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East of Eden
Mountaineers · 10th–12th
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?
The tension The narrator is certain—“It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life.”—yet every proof the chapter offers is a surface: blank eyes in the carriage house, a smile over a napkin, a sob with no tears, bolts shot from the inside of burned locks.
The narrator introduces Cathy Ames, a lovely, quiet girl in a Massachusetts town, and follows the trouble that gathers around her from age ten until the night her family’s house burns.
The chapter moves in six parts. In the first, the narrator argues that just as some people are born with bodies missing a part, some may be born missing kindness or conscience, and he says it is his belief that Cathy Ames was born so. He describes her face of innocence, the unease she stirs in everyone who looks at her, her lies and their methods, and her early skill at using the impulses others hide. In the second, at ten, Cathy is found by her mother in the carriage house with two older boys, her wrists tied. The boys say she started it, that they each paid her five cents, and that she was playing with a rope. No one believes them; they are whipped and sent to a house of correction. Mr. Ames keeps his doubts to himself, and later keeps to himself his suspicion of the things Cathy finds that no one claims. In the third, a young Latin teacher, James Grew, glows for a time and then falls apart. He knocks at the Ames door after midnight begging to see Mr. Ames alone, is sent away, and is found dead before the church altar in the morning. Mr. Ames tells no one and lies to his wife about the caller. At dinner Cathy smiles over her napkin and passes on a rumor of trouble in Boston. In the fourth, at sixteen, Cathy refuses school, says she can get so small no one can find her, and runs away to Boston. Her father brings her home and whips her; she screams and begs until the blows lighten, with no tears. In the fifth, she becomes helpful at home and curious at the tannery, learns to open the safe, oils the hinges and a stiff lock, and keeps the lamps filled. One May afternoon she kills a pullet, fills a jelly jar with its blood, hides the jar under the kitchen steps, and walks gaily to the bank for the payroll. In the sixth, the house burns at night. The remains of Mr. and Mrs. Ames are found, but no trace of Cathy. The fire chief finds both doors locked with no keys in them, the tannery safe has been robbed, and there is blood in the carriage house with a hair ribbon and a cross with red stones. The town hunts strangers, and a half-wit is indicted until a judge sees that his confession is nonsense. Within two months the talk fades, and the chapter ends, “Cathy left a scent of sweetness behind her.”
Before reading, ask the student how they decide whether to trust someone new: by the face, the words, or the deeds. Hold the answer for the end. Read the first part, the narrator’s essay, and stop at “a face of innocence” to ask what the narrator has already decided. Read the second and third parts, and pause after the dinner to ask what the student noticed that Mrs. Ames did not. Read the fourth and fifth parts without stopping, then the sixth to the end. Then go back to the opening answer and ask which of the three the chapter gave the student most of: faces, words or deeds.
Retell The student retells the chapter in its six parts, from the essay on monsters to the town letting the case fade. Look for the order of the fifth part (the pullet, the apron in the stove, the mirror, the jar under the steps, the walk to the bank) and for a clear line between what the narrator tells us and what the town knows.
Imitate the author After copying, the student writes a paragraph of four to six sentences on how someone they know, or a character from another book, gets out of chores. Include a general rule that begins “Most” and turns on “But”, and a chain of three phrases built on one verb form, as the first passage builds on “would have been”. Close on a sentence that turns its own words around, as the second passage turns “her lies with truth” into “a truth as though it were a lie.”
Debate Take sides on the last written question. One side argues the narrator is right, and gathers the pullet and the jar, the mirror, the sob with no tears, the room with nothing in it, and the locked doors. The other argues the chapter proves less than he claims, and gathers his own “It is my belief”, his “no knowing”, the wings and the birds, and the half-wit who is born lacking and is kind. Each side must answer the other’s strongest piece. Neither may say what Cathy thought, or that she died.
Purpose Close on the last line, “Cathy left a scent of sweetness behind her.” Ask the student what “left” could mean, given that no bone was found. Then ask whose word “sweetness” is, the narrator’s or the town’s, and why the chapter ends on it and not on the judge.
Easier Read aloud the essay’s first four paragraphs, the dinner, the whipping, and the pullet and the jar. Talk through the second, third and fourth discussion questions, then answer the last written question aloud before writing it.
On level Talk through all five discussion questions in order, then write both written questions as a thesis, the strongest objection and a revised thesis, each with lines from the chapter.
Harder Ask for one argued essay on the narrator’s comparison: a person born without conscience is like one born without arms, who “cannot miss them.” Does the chapter give any evidence of what Cathy misses, or only of what others see? The essay should meet the objection the narrator raises against himself with the wings and the birds: no one can know another kind of creature from inside.
1. 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
What it asks It asks who is caught by Cathy’s innocent face, and the answer can point two ways. Inside the story, her face works on the people around her: after the carriage house, “Mrs. Ames said it first and the whole town echoed it”, and no one believes the boys. Years later, people on the street turn to look after her as she walks to the bank. But the narrator gives the warning before we see a single deed, so the trap may also be set for the reader. Once told her face is a lie, we may read every face she makes as an act, even “Cathy’s eyes were blank with terror.” The student decides who the warning catches. It feeds the hinge, which asks whether the chapter proves the narrator’s verdict or only reports surfaces. The card must not settle what happened in the carriage house.
The people around her. The face does what a trap does. Her mother, the doctor and the town take it at its word, and two boys are whipped and sent away. Strangers on the street turn to look after her.
Mrs. Ames said it first and the whole town echoed it.
And she was so fresh and pretty that people walking turned and looked after her when she had passed.
The reader. The narrator has already given his verdict, so we come to every scene knowing what to suspect. When her eyes are blank with terror, we may not believe it, though nothing on the page says the terror is false. His warning shapes how we see her, as the face shapes how the town does.
It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life.
Cathy’s eyes were blank with terror.
A strong answer A strong response names who is trapped and stands on the page. One reader says the people around her: the town echoes Mrs. Ames, the boys are punished, and passers-by turn to look after the pretty girl on her way to the bank. Another says the reader: the narrator gives his verdict before any deed, so we read even her terror as a trick, though the page never says it was. The best answers notice that both can be true, and that the narrator’s warning works on us much as her face works on the town.
2. 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
What it asks It asks how the chapter ties James Grew to Cathy when the narrator says nothing ties them. The third part opens on Cathy growing lovelier and starting Latin, and then a flame leaps in the Latin teacher. No scene shows the two together. Then come Grew’s midnight knock, a door that may have closed, his death in the church, Mr. Ames’s lie about a beard, a smile over a napkin, a rumor of “some kind of trouble in Boston”, and the narrator’s remark: “That was Cathy’s method.” The student finds what on the page builds the link, and judges how much it proves. It feeds the hinge: the narrator never states the link, so here the reader judges Cathy by surfaces and their order, which is what the hinge asks about. The card must not say what happened between Cathy and James Grew, or why he died.
The narrator’s order. He sets Grew’s flame right after Cathy starts Latin, and the closing door right after Grew’s knock. Then come the smile, the rumor and “That was Cathy’s method”. Nothing on the page shows the two together. The link is built from where things are placed, so the reader judges Cathy by order and surfaces, much as the town does.
For a time it was noticed that a flame leaped in James Grew and some force glowed in his eyes.
That was Cathy’s method.
Her father’s silence. Mr. Ames thinks he sees her door close. Then he lies to his wife twice about the caller, keeps his story from the coroner, and feels guilty. He never says what he fears. But his cover-up points somewhere, and the reader follows it to what he will not name.
He thought he saw Cathy’s door close very silently, but perhaps the leaping candlelight had fooled his eyes, for a portiere seemed to move too.
He told himself over and over that it was not his fault.
A strong answer A strong response names what builds the link and weighs how much it proves. One reader points to the narrator’s order: the flame in Grew right after Cathy starts Latin, the door, the smile, the rumor and “That was Cathy’s method”, with no scene of the two together. Another points to her father: the door he thinks he saw, the two lies about the caller, the story he keeps from the coroner, and his guilt. The best answers notice that every piece is a surface or a placement, and that the reader’s link, like the narrator’s verdict, is built from outside her.
3. 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
What it asks It asks what Cathy reads in her father in the moment he is whipping her. Mr. Ames “was not good at whipping because he had never done it.” His first blows are “tentative and timid,” and when she stands “quietly staring at him with calm cold eyes”, he loses his temper and cuts harder. “Cathy learned quickly. She found him out and knew him, and once she had learned she screamed, she writhed, she cried, she begged, and she had the satisfaction of feeling the blows instantly become lighter.” He stops, “frightened at the noise and hurt he was creating.” If he had looked, he would have seen “no tears in her eyes”. The student names what she found out. It feeds the hinge: the narrator says Cathy lacks a conscience, yet here, within a few blows, she reads what is soft in her father. The card must not say what she felt beyond the one feeling the page names, “satisfaction”; otherwise the page gives only her eyes, her neck and her jaw.
That he cannot bear to hurt her. His temper drives the first blows, but the screaming frightens him, and he stops. What she finds is his softness, and she uses his decency against him.
Mr. Ames was frightened at the noise and hurt he was creating.
Mr. Ames was not good at whipping because he had never done it.
That he needs to be obeyed. Her calm makes him whip harder, and her begging makes him stop. What he wants is not her pain but the look of a daughter who knows her place, and she gives him the words he wants, with a dry sob.
The first blows were tentative and timid, but when she did not cry he slashed at her sides and shoulders.
See you remember who you are. And don’t forget what I am.
A strong answer A strong response names what Cathy found out and stands on the whipping scene. One reader says she found his softness: he is frightened by the noise and hurt he is making, and she ends the whipping by giving him more of both. Another says she found his need to be obeyed: her stillness enrages him, her begging calms him, and his last words are about who is boss. The best answers notice that either way she uses what is good or ordinary in him, and they ask what that says about the narrator’s claim that she was born without a conscience.
4. 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
What it asks It asks the student to read the rare moment in the chapter when Cathy talks about herself. She lies in bed, staring at the ceiling. “I’m not going to school,” she says calmly. “I’m never going to school again.” When her mother sees the book and says, “You’re too big for that”, Cathy answers, “I can get to be so little you can’t even see me”, and, “Nobody can find me.” Her mother says, “Stop making jokes.” Cathy: “I think I’ll go away.” That afternoon she spends a long time in front of the mirror. The next morning she is gone, and her room has “no Cathy imprint.” Her mother hears a joke; the student says what they hear. It feeds the hinge: here, if anywhere, the chapter lets us hear something from her side. The card must not state what Cathy wants; the student argues it from her words.
A plan, told plainly. She says she will go away, and the next morning she is gone. Her father brings her back from Boston, but after the fire no tooth or bone of her is found: from then on, nobody can find her. Her mother hears a joke. It is the third method from the copywork: a truth told as though it were a lie.
I think I’ll go away.
they could find no tooth or bone
A wish. All her life people have looked at her, looked away and looked back. In the one moment she speaks of herself, she speaks of being too small to see and too hidden to find. That sounds like someone who wants to get away from being watched. It may be the most ordinary thing she says.
Even as a child she had some quality that made people look at her, then look away, then look back at her, troubled at something foreign.
Her daughter had become a stranger to her.
A strong answer A strong response decides what Cathy is saying and stands on the scene. One reader hears a plan told straight: she is gone the next morning, and after the fire nobody can find her at all, while her mother calls it a joke, which fits the copywork’s truth told as a lie. Another hears a wish: a girl watched all her life speaks, once, of being too small to see. The best answers notice that this is the closest the chapter comes to her own voice, and that both readings may hold at once.
5. 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
What it asks It asks what the town sees when it imagines Cathy. After the fire the coroner finds no tooth or bone of her. George, the chief of the volunteers, holds up the burned locks: “No keys in the locks,” and “Both bolts stuck out.” Then the safe is found open, and there is blood in the carriage house, with a hair ribbon and a cross with red stones. The narrator explains that a small town cannot believe a neighbor would murder, so “it must be some dark stranger”. As the pools are dragged, “She was so pretty,” everyone said, and “they meant that in themselves they could see a reason for carrying Cathy off.” The student says what the town pictures, and whose picture it is. It feeds the hinge: the town reads Cathy by her face, as the narrator warned it would, while the reader has watched the jelly jar filled and hidden. The card must not say Cathy died, and must not state what happened that night.
A victim. The town pictures a lovely girl some stranger wanted and took, so it raids the hobo camps and turns out the gypsies. That picture is why no one asks what George’s locks mean: both doors bolted, and no keys. Who locked them and took the keys? The only one missing is the pretty girl.
it must be some dark stranger, some wanderer from the outside world where such things happen
No keys in the locks
Itself. The narrator puts the reason “in themselves”: what the town pictures is its own hidden want. His opening essay said nearly everyone keeps such wants just beneath the surface, and that Cathy knew how to use them. So the town’s picture of her says more about the town than about her, which is how her face has worked all along.
they meant that in themselves they could see a reason for carrying Cathy off
Nearly everyone in the world has appetites and impulses, trigger emotions, islands of selfishness, lusts just beneath the surface.
A strong answer A strong response says what the town pictures and stands on the sixth part. One reader says a victim: a pretty girl taken by some stranger, a picture that keeps the town from asking what George’s locks mean. Another says the town pictures itself: the narrator puts the reason “in themselves”, and his essay said nearly everyone hides such wants. The best answers notice that either way the town judges Cathy by her face, as the narrator warned, and ask whether the reader, told what to see from the first page, is doing anything different.
1. 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?
What it asks It asks the student to test conscience in the people who have one. The constable coaxes a confession with “a baited and set question”, and when the judge scolds him, “The constable’s feelings were hurt because he was a conscientious man.” Mrs. Ames calls for punishment to protect the town, and “out of her hysteria a sadistic devil peered. She wanted blood.” The fathers whip their sons “to raw cuts”, in a time when “A man truly believed that the whip was an instrument of virtue.” Mr. Ames feels his doubts and buries them: “He would have felt bad if two boys were in the house of correction for something they did not do.” Against them stands the judge, “so pure and good that he canceled out a lot of wickedness with his life”, who questions the half-wit and sends him out: “The law was designed to save, not to destroy.” The student builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. It feeds the hinge: the narrator draws his line between Cathy and everyone else at conscience, and this question asks what conscience is worth on the other side of that line. The card must not set the town’s failings level with the fire; the student weighs them.
Poorly. In this chapter conscience mostly turns into blame. The people who feel most sure they are right do the most harm, and Mr. Ames uses his conscience to look away. Cathy needs no conscience to work in a town like this; she uses theirs.
The constable’s feelings were hurt because he was a conscientious man.
He would have felt bad if two boys were in the house of correction for something they did not do.
Well, when it comes with care. The judge has a conscience and uses it to look closely, and an innocent man walks free. Mr. Ames stops the whip when he hears the hurt he is making. The harm these people do is real, but it is not a house burned with two people inside.
The law was designed to save, not to destroy.
Mr. Ames was frightened at the noise and hurt he was creating.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis about conscience, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says conscience fails here: the conscientious constable nearly hangs an innocent man, Mrs. Ames wants blood in the name of the town, and Mr. Ames forgets so he will not feel bad. The strongest objection is the judge, whose goodness saves the half-wit, and the plain fact that none of these failings is a fire. A good revision might hold that conscience alone is not enough, and that what saves the half-wit is a man willing to look closely, the very thing Mr. Ames will not do. The best answers carry this into the last question: if the people with consciences behave like this, how clean is the narrator’s line?
2. 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?
What it asks It asks the chapter’s whole question about Cathy. The narrator opens with his argument: some people are born with bodies missing a part, and just as some are born without an arm, “so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience.” Then: “It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life.” The chapter that follows is told almost wholly from outside her. We see blank eyes in the carriage house, a smile over a napkin, a sob with no tears, a pullet killed and a jar of blood hidden, a face checked in the mirror, and locked doors after the fire. Yet the narrator also says “there is no knowing what Cathy did”, and in his own essay admits that what we imagine of wings is not “the same feeling birds have.” The student builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. The card must not say what Cathy thinks or wants, what happened in the carriage house or with James Grew, or that she died in the fire; and it must not treat the narrator’s verdict as the book’s last word.
The chapter bears him out. What she does in the fifth part is cold and planned: she kills the pullet, burns the apron, wipes her shoe, and checks her face, which glows. Under the whip she weeps without tears. Her room holds nothing of her. No ordinary account explains a girl who can do all that and then walk gaily to the bank.
Her cheeks were bright with color and her eyes shone and her mouth turned up in its small childlike smile.
Cathy dropped back on the bed, sobbing. And if he had looked, her father would have seen that there were no tears in her eyes
The chapter proves less than he claims. Every proof is a surface someone saw, and the narrator calls his verdict a belief. His own essay says we cannot know another creature’s feeling from outside. The half-wit is also born lacking, and he is kind. And the people around Cathy, with their devils and lies and whips, are not so different from her as his line suggests. Something else, never shown, might explain her.
Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have.
His feeble mind sensed that these questioners wanted something of him and, being a friendly creature, he tried to give it to them.
A strong answer A strong response builds a thesis, meets the strongest objection, and revises. One thesis says the chapter proves the narrator right: the pullet, the burned apron, the mirror and the tearless sob show a mind that plans harm and feels none of it. The strongest objection is that every one of those proofs is a surface, that the narrator calls his verdict a belief and admits we cannot feel what birds feel, and that the people around her show plenty of ordinary cruelty. A good revision might hold that the chapter shows what Cathy does beyond doubt, and leaves why, and what she lacks, as the narrator’s claim to be weighed. The best answers keep the half-wit and the judge in view, and claim nothing about what Cathy thought, or that she died.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.