If I wanted to adapt John Steinbeck’s East of Eden for the screen, I’d cast Florence Pugh, too.
I first saw Pugh in one of her breakthrough films, Greta Gerwig’s “Little Women.” Pugh played Amy March, a character I’ve pretty much despised since childhood. I would never have expected to let my grudge against Amy go, but Gerwig’s screenplay and Pugh’s performance accomplished the impossible.
Combine that with the fact that she uncannily matches Steinbeck’s physical description of Cathy Ames in the novel, and you can see why this is the star around which someone would eagerly build an adaptation of an American classic. Casting Pugh as Cathy Ames just might be the key to redeeming one of the most hated women of literature.
If Louisa May Alcott made Amy unlikable, Steinbeck makes Cathy the personification of evil. It’s a different challenge, making Cathy Ames likable, one that raises questions not only for the actress but for the adapter: Are we letting a talented actress have fun playing with cruelty? Or are we re-examining Cathy—and Steinbeck’s view of her? And can justification for that kind of reappraisal be found in the source material?
Zoe Kazan is the writer behind the adaptation of the great family epic, and by choosing this material she enters into a kind of family epic of her own. Her grandfather was the filmmaker Elia Kazan, who directed James Dean in the 1955 film “East of Eden.” That adaptation had a different focus: It tackled only the final section of the novel and told the story of brothers Cal and Aron, Cathy’s children. This new version has the advantage of more screen time, spanning seven roughly hour-long episodes in an attempt to cover Steinbeck’s dense 600 pages.
The first several episodes tell the childhood and adolescence stories of Cathy and of the Trask brothers, Adam (Christopher Abbott) and Charles (Mike Faist). After Cathy turns up beaten and bloodied on the Trasks’ doorstep, Adam falls in love with her before learning the darknesses of her past. Charles doesn’t trust her, but still they share a “kind recognizes kind” connection.
After Adam and Cathy marry, they move to the Salinas Valley in California, where Cathy gives birth to their twin boys, Cal and Aron. Her misery in marriage and motherhood causes her to shoot Adam and flee, beginning a new life with a new name and finding work in a brothel. It’s a fresh start, but Cathy’s past follows her.
Especially in these early episodes, Kazan’s adaptation is faithful to Steinbeck most of all in its prose. Both dialogue and scene-setting voiceovers borrow large chunks of text directly from the novel. If this version is trying to view Cathy and her proclivities through a new lens, it’s often using Steinbeck’s own words to do so.
As the series goes on, though, it takes more creative liberties. In the second half, which follows the next generation, Cal (Joseph Zada) and Aron (Joe Anders) are not drawn in quite as much detail as they are by Steinbeck. Viewers might feel, as I did, that the final two episodes could have stretched into three; so much of the Trasks’ family story had to fit into a short timeframe.
Revisiting the novel with this adaptation in mind, I found that, for a modern reader, some of the reasons for a re-examination of Cathy can be found in the text. What Steinbeck often characterizes as her use of her body, even in childhood, to manipulate the men around her might register to today’s readers as a misogynistic mischaracterization of sexual violence. What the novel portrays as the callous abandonment of her children might now read as a postpartum mental health crisis. And most of all, modern readers might be right in noticing that the mostly male cast of characters around her get a much softer treatment for their misdeeds, and a much clearer path toward some of the story’s central themes: free will and the possibility of redemption.
But when it comes to Cathy, the thesis of Kazan’s “East of Eden” is still muddied in places. Has she been driven mad by her circumstances? Is she a misunderstood victim, doing what is necessary to survive in a man’s world? Is she a protector of other women, or a literal murderer of them?
While Steinbeck insinuates that Cathy has been an agent of chaos, even a monster, since birth, Pugh’s eyes tell a different story. She is not essentially unfeeling; she hardens with experience. Nor are she and Kazan interested in portraying a sinless Cathy, even if they offer texture to her motivations. Pugh’s performance is at its best when she is free to unleash all the brutality Cathy is capable of. It’s up to us as viewers to decide if that cruelty is justified.
Does this all amount to a successful adaptation of the book? Much will be a matter of taste. Some of the parts of the novel that I loved most are not what this version is most interested in—the Cain and Abel allegory and other religious allusions are nodded to very gently, and the Hamilton family, who serve as a kind of pioneer foil to the Trasks and are based on Steinbeck’s actual family, is largely left out. But for readers who are most compelled by Cathy, who want to be transported to the vast landscapes of Steinbeck’s Salinas (though it was largely filmed in New Zealand) and who hope to ponder questions about love and fate within a family, there is much to enjoy here.
I expected to be impressed by Pugh, but another performance in this “Eden” caught me by surprise and stuck the thematic landing: Hoon Lee as Lee, Adam’s Chinese immigrant servant, who serves as both a caretaker to his twin boys as well as a companion to Adam. Lee’s performance brought warmth, curiosity and a yearning to belong, and he beautifully completed the Trask family as we watched him move from outsider to insider.
It is Lee who introduces the word timshel and its significance in the family’s story. Lee tells Adam it translates to “thou mayest,” and when it is used in Genesis as God speaks to a guilty Cain, it is a confirmation of free will: Cain may (or may not) triumph over sin; the same is true for the Trasks—and for us. As Cathy and two generations of Trask brothers battle the good and evil within themselves, they retain the possibility of choice. No ancestral curse or past mistake has written their fate in stone.
(Years of writing Scripture reflections for America have trained me to check on translations, so I was disappointed to find out that Steinbeck wasn’t exactly right about this. It seems that he was trying to refer to the Hebrew word timshol, which doesn’t really function the way the author describes; it implies a command or a certainty rather than the possibility of choice. That being said, the tear-stained final page of my East of Eden copy is evidence that when it comes to the story’s philosophical core, Steinbeck did something right, so I’ll defer to him.)
In the hands of gifted performers, what do human beings look like in their struggle to exercise free will? I think that’s what the cast of “East of Eden” is trying to show us. God’s forgiveness is tied up with his gift of free will, and as we watch these humans struggle to treat each other well, we watch them extend that gift of freedom. As this adaptation comes to a close, that expression of love is the payoff—for characters and for viewers.
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