East of Eden | Style

Symbolism
The battle between good and evil is foreshadowed in the third paragraph of the first chapter, in the description of the mountain ranges that lie on each side of the Salinas Valley. The Galiban Mountains to the east are associated with light, sun, and warmth. The narrator associates them with a mother’s love. To the west are the Santa Lucia mountains, which are “dark and brooding— unfriendly and dangerous.” In his childhood, the narrator says, he dreaded the west and loved the east. Thus the dualistic framework of the novel is established symbolically on the...

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