Naming the twins from Genesis

A year on, Adam is still grey and the Sanchez house stands open to the rain. Lee tells Samuel in a King City barroom that the twins have no names — Adam calls them "they" — and Samuel, sent out with Liza's blessing and her mother's Bible in his pocket, drives over to force the issue. He insults Adam until Adam swings, knocks him down twice, and then lifts him up: "We'll give them names." Over whisky and fried chicken the three men talk. Adam says the shot was aimed to annoy, not to kill, and asks whether Cathy was beautiful; Samuel answers that he only ever saw his own creation, and that a father's suspicion, not blood, builds evil in children. Lee drops the pidgin for good. Samuel reads the sixteen verses of Cain and Abel aloud, and Lee argues that the story endures because it is everyone's: rejection, then anger, then crime, then guilt. The boys are named Caleb and Aaron, each waking as his name is spoken.

The naming is the errand; the Cain and Abel reading is what the errand was for. Steinbeck puts his book's argument in the mouth of the servant, then has the wisest man at the table say his universe has been tumbled by it. Printing the sixteen verses in full is a risk, paid for by the comedy around it — the fist fight, the chicken, the twins asleep in the dust.