting your neck in a a noose once you give yourself uh to to envy. Um yeah and in a lot of the the works of um art uh sculptures that we see um shortly before the time of Christ envy is portrayed as someone with their hands around really their neck right um and they they have emaciated bodies and they're and they're they're perishing from this sin.

SPEAKER_01 48:03

Right.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

That's why I call it the great anti-life sin. And um yeah so that right I don't know about you but I don't hear much preaching on on this envy and you know it's like we need help we need help. And but maybe you know literature can help right uh provide provide some guidance right and and some insight um that we should be getting perhaps right from preachers and theologians.

SPEAKER_03 48:36

Yeah as a kind of at the very least a preparation for an examination of conscience. If you can see it here perhaps you could also see it. Yeah yeah really good well listeners you clearly have some homework which is to go back uh if you have read it before and read East of Eden or if you hadn't read it before time to do it. John Steinbeck's The East of Eden.

SPEAKER_02 48:57

Right. I'm envious if this is going to be your first time right to encounter for the first time.

SPEAKER_03 49:02

Yeah it's beautiful but even if you read it some time ago and I can speak to this I read it what was it 30 some odd years ago to come back to it and rediscover it in a way that was familiar but again a completely fresh encounter with the novel itself. So Michon, thanks so much for this conversation and uh not only for talking with us about it, but you were the reason I picked this up again. Wonderful time well spent so thank you very much and thanks as always to all of you for joining us on Church Life today.

SPEAKER_00 49:32

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