Is Aron made to seem too unsympathetic?

Well, in the beginning, Aron had Abra and his father's love unconditionally. As the story progresses, we gradually see Cal invading that unconditional love. Certainly, the point can be made with Abra. But with Adam, he loved his sons equally, despite the fact that Cal was the problem child and Aron took up the good side.

Adam was not the perfect parent, but then again, no one is, and he was forced to raise the boys by himself. Unfortunately, the boys in their minds, believed one was loved more than the other. Aron certainly believed that. When Cal was trying to "earn" his father's love and respect, in Aron's mind, that was an invasion of his territory, and thus he became very defensive (and with Abra caught in the middle, sort of a causality of war). In their mentality, Cal tried to open the door, in regards to his father, while Aron tried to close it at every turn. It is there, where the audience found the sympathy for Cal and saw Aron as the obstacle (which was broken figuratively and relatively, when Aron broke the window of the train with his head).

One scene they cut (it's on the DVD) that perhaps they should have left in occurs after Adam forces Cal to read the bible verses and Aron, uncomfortable, leaves the table.

The cut scene takes place in the brothers' bedroom (no, not the silly B&W screen test where they start fighting homoerotically, wind up on the floor, and Aron squeezes some part of Cal's lower anatomy -- probably a quad muscle). The color version of this scene, rewritten considerably by the time they shot it for real, has Cal come into the bedroom and, in shadow, goes on about how his father doesn't love him and then sits in a chair in the foreground. Aron then gets off his bed in the background and comes forward, sits nearby, and gently tells Cal that he needs to take more of an interest in their father's activities like the lettuce business.

The scene could have been important because it reveals that Aron's relationship with Dad is less perfect than it looks because Aron has long learned to play his father in order to be seen as the shining son. It's also the most human Aron seems in the entire movie.

I'm not sure why Kazan or Jack Warner decided to cut the scene -- perhaps it was seen as slowing the picture's flow, but the moment goes the furthest in making us understand Aron and his own issues and shows that he has a certain affection for Cal somewhere that's actually genuine.

Without that scene, Aron is reduced to a goody-goody cyborg that we resent unquestioningly because he's getting in the way of Our Boy Jimmy.


--