East of Eden

Chapter 8

John Steinbeck · Mountaineers 10th–12th

Teaching Companion Print Adapt for your student

Copywork

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.

Most liars are tripped up either because they forget what they have told or because the lie is suddenly faced with an incontrovertible truth. But Cathy did not forget her lies, and she developed the most effective method of lying. She stayed close enough to the truth so that one could never be sure. She knew two other methods also—either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie.

Read both passages aloud. The second names three ways Cathy lies. Where later in the chapter do you see one of them at work?

For the educator Two short passages from the narrator’s opening essay. The first, two sentences long, imagines how an older time would have dealt with a girl like Cathy. It climbs in three steps on one verb form, “would have been called”, “would have been exorcised” and “would have been burned”, each harsher than the last, and it ends on the flat phrase “for the good of the community”, which the narrator leaves to judge itself. The second, four sentences long, is built like a short lesson on lying. Its first sentence states a rule about “Most liars” with a balanced pair of “because” clauses. The next turns on “But” to the exception, Cathy. The third is short and quiet. The last stops at a dash and gives two methods in a matched “either” and “or”, and the second method turns the first around: lies with truth in them, then a truth told as a lie. Students copying them practise a chain of parallel verbs, a rule and its exception, and a reversal across a dash. Notice what each passage claims. The first describes a town that burns what distresses it, and after the fire this town hunts strangers and nearly hangs a half-wit. In the second the narrator explains Cathy’s methods with full confidence, though a few pages later he says “there is no knowing what Cathy did”. For the talk prompt, listen for the dinner, where the narrator himself says “That was Cathy’s method” after the Boston rumor. Listen also for the morning she will not go to school: “I think I’ll go away” is the plain truth, said to a mother who has just told her to stop making jokes. A student may also find the whipping, or the helpful months, in which nearly every kind act is true and also something else. Let the student argue for any of these from the page.

Discussion

Narration Tell the chapter back, from the narrator’s essay on monsters to the town letting the case fade. Then choose the one sentence you think tells the most about Cathy.

Before Cathy does anything at all, the narrator warns us: “As though nature concealed a trap, Cathy had from the first a face of innocence.” Who is that trap set for? Author's choice
The narrator says James Grew “was never seen with Cathy and no relationship was even suspected.” Most readers link them anyway. What on the page makes us do that? Plot structure
Under the buggy whip, Cathy first stands still and stares. Then “She found him out and knew him,” and she begins to scream and beg. What did she find out about her father? Character
The morning Cathy refuses school, her mother finds her with Alice in Wonderland. Cathy says, “I can get to be so little you can’t even see me.” Then, “Nobody can find me.” Her mother hears a joke. What do you hear? Inference
As the town drags the pools for her body, everyone says, “She was so pretty.” The narrator adds that “in themselves they could see a reason for carrying Cathy off.” What does the town picture when it pictures her? Moral reasoning

Make a Connection Think of someone people made up their minds about early, in a story or in life. How much did that first judgment change what everyone saw afterward?

Vocabulary

interlard: She knew two other methods also—either to interlard her lies with truth or to tell a truth as though it were a lie. To mix one thing all through another (from the old French entrelarder, to thread lard between, as cooks once threaded strips of fat through lean meat). The kitchen word makes Cathy’s lying a craft: truth runs through her lies like fat through meat, so no bite tastes wholly false.
exorcised: 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. Freed of an evil spirit by prayer and ritual (from the Greek exorkizein, to bind by an oath). Exorcism treats evil as something added from outside that can be driven out. The narrator sets that old view beside his own, in which something is missing, not added, and nothing can be cast out.
slavishness: And this slavishness to the group normally extends into every game, every practice, social or otherwise. Following others without judgment, the way a slave must obey (slave, slavish, slavishness). The narrator does not sneer at it: he calls it “a protective coloration” that keeps the young safe. Cathy has none of it, and the others end up copying her.
ostensibly: Since the owner’s house was burned and the owner ostensibly burned with it, the employees of the tannery, out of respect, did not go to work. As it appears or is said, though it may not be so (from the Latin ostendere, to show). The word keeps a small doubt alive: what is shown is not yet proved. It fits a chapter in which nearly everything about Cathy reaches us as something others saw.
corporeal: The volunteers began to dump water on the fire almost as though they might even so late save some corporeal part of the family. Of the body, as against the mind or soul (from the Latin corpus, body, as in corpse). The volunteers hope to save at least a bodily trace. The idea returns when the coroner finds “no tooth or bone” of Cathy: without a body, no one can prove she is dead.

Critical thinking

The constable nearly gets a harmless half-wit hanged, and the narrator calls him “a conscientious man.” How well does a conscience keep the people in this chapter from doing harm?
The narrator says Cathy was born a monster, missing the conscience other people have. Does what she does in this chapter prove him right, or could something else explain her?