East of Eden

While Steinbeck's narrator serves as a contemplative and critical voice, largely meshing with the voice of the author himself, neither the novel's author nor its narrator are entirely objective. While many statements of fact made by the narrator are rendered with an air of irony or satire, there are a few passages in East of Eden that feature unironic, questionably factual statements. One such unreliably narrated statement occurs in Chapter 1, as Steinbeck sets the scene of his creation myth:

First there were the Indians, an inferior breed without energy, inventiveness, or culture, a people that lived on grubs and grasshoppers and shellfish, too lazy to hunt or fish. They ate what they could pick up and planted nothing. They pounded bitter acorns for flour. Even their warfare was a weary pantomime.

Cite this Quote