The character of Adam Trask in East of Eden In Webster's Unabridged Encyclopedic Dictionary of the English Language, the word love is defined as an affection deeply tender and passionate for another person. Love can bring two people together, but it can also cause one person to be rejected by another because of love. In the novel East of Eden by John Steinbeck, the main character, Adam Trask, faces a feeling of love throughout the book but rejects the love of the people who care about him or has his love rejected by the people to which he cares about. . When Adam was a young man at the beginning of the novel, his father, Cyrus Trask, loved him but Adam did not love him back and when Adam joined the army he did not return home until his father's death. Later in the story Adam really loved his wife, Cathy, but she didn't love him and so when she tried to leave him and he wouldn't let her, she shot him. Even though Adam survived, he was demoralized for much of his life because he still loved her. Through Adam's experiences of love in the novel, John Steinbeck shows that Adam Trask has an inability to handle love. When he first appears in the novel, Adam Trask is a young man who is loved not by his brother or his mother but only by his father. . Cyrus had already punished Adam before and tried to teach him to be a soldier and so Adam hated him for it and when Cyrus told him that he loved him, Adam did not accept his love. Cyrus tells Adam, "I think you're a weakling who will never be a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you more. I always have. It might be a bad thing to tell you, but it's true. I love you more. Why else would I bother to hurt you?" (Steinbeck 28). Cyrus is telling Adam that he has always loved him and that the only reason he punished him is because he loved him. He wants Adam to join the military because he knows Adam would be brave and since Cyrus was in the military, he wants to pass on the legacy. When Adam came home from discharge, he and his brother were talking about their father and Adam told him the truth.