John Steinbeck's East of Eden has been called an allegorical novel. The story of Cain and Abel is obviously an example. What might be some...

John Steinbeck’s East of Eden is
obviously and unapologetically an allegorical novel, and indeed the allegory has often
been considered too heavy-handed and unsubtle. Steinbeck himself took great pride in
this work (considering it better, even, than The Grapes of Wrath –
a book that also had some allegorical overtones but in which the allegory was not nearly
as obvious or overbearing).  The Cain and Abel story clearly lies behind much of the
complicated plot and enormous length of East of Eden, and Steinbeck
makes certain that this archetypal story is never forgotten, partly by giving a
succession of characters names beginning with the letters C and
A.

However, Steinbeck’s novel has also been called
allegorical in a number of other ways, including the
following:

• The book has been seen as an allegory
  of good vs. evil (see an article by John Clark Pratt in A John Steinbeck
  Encyclopedia, by Brian Railsback and Michael Meyer, p.
  189).


• According to Pratt, the novel reveals Steinbeck’s
  technique of

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syncretic allegory, by which he uses precise
literary and other recorded references in a distinctly untraditional way. (p.
189)

• For example,
  Pratt argues that the character of Cathy Trask can be compared to Catherine the Great,
  Cain, Satan, and Alice in Wonderland (p. 189).


• Steinbeck
  himself is quoted by Pratt as having called the Cain and Abel story an allegory of the
  “basis of all human neurosis” (p. 190).


• Louis Owens, in
  an overview of the novel in A New Study Guide to Steinbeck’s Major Works, with
  Explications (edited by Tetsumaro Hayashi), sees the novel as an “overarching
  allegory of light and dark, good and evil” (p. 73). Owens also suggests that the novel
  is an allegory of issues of free choice in
  which

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we are all given responsibilities for our own
destinies (p.
73).

• Owens also
  suggests that in some respects the novel is an allegory of Steinbeck’s own family
  history (p. 75).


• In another article in a different book,
  Owens argues that Adam Trask is Steinbeck’s “American Adam” (see Bloom’s
  Modern Critical Interpretations; The Grapes of Wrath, ed. Harold Bloom
  [2006], pp. 70-71).


• David Jasper, in his book A
  Short Introduction to Hermeneutics, says that Steinbeck’s
  novel

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is an allegory that retells some of the stories
of the early chapters of Genesis in the context of settlers in
California,

and he
specifically mentions not only the Cain and Abel story but also the story of Jacob and
Esau (p. 122).