Cathy from East of Eden: Evil for the sake of evil
Hello everyone, I’m curious does anybody else have the same opinion as me on this very questionable character in Steinbecks book East of Eden. Interested in discussion not argument.
My take that I had written while reading the book;
Her emotional reversals are unrealistic and abrupt, the shooting feels less like the climax of believable human tension and more like Steinbeck abruptly forcing the “evil Kathy” idea into physical action. Kathy’s emotional transitions happen too abruptly and too transparently to feel psychologically believable as human psychology doesnt usually pivot this quickly without a deeper explanation.
While reading about Cathy I found myself constantly looking for this deeper explanation without any luck. I feel that’s because Steinbeck tried writing a ‘truly evil’ character who can’t have a reason for their evil, that is simply the way they were born. Writing a ‘truly evil’ character is difficult, but psychologically convincing evil already exists in real life and literature (which I found constantly bringing up in my mind while reading this book to try and make sense of Cathy) so Cathy’s severe lack of realism must be a stylistic choice. I believe convincing evil, or true evil, requires continuity.
In this continuity we see the gradual shifts in behavior and derive from that whether what we’re seeing is evil or not. Rather than developing gradually, Cathy flips so suddenly between emotional extremes that she begins to feel cartoonish rather than convincingly human. Her character feels very controlled by Steinbeck which strengthens the idea that her actions are artificial. It feels as if Steinbeck kept asking himself as he was writing, “what actions could most quickly reinforce her monstrosity”.
Again please I’m interested in discussions and debates not arguments, just curious to see if anyone felt the same as me!!