Some pieces of literature just stay with you. Maybe it’s when we read them, maybe it’s who recommended them to us, maybe it is something undeniable about the work itself, but for whatever reason we pick these things up and carry them with us.
My first exposure to John Steinbeck, as for many Brits of my generation, was being forced to read ‘Of Mice and Men’ while studying GCSE English. There’s nothing like taking an exam on a book to suck out any joy from it. For better or worse, however, I think I could still answer an essay question on the text almost thirty years later…
Later on, GCSEs a distant memory, in a flurry of Americana, I came back to Steinbeck. I can’t tell you exactly when I started reading East of Eden, regarded by many as his masterpiece, but it was one of those literary experiences where the fabric of the literary world created made me instantly comfortable. Despite the 600 page length of the tome, I was hooked.
While on a long walking trip this year, I listened to the audio book of East of Eden and was reminded of why I remember this book so fondly. When I saw that it was also coming out on Netflix in a new mini-series, I had another reason to come back to the story. It has been an enjoyable experience to talk to friends old and new about it, whether they have slogged through all 600 pages in readiness for the new adaptation, or have just become aware of the novel for the first time.
I think the decision to have the book narrated makes it a very easy story to access. In the novel it is narrated by a grandchild of the central character Samuel Harrison (who is also perhaps Steinbeck himself). In the new TV adaptation, Cathy Ames narrates instead – a decision I was initially shocked by, but on reflection makes sense for the lense that the new show casts over the story.
We all like being told a story. It takes us back to being children and listening to our parents or teachers read to us. I know from my experience as a teacher that even adolescents understand more of what they hear than what they read. Steinbeck tells us the story of East of Eden in a sweeping multi-generational arc, encapsulating the lives of several families across the turn of the 20th Century, mostly in the Salinas valley of California (where Steinbeck lived).
There are ways in which the story is a series of cycles. Fathers and brothers, parents and children, over generations and asking the same questions – can we change? Are we born monsters? What do we pass on to our children and are we doomed to repear the destructive patterns of our forebears?
Through the stories of the Hamiltons, the Trasks and their children, Steinbeck paints a picture of unruly and complicated family life, with the highs and lows that go with it. From the comic antics of the Hamilton boys stealing their ma’s couch, to the fear of flying that beset one of their sisters later in life, to the deadly serious and sinister implications of Cathy’s destructive path through the lives of others in search of an uncertain and elusive independence, the story is often episodic and meandering. But rather than become tiresome, I found that this more fully paints a world of complex diverse characters. The central role played by Lee, a Chinese American in a time of intense racism, is notable, particularly as the story reaches its conclusion.
Cathy is introduced in the following way to the story – note the way Steinbeck even uses ‘I’ as the narrator of the story –
I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one’s fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishment for concealed sins.
And then continues a little later –
It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighed, some gear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may learn to utilize his lack so that he becomes more effective in a limited field than the uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference, make a painful and bewildering stir in her world.
When I saw that Florence Pugh was front and centre in every way in the new adaptation of East of Eden – as the face of the show, on the inevitable tie-in edition of the book etc. – as the latest incarnation of Cathy, I was curious and honestly nervous. How can a character written in such a sociopathic fashion be the hero of a story? The first episode starts with Cathy’s narration based on the above quotation from Steinbeck’s original, casting the story as a whole a consideration of monsters and women/men. Once I relaxed into the adaptation I was able to enjoy the reinterpretation of Cathy’s role as an abused women caught in the misogynistic world of 20th Century America – in the show young Cathy is shown being led into the woods by an older boy, insinuating an experience of childhood sexual abuse that is not there in the book (where she is shown manipulating and falsely accusing men).
Cathy is still captivating in her manipulation of those around her, but she is also shown to be a victim of the sexist system in which she is trapped, and which has a very fixed set of expectations of what a women can be and do. None of which involve financial security and independence – the thing that she seems to want the most. Even those who love her – most notably her husband Adam Trask – cannot see her for who she is. Even her monstrous parts do not mean she is a vessel or prop for their hopes and dreams. Her ruthless escape from her otherwise idealised childhood, then later her married life, are undeniably shocking, but made more sense to me in this latest adaptation. What Cathy wants more than anything, and what is denied her, is her independence. Freedom from even the well-meaning men in her life who project onto her what they want to see.
The new adaptation stretched credulity for me a little in the final episode or two with the decision to have Adam’s brother Charles appear to Cathy as a ghostly manifestation of her unravelling sanity, or perhaps as a spectre of lost love – Charles is portrayed in the book, and more so in the TV show, as the only one who could truly have understood Cathy; her equal in some way. It seems a similar decision to the 1955 film adaptation of story, which leans heavily into a love-triangle storyline about Adam and Cathy’s sons and their on/off again love interest Abra. Maybe Cathy is haunted by her lost love or regrets about the ways she has lived, but it seemed a little neat to have Charles be physically manifest in that (I wonder if the filmmakers just wanted more of the admittedly excellent Mike Feist in the role).
On the whole, the new adaptation was highly enjoyable, making the themes and ideas of the original story fresh and vital. The last section of the story, focused on the Trask sons Aron and Cal, was also handled well, made all the better for restoring Lee’s central part to the Trask family and even giving us a view of his travels to San Francisco. Interestingly, the creative mind behind the new series, Zoe Kazan, is the granddaughter of director Elia Kazan who directed the 1955 adaptation – an adaptation which solely focuses on the final section of the story, on the cusp of WW1. Most famous for James Dean’s iconic portrayal of Cal Trask, this version is limited by its short run-time, but still powerfully captures the brotherly rivalry and desperate need for a father’s love that is also shown, somewhat more sympathetically, in the new adaptation.
All in all, I have relished the opportunity to think afresh about this story I love, and can only hope that more people than ever can approach this timeless story and consider what it might mean to them. After all, as Lee says, it is our choices which make us.
