Thats Right...He's KOREAN!! ROCK ON DUDE!

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

East of Eden (pg 151-175)

False impressions and false love has dragged Adam to Salinas Valley. Now false hope leads him to believe that life in Salinas Valley will be ideal and his farm utopian. In pursuit of his utopian farm, Adam seeks the help of Samuel Hamilton to find some water on the farm. While traveling to and from the Trask farm, Samuel Hamilton is given the opportunity to converse with Adams butler, Lee. From their conversations, Hamilton discovers the manner that is expected of foreigners, the benefits of being a butler, and the true nature of the Trask household. "Pidgin they expect, and pidgin they'll listen to. But English from me they don't listen to, and so they don't understand it." Lee isn't understood by the ignorant unless he puts up the stereotypical front; such expectancies are prevalent today, the nature of contemporaray stereotypes and prejudices demonstrate such expectancies. "But a good servant... can completely control his master, tell him what to think, how to act, whom to marry, when to divorce, reduce him to terror as a discipline, or distribute happiness to him, and finally be mentioned in his will." The professions of butlers and servants are looked upon disdainfully and even condescendingly; however, its position is a powerful one.

Will Lee somehow influence anything in the Trask couple's relationship? Why do people expect certain people to act a certain way? What is pidgin?

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