the wild animals the Lord God had made" (3:1). Steinbeck likens Kate's shrewdness to that of the Devil's, supposedly the foremost source of evil and deception. They both use their abilities not for good, but instead to trick others into cruel submissiveness. Her connection to the Devil is sustained as Steinbeck uses imagery that shows her physical resemblance to the serpent. She has a heart-shaped face, a small mouth, a "little tongue [that] flicks] around her lips" (p. 173), small sharp teeth, tiny ears without lobes, unblinking eyes, and narrow hips. These attributes, not only inducing a perceptible resemblance to the body of a snake, become more prominent as the novel progresses. As her soul darkens, the physical manifestation causes her to resemble a serpent more and more. After she kills her parents and stages her demise, she is badly beaten by her pimp, but manages to crawl to Adam's door, arriving with dirt in her shattered jaw. God places the curse that "upon your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat" (3:14) onto Satan for punishment of his cruel exploitation of Adam and Eve. Similarly, Mr. Edwards places this fate on Cathy after he discovers that she has been torturing and robbing him of his money. These parallels to Satan show the very extremity of her evil. It is this evil, however, that causes others in contact with her to recognize their own personal worth within them.
             When Adam's brother, Charles, meets Cathy for the first time, it makes him perceive the evil that dwells inside him. Before their encounter, Charles feels no r
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