This article contains major spoilers for East of Eden. Since East of Eden was published in 1952, John Steinbeck’s sweeping tale of intergenerational conflict and good versus evil has become widely regarded as a great American novel. A retelling of the Bible’s Book of Genesis, set in California’s Salinas Valley, it spans over 600 pages. In other words, faithfully bringing it to the screen is a tall order. Netflix is the latest to adapt Steinbeck’s magnum opus.
Its new East of Eden miniseries is helmed by Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather, Elia Kazan, previously turned the novel into a film starring James Dean. Although the Netflix show follows many of the book’s plot points closely, it also makes some adaptive changes to condense East of Eden’s familial epic into seven episodes. Read on as we break down the major differences between Netflix’s East of Eden and the original novel.
How does Cathy's role change in Netflix's 'East of Eden?'
East of Eden’s central female character, Cathy Ames (played by Florence Pugh), is known as one of American literature’s most infamous antagonists. The book’s narrator even says early on, "There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been said to be possessed by the devil."
However, from the beginning of the adaptation process, Kazan has been clear about her desire to explore Cathy more deeply, as Steinbeck wrote her to embody the Biblical idea of original sin. Rather than painting Cathy simply as a monster, the show centers multiple episodes around her, exploring what led her to make the dark decisions that she makes throughout the story.
“[Zoe] didn’t want to berate [Cathy],” Pugh recently told Vulture. “We were aware that we were going to have to do so much thinking to make this person watchable, and that was just a beautiful ode to this woman in that era who wasn’t really given much forgiveness.”
The show doesn’t shy away from Cathy’s misdeeds, which include murdering her own parents, as well as Salinas Valley brothel owner Faye (Martha Plimpton), whose business she takes over. Yet it also acknowledges that her worldview is shaped by surviving misogynistic sexual and domestic violence, and by the harsh realities of being a woman at the turn of the 20th century. For instance, she is unable to obtain a safe abortion upon discovering she is pregnant and nearly bleeds out from trying to perform the procedure herself.
“I think her viewpoint that the world is bad, that the world is fully evil and folly makes her isolate herself more and more,” Kazan said during an interview with WWD. “She never gains trust in any other person. I think that, for me, was the key to unlocking how an insistence on self-determination can become toxic to herself.”
How does the Hamilton family's role change in Netflix's 'East of Eden?'
The original East of Eden novel follows two interconnected families: the Irish-American Hamiltons, who are based on the maternal side of Steinbeck’s own family; and the Trasks, whose intergenerational conflicts mirror the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.
Although the Hamilton family patriarch, Samuel Hamilton (Ciarán Hinds), remains a key figure in the Netflix series, his wife Liza and their nine children only appear briefly as minor characters. Their own backstories and relationships are not expanded upon. During an interview with The Independent, Kazan explained that these parts of the novel were omitted to condense its sprawling story into seven episodes.
“There’s so much treasure in [the book] that you couldn’t possibly put it all into seven hours,” she said. “There are things I had to leave behind that hurt my heart—there’s so much of the Hamiltons’ storyline that’s not in there, and the Hamiltons are some of my favorite characters in the book.”
Do we see more of Lee's Story in Netflix's 'East of Eden?'
Yes. Lee (Hoon Lee), a Chinese-American man who Adam hires as a servant soon after moving to Salinas Valley, becomes the novel’s moral and philosophical center alongside Samuel Hamilton. He becomes a key member of the Trask family, acting as a second father to Adam’s twin sons, Cal (Joseph Zada) and Aron (Joe Anders).
At one point in East of Eden, Lee briefly leaves the Trask household and moves to San Francisco with plans to open his own bookstore. In both the show and the novel, he returns shortly afterward, telling Adam he missed home. The show expands upon Lee’s trip to San Francisco, following him as he reconnects with his uncle and struggles to rent a storefront from discriminatory white businessmen. When Lee returns to the Trask home, Adam agrees to listen and lets him run the household as a family member.
Speaking to Vulture, Kazan compared Lee’s time away from the Trasks to “a Wong Kar-wai movie.”
“I thought, ‘This character is so private.' I felt like he was even keeping secrets from Steinbeck,” she said. “I wanted to get to know him better.”
Does John Steinbeck appear in Netflix's 'East of Eden?'
No. Because the Hamiltons are based on Steinbeck’s family, a fictionalized version of the author as a child appears briefly in East of Eden. But because the Hamilton family’s storyline has largely been cut from the Netflix adaptation, he does not make a cameo.
Does Charles haunt Netflix's 'East of Eden?'
Like in Steinbeck’s novel, Adam’s younger half-brother Charles’ (Mike Faist) presence in the Netflix show can be felt long after he dies offscreen. In both cases, Charles haunts Cathy towards the end of her life. Earlier in the story, the two have a complicated relationship; Charles distrusts Cathy, but he sleeps with her—and is therefore potentially the father of her twins.
In the book, Cathy begins to sense Charles around her when she becomes paranoid that Ethel (Amelia Reynolds), a former sex worker at her brothel, will turn her in for Faye’s murder (“On this night, she felt that she was not alone,” Steinbeck writes, “Charles seemed to walk to the side and behind her”). The show takes things a step forward, with Cathy hallucinating entire conversations with Charles’ ghost shortly before her death.
“This is a story about these people who are dealing with their own inner demons and trying to keep them at bay, and some do a better job of that than others throughout the story,” Faist said of the scene while speaking to Netflix’s Tudum.