From Monster to Martyr

W hat happens when a morally relativistic society meets a monster? A recent Netflix reimagining of John Steinbeck’s novel East of Eden gives us an answer.

Rather than keep antagonist Cathy Ames as an impenitent “psychic monster” who emotionally and sexually abuses people as a sick form of contrition for the world’s hypocrisy, the show softens Cathy by adding a backstory of childhood sexual trauma not present in the book. The sentimentalization of Cathy follows the predictable Hollywood tendency to turn villains into antiheroes to root for or pity, transforming Steinbeck’s monster into a martyr. But series creator Zoe Kazan’s decision doesn’t eliminate Cathy’s monstrosity — rather, it encourages her audience to excuse evil.

Netflix’s TV adaptation of the novel was an immediate success after its October 1 release. The cast includes Florence Pugh as Cathy Ames, Christopher Abbott as Adam Trask, and Mike Faist as Charles Trask. After only four days on the platform, the seven-episode TV series garnered a staggering 6.5 million views.

I will admit it was an engrossing piece of television. The creative team tackled Steinbeck’s magnum opus beautifully with a cast that could not have been better suited to the task. Florence Pugh’s performance as Cathy was skin-crawlingly good; I knew I was supposed to hate her, but by episode seven, my heart ached as I watched her devastating demise. Then, a question entered my mind: How could I possibly feel bad for someone who murdered her parents, abandoned her family, and profited from degrading men and women alike? Because she was no longer a monster; moral relativism had come for another victim.

The plot of the original 1952 book mimics the biblical story of Cain and Abel, a sibling rivalry turned fatal, with two generations of brothers: Charles and Adam and Caleb and Aron. Set against the backdrop of Steinbeck’s childhood in Salinas, Calif., at the turn of the 20th century, East of Eden explores the battle between good and evil for the human soul. This theme centers on the Hebrew word timshel, or “thou mayest,” which roughly means that we have moral agency despite our natural inclination toward evil.

The first time Steinbeck introduces us to the infamous Cathy Ames, she’s ten years old and tied up in a barn with two boys, claiming that the boys assaulted her. We soon learn that Cathy staged the rape and framed the local boys for no other reason than to exercise her own power and perverted sexual desires. However, when Zoe Kazan read the scene, she read it differently. Rather than staging the rape, Kazan implies that Cathy was the victim of rape as a child herself.

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Florence Pugh explains that Kazan “didn’t want to villainize this person because of all the things that they did later on, but to maybe give them [the audience] a pause, so that we understand maybe why they react in that way because of all the things that happened to them when they were younger.” “It’s very faithful,” Kazan tells Vanity Fair, “but also, I don’t think extending more empathy to Cathy is outside of what Steinbeck was trying to do.” Except for the fact that the change was completely outside of what Steinbeck was trying to do.

In an epic such as Steinbeck’s, the goal is two-fold: to entertain and to probe. To entertain because Steinbeck wanted people to read the book, and to probe because that is the goal of any great work — to dare the reader to think differently than they had before reading, seeing, or experiencing that work. The first words Steinbeck uses to describe Cathy are, “I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. . . . As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience.” Steinbeck states very clearly what our initial impression of Cathy should be: She is a woman with no capacity for remorse — a monster, plain and simple.

However, the presence of timshel dares us to consider an alternative: Cathy does, in fact, have agency over her actions, despite her nature — that is what makes her monstrous. She is not condemned to evil because she was “born a monster” with no remorse; her fatal reaction to hurting her son, Aron, suggests as much. She chooses evil without remorse. And that’s the point.

By using a biblical story as a framework for the novel, Steinbeck applies an objective moral framework to the plot and its characters. Right and wrong — good and evil — exist. But Kazan’s morally relativistic rewrite erodes Cathy’s original purpose as defined by Steinbeck himself. In an essay by Jennifer Ren about Cathy’s character entitled, “Disappearing Out of Existence: An Examination of Identity in East of Eden,” Ren uses Steinbeck’s own letters and personal writings about Cathy’s character to reveal his intent in creating her:

Steinbeck warns his readers that “they will forget [he] said [Cathy] was bad. And they will hate her because while she is a monster, she is a little piece of the monster in all of us. It won’t be because she is foreign that people will be interested but because she is not” (Journal 129). The main thing most people will not identify with Cathy is her cruelty and lack of empathy. However, in the moments she shows that she has feelings, we relate to her. . . . Steinbeck’s claim that people will understand the more “human” parts of Cathy seems to point to “the little piece of the monster in all of us.” If people can relate to the flawed but understandable parts of a monster, then there must be a seed of monstrosity that we keep hidden in the depths of our own psyche that could have bloomed from within to without.

Steinbeck’s goal in writing East of Eden was to warn against the monster that exists inside all of us, and the consequences of submitting to it. Kazan’s deliberate choice to give Cathy a traumatic background undermines Cathy’s moral agency. Doing so justifies her actions in ways that are unjustifiable in the book, all to extend “more empathy to Cathy.” By doing so, Kazan takes a monster we are meant to hate and fear and turns her into a victim we subconsciously try to understand and extend sympathy toward, robbing us of an opportunity to recognize the monster within ourselves — or worse, subtly giving us a reason to justify that monster inside of us rather than condemn it.

Art reflects a society’s moral psyche, and our morally relativistic art suggests we have forgotten that inexcusable evil exists and is worthy of complete condemnation. Without moral objectivity and a willingness in popular culture to represent evil without rationalization, the morally relativistic entertainment we consume will lead to an inability to define it. If we cannot define evil, we cannot recognize it. If evil cannot be recognized, it cannot be condemned — look no further than the normalization of abortion.

Monsters remind us why we need moral objectivity, but their erasure from pop culture leaves our society groping about in relativistic darkness in search of moral standards. The incessant justification of evil on screen obscures the fact that the characters portrayed chose to pursue it, no matter their backstory, diminishing the sin and its consequences. Forget guilt, confession, and redemption — in Kazan’s worldview, moral absolution is only an excuse away.

To complete his initial description of Cathy, Steinbeck tells — or rather, warns — us that “you must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.” I cannot think of a better argument in favor of moral objectivity than that.