In the year of 1952, John Steinbeck published the novel that "I have been practicing for all my life" (McCarthy, p.117), East of Eden. He decided to hold nothing back from the reader and scrutinize the very aspect of human nature using the Biblical stories of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel as a backdrop. This story of good and evil and man's downfall is centered on the dark and twisted figure of Cathy Ames, later Kate Trask. Through this pure embodiment of evil, Steinbeck demonstrates how the characters of Charles, Caleb, and Samuel come to discover the good and evil that dwells within each of their souls.
             Although the character of Cathy seems unnaturally vicious and cruel, Steinbeck didn't have to go far to find the inspiration for her existence. Steinbeck's first marriage to Carol Henning was unhappy and bitter, filled with quarrels and arguments. In 1942, he divorced her and turned around in 1943 to marry Gwen Verdon, the mother of his two boys. This marriage proved to be more unsuccessful than the first and "she became a kind of monster in John's mind" (Wyatt, p. xi), thus making the explicit correlation to Cathy. Steinbeck speaks of Gwyn and reflects that "she killed my love of her with little cruelties...American married life is the doormat to the whorehouse" (p. xi). Steinbeck later divorced her as well. As Gwen was his torturer in life, so Cathy is the manifestation of his suffering and takes on the role of a monster in the story.
             Through symbolism and her actions within the novel, the diabolical character of Kate Trask parallels the role of Satan in the Book of Genesis. Kate is consistently described as a serpent, the form the devil chose to lure Adam and Eve out of purity and into transgression. Throughout the novel, Kate is presented as a woman who thinks and acts like a man-"only tougher, quicker, and more clever. [She] was more clever than anybody" (p.502). In Genesis, the serpent "was more crafty than any of ...