Let Cathy Ames Be a Monster
News Source : The New Yorker
News Summary
- Forster, or anyone else, would call a round character.
- She is crafty, cunning, manipulative, murderous—evil through and through.
- What made her that way?
- Her badness, Steinbeck tells us, was baked in from the start.
- Today, we’d call her a sociopath.
- That term appeared in the DSM-I in 1952, the same year that “East of Eden” was published.
Charles is no stranger to whores, but purehearted Adam immediately succumbs to the woman without a past upon whom he can project his own dreams and wishes. Cathy will be his wife.
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