the glory

The glory is a luminous, transformative state of mind described in John Steinbeck's East of Eden, a kind of spiritual ecstasy that lights up a man's perception and releases him from fear, bitterness, and rancid memories. It is the mother of all creativeness, a lonely but world-relating force that sets each individual apart from all others. In the novel, the glory descends upon Adam Trask through his love for Cathy Ames, fundamentally altering his gray, eventless life and driving him to build a garden-like home in the Salinas Valley.

Definition and Nature

The glory is defined as a sudden, almost mystical illumination of the mind that can happen to nearly everyone. It begins with a feeling in the stomach, a delight of the nerves and forearms, as though a fuse were burning toward dynamite. The skin tastes the air, and every deep-drawn breath is sweet. Its onset has the pleasure of a great stretching yawn; it flashes in the brain and the whole world glows outside the eyes. A man who has lived all his life in grayness, with events trooping by faceless and pale, may suddenly find that a cricket song sweetens his ears, the smell of the earth rises chanting to his nose, and dappling light under a tree blesses his eyes. Then a man pours outward, a torrent of him, and yet he is not diminished. The glory is a lonely thing, but it relates a person to the world; it is the mother of all creativeness, and it sets each man separate from all other men.

The Glory in Adam Trask

Adam Trask grew up in grayness, his life a slow file of half-sorrows and sick dissatisfactions, the curtains of his life like dusty cobwebs. Then, through Cathy, the glory came to him. His spirit rose flying and released him from fear and bitterness and rancid memories. The glory lights up the world and changes it the way a star shell changes a battleground. Perhaps Adam did not see Cathy at all, so lighted was she by his eyes. Burned in his mind was an image of beauty and tenderness, a sweet and holy girl, precious beyond thinking, clean and loving, and that image was Cathy to her husband, and nothing Cathy did or said could warp Adam's Cathy. She said she did not want to go to California and he did not listen, because his Cathy took his arm and started first. So bright was his glory that he did not notice the sullen pain in his brother Charles, did not see the glinting in his brother's eyes.

Consequences and Thematic Significance

The glory drove Adam to buy the old Sanchez place in the Salinas Valley, where he intended to settle, to found a home, a family, perhaps a dynasty. He planned a permanent seat, a garden so good and beautiful that it would be a proper place for Cathy to live and a fitting place for her light to shine on. He told Samuel Hamilton, "I had a gray life... but it was nothing. I don't know why I tell you this... Then Cathy came. A kind of light spread out from her. And everything changed color. And the world opened out. And a day was good to awaken to. And there were no limits to anything. And the people of the world were good and handsome. And I was not afraid any more." The glory, however, was built on a false image of Cathy, who was a monster incapable of love. When Cathy shot Adam and abandoned him and their twin sons, the glory was shattered, and Adam retreated into a gray, deathlike state for years. The glory thus represents both the highest potential of human perception and love, and the dangerous capacity for self-deception when that perception is projected onto an unworthy object. It is a force that can either elevate or destroy, depending on the truth of the person or thing that inspires it.