Wow. What a book. When I first started reading this book, I didn't expect much. I didn't really pay much attention to the first few sentences. But, after reading for a bit, I don't know why, but the book just drew me in. I thought to myself, "wow, I need to give this book my undivided attention". So, I took a break until I was much more focused, and I spent the next three hours reading up to chapter 15. The book just "pulls you along", and what really worked for me was searching every quote up that I thought was interesting. What I mean by this is, whenever there was something in the book I didn't quite understand, or made me think, I would type that quote into google, and see what others had to say about it. Eventually, this led me to find a reddit book club that happened to have read East of Eden last year. This turned into a system where I would read a chapter, and then look at what others had to say about the chapter, and I would take notes accordingly. This method was extremely helpful for getting the most out of this book. It isn't dense, per say, but there are a lot of ideas being dealt with, and it's easy to overlook them. It's also easy to be overwhelmed and just "clock out". I might have done that near the end of the book, because I felt that Steinbeck kind of lost steam at the end. The chapters weren't as deep as I hoped they would be, and it felt a bit cliche, and uninspiring. But, that might be just a weakness of this kind of book. When you set up the book so that it would try to encompass as much of human nature as possible, it's really easy to draw the reader in at the beginning. Steinbeck does a great job of character building, and making the characters come alive. The only problem is, there's so many characters. How can an ending possibly encompass them all? It might just be impossible to create an ending that successfully resolves everything the book has to offer – an ending is one idea, and the book has multiple ideas that aren't related. East of Eden is unlike any other assignment in AP Lang. For starters, it is a work of fiction. In a class that mainly deals with short non-fiction articles, a 600 page fiction book is definitely not something to be expected. But I don't think that's the point. Reading East of Eden won't make you a better writer, or teach you rhetorical techniques. But it also can – the sheer volume of text will make you want to analyze it. And Steinbeck's prose is very unique and beautiful. By reading good prose, you naturally become a better writer. Still, East of Eden is a more philosophical book. Steinbeck was able to weave the story of his own family with a fictional family. East of Eden was originally dedicated to his sons, and Steinbeck's original purpose of the book was to tell his sons about the stories of his family, as well as teaching them everything he knew, about writing, about life. So, when you read the book in that perspective, East of Eden is meant to make you think. Steinbeck wrote this when he was much older than I am. It's kind of like having an adult sit you down and have a conversation with you about their own regrets in life. And not a short conversation where "living in the moment" comes up. A long conversation, where the adult really tries to reflect on their life, and show everything that the human experience has to offer. And when you have that conversation, you mature. You become a better person as a result. Speaking of the plot of the story itself, it's brutal. Steinbeck sometimes drops the most horrifying things from the depths of human nature. And some chapters really did ruin my day, and I really didn't want to keep reading. But the good thing about Steinbeck is he understands how readers would read his work. After deep emotional chapters, he often has a humorous one – for example the chapter about the Trask family getting a car after the devastating previous chapter. And I also liked the character Lee. It's really interesting that Steinbeck put a Chinese in the story, but even more so the attention he gave to him. The biggest detail was when Lee cut off his queue. He says, "We all did. Haven't you heard? The Dowager Empress is gone. China is free." (292) That's a really specific detail from Chinese history, when the Qing dynasty was toppled, its mark of authority, the queue haircut was abolished. So it just adds to the detail of the story. But one thing that the book really reminds me of is rejection. Obviously everyone gets rejected, especially in terms of college applications. And this book is really useful for learning how to get over rejection. Sometimes, such as in Cain and Abel, someone gets rejected for no other reason than the person didn't like it. God just didn't like wheat as much as he did lamb. No problem in that, and Cain should just accept that it will be unfair – there's only one thing God can like, he can't like both things. Cain isn't inferior, he just didn't find the "right audience". East of Eden is a truly powerful and unique book, and I can see why Steinbeck would consider it his magnum opus. There's so much in the book to unpack, and so many new ideas to ponder about. Reading it has truly changed me, I have new words to describe my feelings.