Steinbeck’s novels are acclaimed for their combination of realistic naturalism and moral optimism—two qualities not commonly found together. Steinbeck portrayed the pain, poverty, and wickedness of the world with unsparing detail while at the same time maintained a belief in the “perfectibility of man.” This optimism pervades Steinbeck’s fiction, leavening even his gloomiest accounts of the Great Depression with a powerful sense of hope. The sweeping California epic “East of Eden” (1952) is considered Steinbeck’s most ambitious work and the masterpiece of his later artistic career. Indeed, although The Grapes of Wrath is more famous and widely read, Steinbeck himself regarded East of Eden as his greatest novel. He wrote that he believed he
