“Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering” (Lucas). Truly few human beings know the darkside like Cathy Ames.The character that everybody is supposed to despise, even if one loves to hate Cathy, she is a wicked woman. While some people may argue that she changes during John Steinbeck's East of Eden, her motivation for every evil deed she commits is the same: Cathy longs to be in control of her entire existence. Cathy has megalomania from the moment she is introduced. From a young age she exhibits the tendency to want to control everything about her. While most things are given to her, and most people won over by her natural charm and attractiveness, she does lose control one time. When she decides that she doesn't want to go to school anymore, her parents reprimand her with a stern talking to, letting her know “who’s boss” (83). As a response to being told by her parents that they control her, even when her parents have her best interest at heart, she decides to sever connection to them and run away. She does so because she abhors the idea of another person being the boss of her. Even when she is whipped for her attempt to escape, she quickly learns to cry out and has “satisfaction of feeling the blows become lighter” (83). She pretends to weep and sob to control her father and manipulate him into not hitting her. While some people would blame the parents for the situation, it should be brought up that this was a normal practice of the time, and the parents where inexperience and racked with guilt and sadness from the process. Finally Cathy kills her family to escape them telling her what to do, leaving her to live her own life. At an unidentified time in her childhood Ca... ... middle of paper ... ... Cathy is scared. Her fear drives her to be evil, or at least do some horrible things. People may argue Cathy is a dynamic character that deserves more sympathy as the story progresses but her motivation is consistently controlling and preserving that sense of control. From her introduction to her untimely self fulfilled demise, she was trying to call the shots. Whether people decide to forgive Cathy is another decision, but understanding her motivations, or the motivations of anyone, is important before one passes judgment on them. Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. John Steinbeck centennial ed. New York: Penguin Books, 2002. Print. Star wars, episode I, the phantom menace. Dir. Ltd Lucasfilm. Perf. Liam Neeson Ewan McGregor Natalie Portman Jake Lloyd Ian McDiarmid Anthony Daniels Kenny Baker Pernilla August Frank Oz. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, 1999. DVD.
East of Eden by John Steinbeck is an optimistic film about a boy becoming a man and trying desperately to earn the love of his father and mother in the troubled times of the Great Depression. Cal, the main character is a troubled teen who lives with his entrepreneur father, and a brother who is following closely in his fathers steps. Cal’s mother left him and his brother to become a madam of a whorehouse. The struggle takes place between Cal and his father due to his fathers lack of compassion for his son. The conflict rises further when Cal tries to help his father repay a debt, his father further isolates his son and this turns to violent outbursts. Steinbeck focuses on Cal in order to suggest the theme that without love people become violent and mean.
Catherine first becomes exposed to the opposing forces as she experiments with her desires for love and a better quality of life. *6* Because she constantly shifts priorities from one man to the other, her love for Heathcliff and Edgar results in a destructive disequilibrium. *1*In the novel, Cathy is portrayed as a lady with untamable emotions. *7* In her childhood she learns to l...
With malicious intentions, Cathy purposefully nurtures James Grew just so she can cut him down and hurt him. She is beautiful, deceiving, and conceited. Thinking highly of herself as if everyone were below her, she believes she can do whatever she wants to obtain whatever she wants. There is another instance where a “fire broke out at about three o’clock in the morning” and by the time people arrive, Cathy’s parents and her house are nothing but ash and burnt remains. Cathy is not found at the scene, but she “left a scent of sweetness behind her” (Steinbeck 86 & 89). Within the text, it is apparent that Cathy burns her house and parents all because her parents __ mad and her father whips her. These actions are so heartless that no normal human being could accomplish them without feeling some sort of guilt or regret. Cathy, however, does not feel anything except some twisted happiness at what she has done. Afterward, she starts moving on to bigger things and learning how far she can push her boundaries of manipulation and deceit to benefit herself and punish those she feels needs
The theme that has been attached to this story is directly relevant to it as depicted by the anonymous letters which the main character is busy writing secretly based on gossip and distributing them to the different houses. Considering that people have an impression of her being a good woman who is quiet and peaceful, it becomes completely unbecoming that she instead engages in very abnormal behavior. What makes it even more terrible is the fact that she uses gossip as the premise for her to propagate her hate messages not only in a single household but across the many different households in the estate where she stays.
Steinbeck, John. The Grapes of Wrath, The Moon is Down, Cannery Row, East of Eden, Of Mice and Men. New York: Heinemann/Octopus, 1979. pp.475 - 896.
The color and temperature of a person’s eyes comprise the first layer of his identity. Welcoming, smiling eyes identify their owner as a friend, while angry, bitter eyes warn of a comparably biting personality. A person’s eyes show much at a first glance. In literature, they perform a more significant job, reflecting the character of the soul they guard. In developing the famously complex characters of his novel East of Eden, John Steinbeck heartily subscribed to this literary symbolism by giving special meaning to the eyes of his characters as ‘windows to the soul.’ This can be seen especially in the characters of Adam and Cathy Trask.
Steinbeck, John. Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters. 1969. New York: Penguin,
John Steinbeck's novel, East of Eden is the epic story of a California family who struggle to overcome issues of betrayal, infidelity, and the age old battle between good and evil and sibling rivalry. The story centers around two generations of brothers in the Trask family-Adam and Charles, and Adam's sons Aron and Cal. In each generation, one of the Trask brothers is moral and good while the other brother behaves badly and immorally. Because the good Trask brothers are favored, the bad Trask brothers develop envious tendencies and a recurrent theme of sibling rivalry appears throughout the book. Steinbeck's dramatic account of the Trask brothers and their rivalry in East of Eden is an impressive tale, but it is also a familiar one that closely echoes a
Hayashi, Tetsumaro. A New Study Guide to Steinbeck's Major Works, with Critical Explications. Scarecrow Press, Jan 1, 1993
The main character Adam Trask proves that by letting go of Cathy and deciding to create a new type of Eden that mankind holds the ultimate decision to rise above their destines. After finding Cathy and marrying her, Adam believes that he has found the missing part of his life. Cathy becomes the emblem of perfection and a key to happiness for him. As Adam continues to fall in love with her he starts to fall more out of touch with reality causing him to miss the obvious signals that Cathy does not feel the same way about him. Her manipulative ways are able to fool Adam’s kindness. Adam, being too naive to pay attention the obvious indications that Cathy does not love him is left in complete shock after she shoots and leaves him after the birth of their sons. After centralizing his dream around creating his own Eden with Cathy as his own Eve, he se...
Did The Green Knight poem make allusions to Biblical tales? . Allusions is a vague description of a person, place or thing without being too specific. Allegory is a hidden meaning within a story that one has to discover on his or her own. Green Knight makes allusions towards the bibical tales of The Garden of Eden. The allegoring retelling of The Garden of Eden is apparent in the Green Knight in one big way, temptaion. The symbolic references from both stories are similiar in many aspects.
Star Wars: A New Hope. Dir. George Lucas. Perf. Mark Hamill, Harrison Ford Carrie Fisher. DVD. Twentieth Century Fox, 2006.
Steinbeck uses the biblical story of Cain and Abel in East of Eden to show us that we do not have set fate. Steinbeck uses the Hebrew word “timshel”, which means “thou mayest”, to suggest that man has the ability to choose good or evil. “Timshel” affects the characters in East of Eden such as Cal and Aron and their choice of overcoming good or evil. Steinbeck sees this novel as his most important work, and he uses it as a way to state his personal ideas concerning mankind:“The free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual.”(Steinbeck,132). Steinbeck shows God has given humans free will and their ability to choose good or evil, if they so decide. He portrays the “C” characters to be connected to Cain, such as Charles and Cal and the “A” characters to be connected to Abel, such as Aron and Adam.
Her selfishness lies within the reality that she married Linton for the things he could have provided for her. Nothing parted Catherine and Heathcliff. Not God, nor Satan, it was Catherine herself – Catherine was the cause of her broken heart. Along with breaking her heart, she also broke Heathcliff’s, which led him to loathe and yearn for vengeance against what Heathcliff thought was the cause of Catherine’s death – her daughter.
During the first half of the book, Catherine showed different types of love for two different people. Her love for Heathcliff was her everything, it was her identity to love and live for Heathcliff but as soon as she found out how society views Heathcliff, she sacrificed their love and married Edgar Linton in the hopes of saving Heathcliff from Hindley and protecting him from the eyes of society. In her conversation with Nelly, Cathy who professed her love for Heathcliff quoted “My great miseries in this world have been Heathcliff's miseries, and I watched and felt each from the beginning: my great thought in living is himself.” Catherine proved Nelly Dean that the only person who can make her feel pain and sorrow is Heathcliff. The extent of her love was uncovered when she sang her praise of “I am Heathcliff” because this was the turning point in the book that allowed the readers to truly understand and see the depth of Cathy's love for Heathcliff. On the other hand, Catherine's love for Edgar wasn't natural because it was a love that she taught herself to feel. It might have come unknowingly to Cathy but she did love Edgar as she said “My love for Linton is like the foliage in the woods: time will change it, I'm well aware, as winter changes the trees.” Cathy knew that it was not impossible to love Edgar for he was a sweet and kind gentleman who showed her the world but unlike ...