SOURCE: Mann, Susan Garland. “The Pastures of Heaven: Agrarianism and The Emergent Middle Class.” In The Betrayal of the Brotherhood in the Work of John Steinbeck: Cain Sign, edited by Michael J. Meyer, pp. 147-61. Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2000.

In the following essay, Mann perceives the Cain and Abel myth as a notable aspect of the stories of The Pastures of Heaven.

“Our enemy has indeed the consolation of Satan on removing our first parents from Paradise: from a peaceable and agricultural nation, he makes us a military and manufacturing one.”

(Jefferson during the War of 1812)

I

The Cain and Abel myth is not nearly as pervasive or as intentionally employed in The Pastures of Heaven as it is in East of Eden, the Steinbeck novel that Ricardo J. Quinones focuses on in The Changes of Cain: Violence and the Lost Brother in Cain and Abel...