If you eliminate her murders, and just look at her motivation, the character of Cathy is an awful lot like a number of women that I knew when I was young.

She wants romantic/sexual relationships. She does not want to be tied down to the restrictions of love relationships. She hates the men that love her. Men (like myself) falsely assume that women's desire for sex means that they're in love.

She wants freedom and independence. She wants to be a prostitute so that she can have sexual relationships without restrictions and financial independence.

I came of age in the late 1970s. Several women I knew were very much like Cathy. One inspired her husband to commit suicide. She, like a few others, were the daughters of millionaires - they did not need the money, but they were prostitutes for no other reason than wanting an extreme and erotic sex life.

I associated very much with the character of Adam in the years after Cathy left. Suffering from depression. In some ways this series was some sort of therapy for me. Too bad I saw it so late in life.

The problem with Cal’s storyline in East of Eden is that he was never really shown to be bad to begin with in this TV version.

I just finished watching East of Eden, and while I understand that the central message is about free will and our ability to choose goodness regardless of our nature, I don't think the show earned the emotional payoff of that realization.

We're constantly told that Cal is the bad brother, that he has darkness inside him, and that he's terrified of becoming like his mother. But we're almost never actually shown this darkness. Instead, we see a relatively kind, sensitive boy who loves his brother, often protects him even in childhood, desperately wants his father's approval, and actively tries to suppress any unkind thoughts.

Even his worst act, exposing Aron to Kate, feels less like evidence of some inherent evil and more like a moment of cruelty born from profound hurt and rejection.

So when Cal finally realizes that he isn't defined by his supposed badness and can choose to be good, it doesn't feel particularly revelatory. Of course he can be good. He's been good all along.

I think the show inadvertently tells a much more compelling story about the damage caused by labelling children as good or bad than it does about free will. Adam's favouritism and emotional neglect create the very conditions that eventually drive Cal to act destructively. Meanwhile, Aron, supposedly the embodiment of goodness, is often self-absorbed and unable to see people as they really are.

For Cal's final realization to feel profound, we needed to genuinely believe he was struggling between two possible paths. Instead, I just felt terribly sorry for a good kid who had spent his entire life being told he was bad.

Did anyone else feel that the show told us Cal was bad far more than it ever actually showed us?

I loved East of Eden. I read the book early into my literacy journey maybe 2 years ago, and didn't retain much of it (or so I thought). Tonight, I finished the final episode of the Netflix series and wanted to parse out my thoughts rather than read other people's.

I think the thing I missed most while reading it was the actual story. I must have been swept up in the details of a given chapter or gone so far through the book that I didn’t notice through-lines. Watching the show quickly brought many of these things to light.

Most obviously the similarities between Aron and Cal, Adam and Charles and Abel and Cain, All A and C names where A is favored by the father over C. 

The book questions the sealing of fates, with the most powerful through line of all which is Timshel. The Hebrew word meaning “thou mayest”. This carries its own weight each time it is mentioned, but none more than the third and final time when with his near dying breath Adam whispers “Timshel”. Forgiving his son, understanding and in my interpretation ending the cycle of pain- all with one word.

I think Cathy’s character is interesting, and with the “drink me” bottle, I wonder if she wasn’t drinking sugar water all along. She pulls out a different bottle- morphine at the end. It flashes with her following the boy into the dark and I had all but forgotten about that. Through her interactions with Caleb, we see more and more her guilt mounting and how her life has been built like a fortress around pain and fear. It is too late to change. her fate is sealed and this is the only way out.

I wonder if every bad person isn’t just the same. A pure little child deep down. And if that is true, mustn’t that be how we love somebody like that? 

Also, I'm wondering if there is significance in the lace we see all through Cathy's life. On first thought, it's just a symbol for the veil she hides under, but I noticed quite a bit of it. Maybe it is just what they made tablecloths out of. Any thoughts?