Popular Culture Review 30.1
to eliminate roughly the first two-thirds of the novel . The film was more critically acclaimed than its source material ( Railsback and Michael 94 ), despite extreme alterations . Lee , the Trask family ’ s trustworthy , Chinese servant in the novel , may have been effaced because racism towards people from East Asia still existed , as Kazan ’ s film was released within a decade after the end of WWII . This omission makes East of Eden go south somewhat since Lee is the character who makes some of the others realize that mankind has the freedom to choose good over evil . It is Lee who introduces the Hebrew word which means “ thou mayest ,” timshel ; the word is completely absent in Kazan ’ s film . Even though Osborn removed all traces of Lee , Kazan ’ s 117-minute film still stands on its own despite missing other characters and plot points that feature prominently in the novel . With its disturbing issues of crime and sexuality , John Steinbeck ’ s novel East of Eden had to undergo transformation of both narrative and style in order to accommodate translation to director Elia Kazan ’ s vision as a feature film and then to director Harvey Hart ’ s conception as a soapy miniseries ; both adaptations move between Dudley Andrew ’ s three modes of adaptation�borrowing , intersecting , and transforming�and these adaptations also exemplify conventions , historical and cultural contexts , and limitations of their respective eras .
The literary limitations of soliloquies , memories , and stream of consciousness must be externalized for the two-dimensional media of film and television . For instance , Steinbeck chose to have Cathy / Kate think about her son Cal Trask ’ s introduction of his twin , Aron , to her after the fact . Steinbeck places Aron ’ s induction into the army between Cal ’ s taking him to see “ something interesting ” and Kate ’ s recollection of their surprise visit . Both Kazan and Harvey Hart in his 1981 miniseries dramatize the boys ’ visit , for it is the climax of the narrative .
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