East of Eden Hamilton family tree

Samuel Hamilton and his wife Liza came from Northern Ireland and settled outside King City around 1870, on rocky hill land where Samuel struggled to make a living.² They had nine children, four sons and five daughters, and the East of Eden Hamilton family tree draws all nine on one row.²

Samuel is the friend of Adam Trask through the middle of the novel. He dies in Part Three, and Adam goes to his funeral in Salinas after Samuel’s last visit to him at the old Sanchez place.⁴

The synopsis describes George and Will as the practical older sons, both married and respected in business. Tom and Joe are the younger dreamers. Tom stays on the farm and writes poetry, and Joe avoids farm work and is sent to Stanford.²

Of the daughters, Una is the eldest, dark and studious, and marries a photographer and moves to Oregon. Lizzie marries young and becomes estranged from the family. Dessie is the daughter known for fun and laughter, Olive becomes a schoolteacher, and Mollie is the youngest.²

Olive is the mother of the narrator, who is John Steinbeck himself, so the East of Eden Hamilton family tree reaches one generation further on her side than on any other.²

Steinbeck first planned the novel as a history of his own family, and the University of Virginia Library describes Samuel Hamilton and his descendants as his relatives in the Salinas Valley.¹ The synopsis names Olive as Steinbeck’s mother.²

The Trask family is invented. The same record describes the Trasks as a fictional family followed over three generations beside the account of Steinbeck’s own people.¹ An East of Eden Hamilton family tree is therefore half a family history and half a novel, and this chart draws the Hamiltons as the novel tells them rather than as the records of the real family give them.

The Trasks stand to the left of the East of Eden Hamilton family tree on the chart. Cyrus Trask farms in Connecticut after serving as a private in the Civil War. Adam is his son by his first wife, and Charles is his son by his second wife, Alice.²

Adam marries Cathy Ames, and she bears the twins Cal and Aron and then leaves him. As Kate she works in Faye’s brothel and takes it over by poisoning Faye, and she claims that Charles is the father of the twins.^2,3 Lee, Adam’s cook, raises the boys, and Abra Bacon becomes close first to Aron and then to Cal.^3,4

When Charles dies in Part Three, his will divides his money between Adam and Cathy.⁴ In Part Four Cal goes into the bean business with Will Hamilton and offers his father fifteen thousand dollars, and the rejected money is burned. That moment ties the two families together on the chart, since Will is a son of Samuel.⁵

Lee explains the Hebrew word timshel to Samuel in Part Three as thou mayest, a word that leaves a choice to each person. In the last scene of Part Four Lee urges Adam to bless Cal, and Adam whispers the same word.^4,5 The East of Eden Hamilton family tree ends there, with a father and the son who lived.

A square is a man and a circle is a woman. A line between a couple with a line down to the children is a marriage, and the joined lines over Cal and Aron mark them as twins. A cross marks a death.

The green ring shows the Hamiltons and the red ring the Trasks. Lee and Abra belong to neither family and stand without a ring. The orange zigzag between Cal and Aron repeats the rivalry of Adam and Charles one generation earlier, which is the pattern the novel takes from the story of Cain and Abel.

To build an East of Eden Hamilton family tree of your own, open the chart in the editor from this page or start from the story charts. The symbols are set out in the genogram symbols.