I have thought very long and hard about forgiveness over the past few years. How is it do be done right? If someone hurts you, and immediately asks for your forgiveness, how is it possible for you to give it? If you haven’t processed your feelings of anger and injustice, they will bubble up later. Is forgiveness always aspirational? Can it be forced before its natural time? Or is it just a result of healing? If you were to ask a child what it means to forgive, they would probably describe some sort of verbal exchange, a conversation between two people, one having wronged the other. There might be the phrase “I’m sorry” and an explicit or implicit request for forgiveness. The speech part of forgiveness is performative,[1] where an utterance doubles as an act. In saying “I forgive you” the act of forgiving, presumably, takes place. As we all know, forgiveness is much messier and rarely follows such a stiff formulaic pattern. Why is this how we talk about it then? Does it require a conversation? Is it just a feeling in your heart? How do you know if you have given it? Or received it?

 East of Eden[2] is one of my favorite books and when read through the lens of how complicated forgiveness can be, it becomes a rich text on the nuance of forgiveness—where it is implied, granted, or misused. In no place in the book does a clear exchange of forgiveness take place, which, to me, feels true to life. How, then, do different characters reconcile? The imprecision of forgiveness highlights a weak spot in the clear-cut formula of performative speech acts. Sometimes people are able to reconcile without any verbal transaction like Adam and Charles; other times, a person doesn’t mean the words they are saying, like Cathy; and puzzlingly, in the final scene, Adam introduces agency as the most important element of the fabric of forgiveness.  Cal is asking for Adams forgiveness and instead of granting it, Adam answers “Thou mayest.” What does this teach us about the role that individual agency plays in forgiveness?

First of all, are words required to forgive? Examples in the book and real life suggest that no, words are not always necessary. When Adam says he is going to come home but then decides to reenlist in the army, he disappoints Charles, who was waiting and excited for him to come home. Adam knew this would hurt Charles: “It was over a year before Adam wrote to Charles…Charles did not reply until he had received four anxious letters, and then he replied coolly, ‘I didn’t expect you anyway’” (Steinbeck 52). Charles holds on to this hurt, acting indifferent and chilly towards Adam until, 50 pages or so later, he learns that Adam was in prison and that knowledge seems to soften him to his brother: “Charles had more respect for Adam after he knew about the prison. He felt the warmth for his brother you can feel only for one who is not perfect and therefore no target for your hatred” (109). Neither Charles nor Adam ever say a word about forgiveness, yet functionally, these interactions have the result of forgiveness and reconciliation. Does this mean that if the two parties want to reconcile, there is no need to ever explicitly, verbally grant forgiveness?

What about when the right words are there but the intent is not? When Cathy tries to run away from her family, her father brings her back and whips her brutally. When her father finished and asked her, “Now, will you ever do that again?” she cried “No, oh, no! Forgive me!” (83). Her father does not hit her again. After that, riding on the goodwill of her explicit plea and her father’s implicit forgiveness, Cathy is good, respectful, and above suspicion from her parents until she sets the house on fire with them inside. Cathy said she wanted to be forgiven, but she didn’t: she wanted them to (literally) get off her back so that she could do what she wanted, which was to get away from them forever. The words are there, the petition for forgiveness is explicit; however, the trust it produced in her parents was the result of a façade and Cathy’s intentions were never that of actual reconciliation. She exploited the trust they placed in her after she said she wanted forgiveness, and they granted it. She wanted to stop being beaten by her father and she wanted to be free of them forever. If intention seems to matter but words don’t as much, then how do you know if forgiveness has taken place? Do you just look to the effects?

This imprecision of forgiveness is the backdrop of much of the cyclical family patterns that power the central drama of the story. These examples may seem obvious when we think about how forgiveness functions in our own lives, however, within the laws that govern the universe of this fictional book, the times where forgiveness is granted without words and when words and intentions don’t match up matter in analyzing the final, climactic scene. After being shown by Cal that their mother is a prostitute, Aron enlisted in the war and quickly died; Cal wants forgiveness from his father who has suffered a stroke from the stress of it all. Adam is in a rapidly deteriorating physical condition, making his body language and actual spoken language hard to understand. However, those who surround Adam’s bedside postulate that Adam may be trying to communicate with his eyes: “His eyes were open, and they had great depth and clarity, as though one could see deep into them and as though they could see deep into their surroundings. And the eyes were calm, aware but not interested” (590). When Cal enters and offers his initial apology, confessing and explaining the contours of his wrongdoing that he feels led to Aron’s death, Adam’s eyes “did not change or move.” Cal interprets this as not offering forgiveness because he is expecting a certain scripted response. This is reasonable, based on the collective narrative of the verbal back-and-forth of forgiveness; however, as the text has already gone out of its way to show, much of the performance of forgiveness is ambiguous. When Cal later tells Lee that Adam has not given his forgiveness, Cal says “It was in his eyes. He said it with his eyes. There’s nowhere I can go to get away—there’s no place” (592). Lee explains that any look in Adam’s eyes is not trustworthy, that there is pressure in his brain that affects his eyes and therefore the meaning that Cal is ascribing to them (that they are accusing him of murder) may not be true. This disconnection between the body and the words of forgiveness is the first in the book—throughout the novel, eyes have been indicators of characteristics of those that possess them. Cathy’s eyes are described as cold and able to see into men’s souls; Adam’s as tunnels. To explicitly disconnect the meaning from the body after Steinbeck has so carefully woven the two together creates tension between Steinbeck’s precedent and the failure of the body to live up to intention, here manifest in the actuality of having a stroke. Thematically, this discussion about the meaning of the look in someone’s eye fits with the characterization of forgiveness throughout the book. How can one truly know if they have been forgiven? Is a look sufficient?

Then “terrible brightness shone in Adam’s eyes… Adam looked up with sick weariness. His lips parted and failed and tried again. Then his lungs filled. He expelled the air and his lips combed the rushing sign. His whispered word seemed to hang in the air: ‘Timshel!’” (601). Then he goes to sleep, it is unclear if that is meant to be death. “Timshel” is a Hebrew word that means “Thou mayest.” The meaning of “timshel” is first explained by Lee earlier in the text: unlike The American Standard translation of the Bible where Cain is “ordered” to triumph over sin, or The King James translation where there is a promise that he “shalt” triumph over sin, the original Hebrew word Timshel means that Cain “mayest” triumph over sin (301). In this key moment as Cal asks for forgiveness, Adam answering “timshel” points Cal to the reality that individual agency, not collective agreement or reconciliation, is critical to forgiveness. Does Adam forgive Cal? It doesn’t matter. The answer is irrelevant in the face of Cal’s agency.

East of Eden’s final scene suggests that individual agency, as opposed to the relationship between two parties, plays the most important role in forgiveness. All of the previously raised textual questions about the ambiguity of forgiveness in verbal and nonverbal communication have placed the relationship as the central deciding factor and not the individual. This last scene suggests that by saying you forgive someone, the other person and their response doesn’t matter– the speech act is contained within itself, and any issue with that forgiveness is in the control of the person that gives forgiveness. If one is asking for forgiveness and feels remorse, they are in control of the effect (how they want to change, what they want the relationship to be going forward etc.) in themselves– they ‘mayest’ live as if they have been forgiven– independent of whether it was actually given. All the redemption that happens as a potential result of successful forgiveness is contained within the body and soul of the person who gives it. Forgiveness is self-referential and kenotic.[3] As one uses one’s agency to choose to forgive and to accept the benefits of receiving forgiveness, even if it is not actually granted, one is able to live as a full agent, fully liberated and empowered to act. Whether or not Adam forgives Cal or Cal accepts that forgiveness is entirely up to them–they mayest.

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[1] This is not like the black squares during the 2020 situation, this is when something you say is also something you do—for example to warn. It is something you say, and as you say it, you also do it. Other examples are when you greet, promise, warn, order, invite, congratulate, advise, or thank.

[2] There are spoilers in this post but also the book is like 100 years old so I don’t feel bad. If you haven’t read it, you should! It is very good and easy to read.

[3] A Christian theological idea that means “self-emptying,” specifically the self-emptying of Jesus—it’s a Greek word