Coming of Age in John Steinbeck's East of Eden

As time passes, it seems that each generation gets weaker and weaker. Cases of asthma, allergies and various other sicknesses increase with each year. This increase in ailments is the result of society as a whole becoming too clean. Some exposure to germs is beneficial.

Similarly, it is beneficial for people to be exposed to some trauma as they are coming of age. People who had a lack of adversity in their childhood are particularly vulnerable to panic when trauma does eventually occur (Rando). The lack of adversity in childhood yields no opportunity for practice in coping with conflict or opposition to one's assumptive world. The assumptive world, as explained by Jeffrey Kauffman, is "a psychological principle of the conservation of human reality or 'culture' [...] It includes our interpretation of the past and our expectations of the future" (2). Kauffman also explains that "Assumptive worlds are constant internal constructs, and change is the disruption of the constancy of these constructs. Change also prompts the need to conserve, or maintain constancy" (2). As illustrated in John Steinbeck's depiction of Cal, Aron, and Adam as well as the use of Biblical allegory in the novel East of Eden, adversity is an essential part of the coming of age process because it grants those enduring the adversity with the consequential experiential knowledge to reassess and effectively manage more complex confrontations to their assumptive worlds as adults. Therefore, conflict is even the very thing that defines coming of age. That is, those who mature in conditions where there is a pronounced lack of adversity must rely on juvenile coping management skills although physically they are adults.