#cathy trask

When I said Cathy was a monster it seemed to me that it was so. Now I have bent close with a glass over the small print of her and reread the footnotes, and I wonder if it was true. The trouble is that since we cannot know what she wanted, we will never know whether or not she got it. If rather than running toward something, she ran away from something, we can't know whether she escaped. Who knows but that she tried to tell someone or everyone what she was like and could not, for lack of a common language. Her life may have been her language, formal, developed, indecipherable. It is easy to say she was bad but there is little meaning unless we know why.

You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous.

I think the difference between a lie and a story is that a story utilizes the trappings and appearance of truth for the interest of the listener as well as of the teller. A story has in it neither gain nor loss. But a lie is a device for profit or escape.

Staying up late on a summer night writing an essay about Cathy Ames from East of Eden.

Sometimes when she was alone, and she knew she was alone, she permitted her mind to play in a garden, and she smiled.