John Steinbeck’s East of Eden retells the story of Cain and Abel, depicted by the Trask family as generations move from Connecticut to Salinas, California. East of Eden was also adapted to the screen, directed by Elia Kazan and featuring James Dean.
Although Steinbeck and Kazan have achieved the peak of their professions – the Nobel Prize in Literature and the Academy Award for Best Direction, respectively – Kazan clearly outshines his literary counterpart in bringing the oft-repeated story to life.
Two main differences: Steinbeck challenges the Bible for length whereas Paul Osborn’s screenplay focuses on the last third of the novel and the book loses realism by starkly depicting the characters in black and white extremes as opposed to the film which permits the characters to exist in shades of grey.
James Dean’s immense skill, combined with his untimely demise, has made him a Hollywood icon and he carries this picture. If it were solely up to Steinbeck, one wouldn’t care much about Caleb Trask but Dean’s performance demands the sympathy of the audience.
The book was a chore, the film a joy. Kazan didn’t do much relative to his potential but his use of CinemaScope to make Eden (Salinas, California) come to life and askew camera angles to illustrate the turmoil felt by Caleb, the film’s protagonist. As usual, I don’t see why Dean’s character is the out of control scoundrel that others accuse him of being and feel that he’s one of the most rational people in the film.
Obviously, the parallels to the Old Testament foreshadow the miserable conclusion but there remains a positive message that any Choice Theorist would approve of. The film excludes the character of Lee, the Chinese servant who is more literature than any of the Anglophones who employ him, and consequently loses a large part of Steinbeck’s philosophical contemplation.
In the novel, when confronted with dozens of examples of good and evil distributed along a timeline nearly a century in length, an interlocutor like Lee is valued for serving as a bit of a philosopher for dummies and for curtailing the reader’s urge to throw the book out by imparting interesting ideas largely lacking throughout the text.
Nevertheless, whether audiences experienced East of Eden on film or as part of Oprah’s Book Club, everyone can get the message. “Timshel”, Adam Trask’s last words to his son Cal, a Hebrew excerpt from the Bible meaning “Thou mayest” or “you have a choice”, are applicable to any athlete, student, or person. In the end, you’re responsible for yourself, nothing is pre-ordained, and there’s always a chance to make things better.
A remake of the film is scheduled for release 2009. This production serves as an example of how there is always a choice to pull the plug on a project like this and preserve a perfectly good legacy.