Warning: This post contains spoilers for Netflix’s “East of Eden.”
Joseph Zada lights up when asked about the ending of “East of Eden,” Netflix’s seven-episode adaptation landing on the platform Oct. 1.
“It was ridiculous,” Zada tells TODAY.com of his co-star Christopher Abbott’s performance, awe in his eyes.
Zada’s character, Cal, is the cast out son of Abbott’s Adam Trask. Growing up, Cal always came second to the favored son, Aron (Joe Anders).
In the final scene, which takes place after Adam has a stroke, Cal and Adam have a charged interaction that encapsulates the story’s themes of forgiveness, redemption and choice. Incredibly, the interaction consists of just one, weighty word: “Timshel.”
“I was like, ‘Dude, like, you should not be able to act like that.’ It’s ridiculous. He was using half of his mouth and one of his eyes to act, and then he would say that line. It would be like the most like impactful full word of all time,” Zada says.
Zoe Kazan wrote and directed the series adaptation of the sprawling, multigenerational epic, over 70 years after her grandfather Elia Kazan directed his own adaptation of John Steinbeck’s 1952 book.
Here’s what to know about how her version of it ends.
What Happens at the End of ‘East of Eden’?
A loose retelling of Cain and Abel, “East of Eden” is the story of how two families came to live in California’s Salinas Valley, starting in the Civil War era and through World War I.
Cal, one of Adam’s two sons, grapples throughout the book with feeling immoral. His brother, Aron, is the apparent favorite — the “good” one. As Cal learns the truth about his mother, Cathy (played by Florence Pugh), he worries he inherited her badness.
His inner turmoil worsens when his actions inadvertently lead to his brother Aron’s death while serving in Europe in WWI. His father has a stroke after hearing the news.
Lee (Hoon Lee), Adam Trask’s housekeeper, urges him to forgive Cal and release him from guilt. All Adam says is one word, but it’s enough.
What Is ‘Timshel’?
Adam tells Cal one word at the end of the series and the book: timshel.
“Timshel” is a Hebrew word that appears during the Cain and Abel story in Genesis 4:7, at a time when God is speaking to Cain about overcoming sin or evil. In different versions of the Bible, the word has been translated a few ways — that man “must” or “shall.” But Steinbeck revisits another potential meaning of the Hebrew word: “thou mayest.”
The character Lee explains it in a conversation with Adam Trask and Samuel Hamilton in “East of Eden.”
“The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can calls in ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel — ‘Thou mayest’ — that gives a choice,” Lee says.
“It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’— it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?”
East of Eden
That’s the choice Adam gives his son on his deathbed — he can still choose to be good.
“The whole book is about intergenerational trauma and the way that people believe that they’re sometimes fated to what their parents were like or what the environments that they grown up in,” Zada says.
For Zada, the word liberates his character from his family’s past.
“You can choose your own path, regardless of what you’ve been through and the choices that you’ve made already,” he explains. “You can change, and you don’t have to be like your predecessors.”
