Cain and Abel, those two brothers that the Bible presents us with and that are reflected in this film, based on a play by John Steinbeck and brilliantly directed by Ellian Kazan, in which Aron represents the good brother and Cal the rebellious and perverse one, but who only intends to win the affection and love of his father, who embodies a moralistic fanatic who feels in possession of the most absolute truth about what is right or wrong and intends to administer this morality to his children, who lack affection due to the absence of their mother, whom they believe to be dead, but who actually left home when they were children, fleeing from the rigidity and fanaticism of the pretended moral preacher.
How many false preachers who try to impose their principles on others, full of anger, like the protagonist, who hold a resentment caused by a feeling of injustice and insist that others share their criteria and values.
The anger felt by the father, who intends to offer a virtuous image, is present in the form of irritation, reproach and hatred towards his son Carl, who does not understand why his father shows himself to him in that way. But what the father really hides is a fear that his ideals are wrong and counterproductive and a great fear of being bad, corrupt, perverse or imperfect which makes him highlight the evil, corruption and defects of Carl, who will undertake a search to some place where perhaps they will accept him, as it is, with his defects and virtues, the search for Eden, the paradise that the Bible describes where the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was found and the serpent that represents that desire to eat from the tree of knowledge and in that search for the Garden of Eden is where Carl will find his mother and with her that knowledge of evil that she represents, as the owner of a brothel, an older woman who has lost all her attractiveness and with hands disfigured by a degenerative disease and that does not show the slightest affection towards him who is his son. This discovery will make Carl emotionally mature and recognize his own moral principles and not those imposed by his father. Which will have the opposite effect on his brother, when Carl, in an act of evil, shows him the truth about his mother, for Aron it will mean a loss of his ideals and values and will cause him to flee from Eden and what it means to him. a loss of values since the Human Being is reduced without some values that guide him, towards self-destruction.
