East of Eden

Cathy Ames is described as a beautiful, innocent woman. With "delicate, blooming skin", "golden hair", "wide-set, modest, and yet promising eyes", her mouth "full of sweetness" (p.78), she caught the attention everywhere she went. But all that beauty and looks of innocence were deceiving traits; she used them to manipulate her way into the hearts of many characters throughout the book. Because of her manipulative ways, she is essentially the main "evil" in the novel. Steinbeck's personal comments on Cathy's personality make it clear that ever since Cathy was young, there was an evil lurking beneath her lovely exterior.

"There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. The one thing that may not be forgiven a witch is her ability to distress people, to make them restless and uneasy and even envious." (p.73)

Steinbeck's description of Cathy is exposed when an incident is told where Cathy murdered her parents and burned her home down. It implied throughout the telling of Cathy murdering her parents that she locked them in the house and burned them alive as a sixteen year old.

"He looked at the blackened metal, puzzled, but not quite knowing what puzzled him. He borrowed the coroner's rake and worked furiously. He went to the place where the front door had been and raked until he found that lock, crooked and half melted...

'No keys in the locks,' the chief said uneasily.

'Maybe they fell out.'

'How?'

'Maybe they melted.'

'The locked didn't melt.'

'Maybe Bill Ames took them out.'

'On the inside?'" (p.87)

The evidence that Steinbeck provides leaves room for interpretation that Cathy was the one who locked them inside before she burned the house down; the locks that belonged in the kitchen were used to lock the doors from the outside, where the volunteers found them. After Steinbeck shows that Cathy feigned her own death, it is obvious that she was also the one who set the house on fire and locked the parents inside.

"In the chicken yard she [Cathy] caught a little pullet, took it to the block and chopped its head off, and held the writhing neck over the jelly jar until it was half full of blood ... She looked at her face in the mirror. Her cheeks were bright with color and her eyes shone and her mouth turned up in its small childlike smile. On her way out she hid the jelly jar under the lowest part of the kitchen steps. (p.86)

When Steinbeck is describing the community's point of view, it is described as a "'sign of struggle'" (p.88)

"They had not far to go. In the carriage house there was what is called "signs of a struggle"--in this case a broken box, a shattered carriage lamp, scraped marks in the dust, and straw on the floor. The onlookers might not have known these as signs of a struggle had there not been a quantity of blood on the floor." (p.88)

The blood on the floor is implied to be the pullet's blood which she used to convince the community that it was her own.

Cathy's drive is her selfishness; she tries to destroy anything that keeps her from her desires and as Steinbeck has already shown she will even murder as long as it gets her closer to what she wants. This is shown when Cathy tries to abort her twins to prevent Adam from discovering her pregnancy.

"Dr. Tilson closed the door behind him and came back to the bed. His face was red with anger. "Why did you do it?"

Cathy's mouth was a thin tight line.

"Does your husband know you are pregnant?"

Her head moved slowly from side to side.

...