The passage below is taken from “East of Eden” written by John Steinbeck in 1952. In the story Cyrus is the father of two boys. Adam, the child of his first wife is meek and mild, while Charles his son from his second marriage (after his first wife had died) is the exact opposite- he’s perpetually angry and mean to everyone.
In this extended passage, taken from early in the story, Cyrus is preparing to send Adam off to the army- something Adam does not at all want to do.
While this entire section is really awesome writing, I’m especially struck here by how well Steinbeck really nails the working of the military in terms of forced assimilation, what happens when people try to maintain their personal identity and finally, how service in the military can be positive experience for some, and not for others.
Cyrus explained softly to Adam the nature of a soldier. And though his knowledge came from research rather than experience, he knew and he was accurate. He told his son of the sad dignity that can belong to a soldier, how he is necessary in the light of all failures of man – the penalty of our frailties. Perhaps Cyrus discovered these things in himself as he told them. It was very far from the flag waving , shouting bellicosity of his younger days. The humilities are piled on a soldier, so Cyrus said, in order that he may, when the time comes, be not resentful of the final humility – a meaningless and dirty death. And Cyrus talked to Adam alone and did not permit Charles to listen.
Cyrus took Adam to walk with him one late afternoon, and the black conclusions of all of his study and his thinking came out and flowed with a kind of thick terror over his son. He said, “I’ll have you know that a soldier is the most holy of all humans because he is the most tested – most tested of all. I’ll try to tell you. Look now – in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst sin we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, “Use it well, use it wisely.” We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.”
Adam wet his dry lips and tried to ask and failed and tried again. “Why do they have to do it?” he said. “Why is that?”
Cyrus was deeply moved and he spoke as he had never spoke before. “I don’t know,” he said, “I’ve studied and maybe learned how things are, but I’m not even close to why they are. And you must not expect to find people understand what they do. So many things are done instinctively, the way a bee makes honey or a fox dips his paws in a stream to fool dogs. A fox can’t say why he does it, and what bee remembers winter or expects it to come again? When I knew you had to go I thought to leave the future open so you could dig out your own findings, and then it seemed better if I could protect you with the little I know. You’ll go in soon now – you’ve come to the age.”
“I don’t want to,” Adam said quickly.
“After a while,” said Cyrus, “you’ll think no thought the others do not think. You’ll know no word the others can’t say. And you’ll do things because others do them. You’ll feel the danger in any difference whatever – a danger to the whole crowd of like-thinking, like-acting men.
“What if I don’t?” Adam demanded.
“Yes,” said Cyrus, “sometimes that happens. Once in a while there is a man who won’t do what is demanded of him, and do you know what happens? The whole machine devotes itself coldly to the destruction of his difference. They’ll beat your spirit and your nerves, your body and your mind, with iron rods until the dangerous difference goes out of you. And if can’t finally give in, they’ll vomit you up and leave you stinking outside – neither part of themselves nor yet free. A thing so triumphantly illogical, so beautifully senseless as an army can’t allow a question to weaken it. Within itself, if you don’t hold it up to other things for comparison or derision, you’ll find slowly, surely a reason and a logic and a kind of dreadful beauty. A man who can accept it is not a worse man always, and sometimes is a much better man. Pay good head to me for I have thought long and hard about it. Some men there are who go down to the dismal wrack of soldiering, surrender themselves, and become faceless. But they had not much face to start with. And maybe you’re like that. But there are others who go down, submerge in the common slough, and then rise more themselves than they were, because – because they have lost a littleness of vanity and have gained all the gold of the company and regiment. If you go down so low, you will be able to rise higher up than you can conceive, and you will know holy joy, a companionship almost like that of a heavenly company of angels. Then you will know the quality of men even if they are inarticulate. But until you have gone way down you can never know this.”
As they walked back toward the house Cyrus turned left and entered the woodlot among the trees, and it was dusk. Suddenly Adam said,”You see that stump there, sir?” I used to hide between the roots on the far side. After you punished me I used to hide there, and sometimes, I went there just because I felt bad.”
“Let’s go see the place,” his father said. Adam led him to it and Cyrus looked down at the nestlike hole between the roots. “I knew about it long ago,” he said. “Once when you were gone a long time I thought you must have such a place, and I found it because I felt the kind of place you would need. See how the earth is tamped and the grass is torn? And while you sat there you stripped little pieces of bark to shreds. I knew it was the place when I came upon it.”
Adam was staring at his father in wonder. “You never came here looking for me,”he said.
“No,” Cyrus replied. “I wouldn’t do that. You can drive a human too far. I wouldn’t do that. Always you must leave a man one escape before death. Remember that! I knew, I guess, how hard I was pressing you. I didn’t want to push you over the edge.”
They moved restlessly through the trees. Cyrus said, “So many things I want to tell you. I’ll forget most of them. I want to tell you that a soldier gives up so much to give something back. From the day of a child’s birth he is taught by every circumstance, by every law and rule, to protect his own life. He starts with that great instinct, and everything confirms it. And then he is a soldier and he must learn to violate all of this – he must learn coldly to put himself in the way of losing his own life without going mad. And if you can do that – and, mind you, some can’t – then you will have the greatest gift of all. Look, son,” Cyrus said earnestly, “nearly all men are afraid, and they don’t even know what causes their fear – shadows, perplexities, dangers without names or numbers, fear of a faceless death. But if you can bring yourself to face not shadows but real death, described and recognizable, by bullet or saber, arrow or lance, then you need never be afraid again, at least not in the same way you were before. Then you will be a man set apart from other men, safe where other men cry in terror. This is the great reward. Maybe this is the only reward. Maybe this is the final purity all ringed with filth. It’s nearly dark. I’ll want to talk to you again tomorrow night when both of us have thought about what I told you.”
But Adam said, “Why don’t you talk to my brother? Charles will be going. He’ll be good at it, much better than I am.”
“Charles won’t be going,” Cyrus said. “There’s no point in it.”
“But he would be a better soldier.”
“Only outside his skin,” said Cyrus. “Not inside. Charles is not afraid so he could never learn anything about courage. He does not know anything about outside himself so he could never gain the things I’ve tried to explain to you. To put him in the army would be to let loose things which in Charles must be chained down, not let loose. I would dare not let him go.”
The Glass is Still Half Full 