Thoughts from my bookclub book: The Life of Pi (Yann Martel) Harcourt, 2001, Orlando.

"What you don't realize is that we are a strange and forbidding species to wild animals. We fill them with fear. They avoid us as much as possible. It took centuries to still the fear in some pliable animals--domestication it's called--but most cannot get over their fear, and I doubt they ever will. When wild animals fight us, it is out of sheer desperation. They fight when they feel they have no other way out. It's a very last resort" (373) Any insights from this into Cathy?

"The world isn't just the way it is. It is how we understand it, no? And in understanding something, we bring something to it, no? Doesn't that make life a story?" (380) Any thoughts?

"I wished for her anger. I wished for her to punish me. Only not this silence" (386). A bit how Cal feels...

"Then we fought and I killed him. He had no expression on his face, neither of despair nor of anger, neither of fear nor of pain. He gave up. He let himself be killed, though it was still a struggle. He knew he had gone too far, even by his bestial standards. He had gone too far and now he didn't want to go on living any more. But he said 'I'm sorry.' Why do we cling to our evil ways?" Cathy?

"Do you think I want to be human?
Look at those pictures! I'd rather be an animal than a human," said
Cathy.

Does she get to the point that she has gone too far even for her bestial standards and is it at that point that she spares Adam and commits suicide? There is no catharsis, but there does seem to be a recognition that she has gone too far even for herself...

Just some thoughts...it seems that I have been unable to turn East of Eden off no matter what I am doing, reading, thinking, breathing, etc....

C.