East of Eden L -- chpt50: ALICE IN EVIL-LAND, LOST THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS

Reading Questions
Chapter 50.1

by John Tenniel

1. Maybe Cathy could read when she was five, but she clearly missed the boat on what those words meant.  How is she like--short answer--and how is she really almost completely different than Alice in Wonderland?  (Obviously, this one's for those who've read AND UNDERSTOOD the Alice books.)
2. How does this misinterpretation shed light on her evil--and, I'm going to pursue it still, her humanity (I believe less and less that she is indeed so inhuman and without justification as we and others have claimed)?  After all, what else in the universe does to itself what she does at the end of this section?
3. Take a look at the very last sentence of the section;" and she had never been."  Not, "as if."  Unfortunately, it's just not true.  I think we're meant to hope so.  What legacy does she leave behind?  And regardless of how Aron responds to the news of the will (if he ever gets it), has Cathy won?  What will determine her victory?

chapter 50.2

1. I hate to ask it, but is all this death a cop-out--a great steamroller ending?  Is this whole book thing turning all Grady-Tripp on ol' Steinbeck?  (Sorry -- for anyone following along who hasn't read Wonder Boys, Grady Tripp is a fictional creative writing professor who's working on a mammoth book with absolutely no aim to it, and which just goes and goes and goes--and goes nowhere.)