Cal turns away and runs to his room, full of anger and
jealousy for Aron. Lee tells Cal to control his reaction, and Cal
does finally recognize that it is within his power to control himself.
He apologizes to his father and goes to see Aron, who is on his
way back from Abra’s house. Still roiling with jealousy, Cal tells
Aron that he has something to show him. He takes Aron to see Cathy
at her brothel. The next morning, Aron signs up for the army, too
sickened by the truth to want to live.
Summary: Chapter 50
The next day, Cathy is practically catatonic with the
memory of Aron’s visit and his horror upon learning the truth about
her. She sends a note to the sheriff advising him to check Joe Valery’s
fingerprints and then writes a will in which she leaves all her
worldly possessions to Aron. Cathy remembers her childhood, when
she used to fantasize about forming a friendship with Alice of Alice
in Wonderland. Cathy takes the morphine pill and imagines
herself shrinking like Alice until she dies.
Joe Valery discovers Cathy’s body the next morning and
finds the will she has written. He takes the keys to Cathy’s safe
deposit box at the bank, as well as the photographs of the men she
blackmails. However, just as Joe is about to leave the house, the
sheriff’s deputy arrives and says that he has to bring Joe in to
see the sheriff about something—the sheriff has read Cathy’s letter.
Joe suddenly breaks away and tries to run, but the deputy guns him
down as he flees.
Analysis: Chapters 46–50
On a biblical level, Adam’s rejection of Cal’s money parallels
God’s rejection of Cain’s offering of grain—the act that prompts
Cain to kill Abel out of jealousy. Furthermore, Adam’s rejection
of Cal’s gift parallels Cyrus’s rejection of Charles’s gift earlier
in the novel. In both cases, a father ignores the intentions of
a loving son in order to focus on the son he has chosen to love
better. In the early parts of the novel, Adam shows no love for
Cyrus, while Charles loves Cyrus deeply; nonetheless, Cyrus idealizes
Adam as the perfect son and prefers him to Charles. Similarly, Cal
loves Adam more completely and selflessly than the anemic Aron,
but Adam is so pleased with Aron’s matriculation at Stanford that
he decides Aron can do no wrong. His strict sense of morality prevents
Adam from accepting the money from Cal; he does not take the time
to realize that Cal means well by giving him the money and that
Cal merely has not thought about the moral complications of the
way he earned it. Similarly, when Aron learns the truth about Cathy,
his despair stems largely from the fact that his father lied to
him so many years by claiming his mother was dead. Aron, who lives
in a world of moral simplicity and extremity, is unable to understand
that Adam lied to him in order to protect him and to shield his
feelings.
When Cal takes Aron to Cathy’s brothel, he at least temporary loses
his struggle with evil. In doing so, Cal fulfills his role in the Cain-Abel
story, causing Aron to join the army and ship off to die in the
war. Indeed, Cal brings Aron to their mother out of anger and a desire
to inflict pain on his brother, not out of a desire to help Aron confront
the ghosts of their family’s past. As expected, the revelation about
Cathy shatters Aron: Cathy describes Aron’s horrible screaming when
he sees her and Cal’s bitter laughter at the sight. However, although
Cal has chosen evil once again, it is significant that East
of Eden does not end with Aron’s disappearance: there is still
time left for Cal to come to grips with his sin and make a decision
about how he will direct his life. Cal must decide whether to choose
goodness and strength or to give into the example of Cathy, whose
spirit he feels inside him.
Cathy’s downfall, meanwhile, is precipitous. She becomes increasingly
paranoid and suspicious until the point where she actually feels
Charles Trask’s spirit inside her. Mirroring the emotional and psychological
decay wrought by her life’s commitment to evil, her body degenerates
as well. Her hands are ravaged by arthritis, she suffers from insomnia,
and she fears exposure to light. The extraordinary pain she has
inflicted on others simply for the sake of doing so now begins to
come back to haunt her. As Cathy deteriorates, she relies upon increasingly
desperate means to control those around her. As she realizes that
she has no control over Cal, just as she has no control over Adam,
she escapes in the only manner available—a morphine overdose. A
vestige of her remains, however, in the form of the inheritance
that she passes to Aron.
