East of Eden Ending Explained: Why Does Adam Say Timshel?

Netflix’s ‘East of Eden’ unfolds over several decades, following the loves and losses of the Trask family. Based on the book of the same name by John Steinbeck, the series streamlines the story to focus solely on them. This means we don’t get to see much of the Hamiltons, but the core of the story is preserved, and the themes of good and evil and a person’s control over their own destiny remain as relevant as ever. The finale brings the entire Trask family, including Cathy Ames, to their reckoning, where each must decide what kind of person they want to be and what legacy they want to leave behind. SPOILERS AHEAD.

East of Eden Recap

Adam and Charles Trask are half-brothers, raised by their strict father, Cyrus, who prepares them to be soldiers from childhood. While the boys love each other, there is also a sense of rivalry, especially from Charles’ end, who is hungrier for his father’s love and approval, which he never really gets. They are separated when Adam is sent to join the army while Charles remains to work at the farm. They reunite years later, after their father has died. For a while, things are fine between them, but then, the arrival of a wounded and beaten Cathy at their door stirs new trouble. Adam sees her as someone who needs to be saved and protected, and eventually falls for her. Charles, however, sees something evil inside her and warns his brother to stay away from her.

Adam doesn’t listen to his brother, believing he is simply jealous, and marries Cathy. Against her wishes, they move to California, where Adam buys a ranch in the Salinas Valley. A pregnant Cathy is tied down to him, but she tells him she will leave the first chance she gets. Adam doesn’t take her seriously and is completely caught off guard when she eventually does what she said she would. She shoots him and walks out of the house, leaving their two unnamed sons behind. She goes to Salinas and joins a brothel. Meanwhile, Adam falls into a pit of despair, from which he is brought out by a wise Samuel Hamilton and the devoted Lee, who singlehandedly raise the twins, Cal and Aron.

How does Cathy Die?

Following Faye’s death, Cathy, now going by Kate, takes over the brothel and completely revamps it. As opposed to how it was when her predecessor was in charge, the place is now known all over the town for being a dark and depraved place where people go to indulge their worst urges and fantasies. While the money is already flowing, Kate also uses the brothel to gather scandalous information about important people, making sure she is always in control. But while the outside world seems to be under her thumb, her own body starts to rebel in a way as she starts to lose control of it. Her years of youth are in the rearview mirror, and she knows her beauty is not as compelling as it once was.

Most of this deterioration is due to her arthritis. It makes her unable to do basic tasks without feeling a measure of pain, which means she is now dependent on other people to do things for her. This includes Joe, who is sent to find Ethel, who has evidence that could prove Kate killed Faye. He uses this to dig up information on Kate, and it doesn’t take her long to realize that he is planning to take over the house the same way she took it from Faye. To get him out of the equation, she sends word to the sheriff that Joe is an escaped convict. This ensures that the threat to her will be removed. However, this still doesn’t change the fact that she cannot trust anyone else. If anything, she becomes even more suspicious of people around her.

To relieve herself of the pain of arthritis, Kate starts taking morphine, which leads her to hallucinate Charles, perhaps the only person she ever felt a kinship with. And then, one day, out of the blue, Cal brings Aron to her place. She knows Cal did it to hurt his brother for some reason, but what truly pains her is to see the hurt in Aron’s eyes. While Cal had accepted that he had some malice in his heart, he had always painted Aron as pure of heart. Perhaps, it had given her the consolation that something good had come out of her despite everything, which is why Aron’s revulsion towards her hits her more strongly than she had anticipated. All of these things create walls of abject dejection around her.

Earlier, she’d talked about how, like the protagonist of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ she would think about drinking the potion that would make her small. She would drink just enough to shrink, as she would still have Alice as her companion. She never drank the whole bottle because she didn’t want to disappear. Now, however, the closing walls around her make her want to leave forever, and so, she drinks the entire bottle of morphine. In her final moments, she sees the five-year-old version of herself, who is, in some ways, her Alice. She embraces the girl, and with that final comfort, departs the world.

Is Aron Dead?

If characters like Cathy show the havoc wreaked by an evil heart, characters like Aron show the downsides of being too pure. Since childhood, Cal has accepted that there is some meanness inside him, and he prays to God to change him and make him good, like Aron. However, being too pure in thought alienates Aron from others, just as her mother’s evil did. This is why he becomes incapable of accepting things as they are and moving on. At a young age, he was told his mother was dead. With no physical representation of her, he was free to create an image of absolute goodness in his mind. Since there was nothing to challenge his idea of who Cathy was, he made her into someone in his own image.

Everyone, including Cal, knew that breaking this illusion would be too much for Aron to handle. This is why everyone kept the truth from him. But in a fit of anger triggered by his father’s rejection of his gift, Cal shows Kate to Aron, completely shattering the idea of goodness and purity he had built up in his mind. Not only that, it proves to him that the other good people around him, like his father and Lee, had also lied to him. This is too much for Aron to bear, and he decides to leave everything behind. Since he is in college, it is easy for him to lie about his age and present himself as a year older to enlist in the army. Soon, he is shipped off to France, where he meets an untimely end.

Why does Kate Leave Everything to Aron?

Kate dies before her son’s death on the battlefield. In fact, after Aron sees her, she kills herself the very next day. In all the years as the madam of the brothel, she had amassed considerable wealth, on top of what Faye left her when she died. Then Charles passed away and left behind half his estate to her. This means that Kate died a very rich woman. Unlike Faye, she didn’t have a girl under her wing to pass on her property to. In fact, the idea of death had never really crossed her mind, which makes sense because she was still in her late 30s. But then, when she does decide to die, she ensures that her wealth doesn’t fall into the hands of another sex worker at the brothel, or worse, Joe. She knows Adam is too good to come forward and claim her money as her legal husband.

This leaves her children, Cal and Aron. Like Cyrus Trask, she could leave her money to be divided in half between her two sons. Instead, she chooses to leave it all to Aron. If one is hopeful for some semblance of goodness in her, one could believe that seeing her good and pure son made her heart melt, and she did, in fact, feel some form of love before she died. Or perhaps, in Aron, she saw Adam and realized that, unlike Cal, he was not capable of finding his way around the world and would need the money more. One could even think that she kept Cal out of the will as a punishment for breaking Aron’s heart and showing the same meanness that had defined her mother.

But if one is to believe that Cathy was born a monster, it can be theorized that her reasons were to stir more chaos. Even in death, she was not going to let people off the hook. She made sure Joe would either be in prison or dead after her death. She even made sure that all the incriminating evidence she had on the powerful people was released, causing chaos throughout the city. Thus, it makes sense that the reason she chose to leave everything to Aron was her final act of stirring more trouble for Adam’s sons. It was an answer to Aron’s repulsion of her, knowing that he would accept the money and be tainted by it. It would also make Cal feel rejected, pushing him away from Aron and doing things that would crack their relationship, if not destroy it. In that context, Cathy’s will is a punishment to both her sons.

Does Adam Die? Does He Forgive Cal? What does “Timshel” Mean?

When Aron reveals he has joined the army, Adam suffers a stroke, which takes months for him to recover from. When things start to look good for him, the news of Aron’s death arrives, and another stroke leaves him paralyzed on one side and bedridden. His situation is so dire that the doctor confesses he has no idea when Adam will die. He could survive for months, or he could die tonight. In any case, things are not going to get any better for him. Meanwhile, Cal blames himself for Aron’s death and Adam’s stroke. If he hadn’t taken his brother to Kate, none of this would have happened. Lee recognizes this guilt in Cal, which is why he knows the urgency of Adam’s forgiveness.

If his father dies before absolving him, Cal will spend the rest of his life with that guilt and regret, which will surely eat him up. So, he urges Adam to tell his son he loves him. He points out that rejection would be Cal’s undoing, putting him on a dangerous path. This reflects the discussion Adam, Lee, and Samuel Hamilton had back at the ranch all those years ago. Lee had pointed out that the original Hebrew word in the Cain and Abel story is “timshel.” This means that God is neither commanding Cain to be good nor predestinating him to it. With timshel, i.e., thou mayest, he is putting the choice in Cain’s hand, making him the master of his destiny. So, whatever happens next is now entirely on Cain.

Thus, timshel gives a person power over their actions. It doesn’t matter who their parents were or what things happened around them. What they do at any given time is determined entirely by who they want to be. Now Adam gives Cal the same choice. He had feared that he was evil like his mother, and because of that, he pushed his brother to join the army. But timshel also applies to Aron, meaning his choices are entirely dependent on him. No one else, including Cal, is responsible for them; hence, Cal shouldn’t feel guilty about what happened. With just one word, Adam not only assures his son that the actions of others are not his to repent for, but he also gives him the possibility of a good life if he chooses to be good.

Do Cal and Abra End Up Together? Did Abra Break Up With Aron?

When Cal and Aron were young, they met Abra, who instantly took a liking to Aron. In the innocence of childhood, they made plans about their future, of getting married and spending the rest of their days together. But growing up, Abra realized that things were much different from what she had expected. Age brings her knowledge and wisdom, allowing her to see that not everything is entirely good or bad, including herself. Aron, however, doesn’t grasp that concept. The older he gets, the more he recedes into his own idea of goodness, which alienates him from Abra. When he leaves for college, the distance leads him to create his own version of Abra, which disturbs her because she is no longer the girl Aron is in love with.

She fears that when the time comes, and he sees the bad things in her, he will not be able to cope, and that will be the end of things. Cal, on the other hand, is much more realistic in that sense. He accepts his flaws and tries to grow despite them. He sees the world’s grayness, which makes Abra feel seen, too. So, when Aron leaves for war, she and Cal get closer. As Lee tells her, now that she doesn’t have to be perfect, she can be good. This means that even if Aron had somehow survived the war and returned home, she would still have chosen to be with Cal. Her choice is not defined by the physical distance between her and Aron, but by the fact that they are not the same children who pledged themselves to each other all those years ago. With Cal, things are more grounded and real, and that’s the kind of love she can see living the rest of her life with.