David Copperfield and East of Eden

A friend gave me this book, East of Eden by John Steinbeck, to read, and with gladness I read it right after I completed the 800+ pages of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens. Having fully crammed David Copperfield and East of Eden into my tiny brain within two weeks, I am left with a spectrum of feelings, past memories, and thoughts to process. There is a sharp contrast between the two in their contents, writing styles, and themes. I sailed through very smoothly with Charles Dickens' train of thoughts as he painted the characters and storyline. However, I was caught quite off guard at nearly every turn of East of Eden's storyline. Its content caused me to pace the floor, to slowly chew the words lest the indigestion sneers at me, and at times, to get choked as if the water went into the wrong pipe of my throat.

I enjoyed these two books immensely, but with a completely different kind of enjoyments. When I finished the book of East of Eden, I felt like I have just proudly crossed the finish line of a x-mile marathon with both arms flung open into the air, head held upward, and exclaimed "YES!"; as opposed to that of David Copperfield, I felt like having just listened live to Beethoven Symphony no. 5 with Beethoven himself as its conductor. And yet both experiences are essential and beneficial, for one strengthens my philosophical muscle on human problems while the other my imagination muscle.

On a personal level, David Copperfield aspires me to a world of dreams, especially on one particular dream that has been shelved for almost 15 years now; East of Eden, under John's psychological insight and understanding on human nature, illuminates some very unpleasant family issues caused by the very haunting theme amplified in this book. That is the very reason why I felt overwhelmed after reading these two books, for they swang me from one end of the cozy imagination world to the lingering realistic age-old human problems. Although I disagree with JS on two out of his many philosophical statements, his brilliant writing style and a unifying theme throughout the book with its various characters do ease the discomfort of our different view points on the existence of God. He definitely enhances my understanding on the dire consequences of "sin is crouching at door.." if we don't learn to master our weakness, and he rekindles my interest in learning Hebrew language again..

When time is permissible, I will definitely reread these two books again. ;-)