East of Eden by John Steinbeck is a beloved novel, and its 1950’s film adaptation is just as beloved. The film was written by Paul Osborn and Elia Kazan, directed by Paul Osborn featuring the infamous James Dean as Caleb Trask.
Though the movie is based on the book, it’s obvious that there are multiple differences between the two. One example of this is in the novel, where we had many characters that were not in the movie, with one being Lee. Lee was a major character in East of Eden. He was a servant to the Trask family, but he provided the boys with a prominent father figure while their own father was too caught up in his own world and sulking over his life. Lee also provided key plot points to the book, like the idea of Timshel or free will, the right to choose your own path in life. That was never in the film! Lee had also given Caleb the money to start his business with Will Hamilton in the novel, but in the film, Cathy would give Caleb the money instead.
Another example of something changed in the film is that Caleb and Aron are supposed to be opposites of each other and, to be honest, they looked really similar. It is shown in the book that Caleb and Aron are supposed to have different colored hair representing Cal having dark hair and Aron having blonde hair showing they have two different fathers. Their mother gets around a lot with different men, including the night of Cathy’s wedding, her soon to be husband Adam, she drugged him and slept with his brother. They didn’t contrast enough to be like how they were in the novel. Caleb was still “evil”, he still had his moments where he was definitely acting with malicious intent and Aron was acting with his heart, but at other times, the way both of them were written made it unclear which is which.
The last example of how things were changed in the film from the novel is the multiple scenes that were actually added to the story. An example of an added scene was when Caleb was in the bar/brothel with Ann (an added character), where Caleb asks about what she knows about Cathy and where he can find her. He had to find her because he had to find out who he is and where this desire in him comes from. It’s shown in both the film and the novel that Caleb is so much more like his mother than his father. He’s driven to be evil, not pure like his brother Aron.
Many (rightfully) prefer the novel over the movie. As mentioned before, East of Eden, by John Steinbeck, is a beloved novel and so is the 1950’s film. However, the novel is long and dragged out at just about 600 pages in length, which really adds so much unneeded context. While, yes, the setting was important, there was no need to write a whole chapter in each section about the war and keeping up with the war.
In the end, I would give the novel a 4 / 5 but the movie was even worse between in my opinion the not so great acting on top of changing the story line every so slightly to the point I wouldn’t be able to tell the two were the same story. I would give the movie a 3 / 5.