1880s

The 1880s serve as a pivotal decade in East of Eden, bridging the aftermath of the Civil War and the turn of the century. It is a time of personal transformation for Adam Trask, of burgeoning corruption and ambition in his father Cyrus, and of the early, hardscrabble settlement of the Salinas Valley by families like the Hamiltons. The decade sets in motion the economic and moral currents that will define the lives of the next generation.

Adam Trask's Military Service and Wandering

Adam Trask spent the first half of the 1880s in the U.S. Cavalry, a period he found deeply revolting. He served in the Indian Wars, a campaign he later described as "not nice work" but necessary "given the pattern of the country's development." His revulsion toward violence grew so strong that he deliberately fired his carbine to miss, committing what he knew was "treason against his unit." Despite this, he was commended three times and decorated for bravery, often risking his life to bring in wounded men or volunteering for field hospital work. He was discharged in 1885, after which he began a long, aimless wandering. He rented a room in Chicago, visited Niagara Falls, and felt a crippling loneliness for the camaraderie of barracks life. This led him to re-enlist, a decision he made in a panic, feeling he "couldn't stand it" and had "no place to go." His second five-year term ended in late 1890, and he was discharged in San Francisco, only to begin another three years of wandering as a bindlestiff, traveling across the country and learning the harsh realities of poverty and vagrancy.

Cyrus Trask's Rise and the Mystery of His Fortune

The 1880s also saw the remarkable ascent of Cyrus Trask, Adam's father. After losing a leg in the Civil War, Cyrus transformed himself into a celebrated military authority. He wrote articles on the conduct of the war, his criticisms of army organization were "irresistibly penetrating," and he became a spokesman for the Grand Army of the Republic (G.A.R.), a position that gave him political influence. He traveled the country attending conventions and meetings. His public life was mirrored by a private life organized on a military basis, where he demanded reports on the household economy. By the time of his death, his estate was valued at over ninety-three thousand dollars in the bank and ten thousand dollars in good securities, a fortune that astonished his sons. The source of this wealth remained a dark question for Charles, who discovered that his father's military discharge proved he had not been at any of the major battles he claimed to have fought in, leading Charles to suspect he had stolen the money from the G.A.R.

The Salinas Valley and the Hamilton Family

During the 1880s, the Salinas Valley was still a frontier region being settled. The land was taken up by homesteaders, and families like the Hamiltons lived on marginal, barren hillsides. Samuel Hamilton, an Irish immigrant, homesteaded a quarter-section for himself, his wife, and each of his nine children, totaling 1,760 acres of harsh, dry land. He built his own house, barn, and blacksmith shop, and invented a well-boring rig and a threshing machine to make a living. The decade was a time of hard work and poverty for the Hamiltons, but also of community and the slow establishment of a social fabric. The whorehouse system, as exemplified by Mr. Edwards's circuit, was also being established in this era, with its two-week stands and careful discipline, a system that would later entrap Cathy Ames.

The Whorehouse Circuit and Social Mores

The 1880s were also the era in which the institutionalized whorehouse circuit, as run by Mr. Edwards, flourished. His system involved moving girls through small towns on two-week cycles, a method that provided anonymity and prevented clients from tracing diseases. The houses were an accepted, if not openly discussed, part of social life, and were said to protect "decent women." This period established the social and economic structures that would later provide a refuge for Cathy Ames after she fled her husband and children, and it set the stage for the moral conflicts that would define the next generation in Salinas.