This morning I was thinking about Adam and Cathy. Yes, I really want to shake Adam for falling under Cathy's spell, and I want to shoot Cathy for all the harm she's caused others.
I noticed how all of us talk about Adam being in love with Cathy and how it makes him blind to what she really is. We see her evilness and we see that nearly all the other characters see it as well. I have to wonder though, is Adam really in love with her or just in lust with her? He's so blind to her real character and not seeing who she is that it makes me curious.
The thought came up because when I read Jane Eyre I enjoyed the love story to it in the sense that Jane and Rochester fell in love with each other because of who they are. They acknowledged each other's strengths and weaknesses, did not lie to each other, but still loved one another (we're completely ignoring the fact that I wanted to slap Rochester every other page). With Adam though, he seems so blinded by his infatuation with Cathy that he notices nothing about her actual self. Steinbeck proves it too when he says Adam's Cathy. So the woman that Adam has envisioned Cathy to be does not actually exist. What was it about Cathy that managed to enthrall Adam, as well as her pimp from early on. The difference with Adam and the pimp, is that that the pimp, after first pissing Cathy off, saw who she was and decided to get rid of her. Not that it worked. Instead she fell into Adam's hands. How is it someone evil can draw protection from a man like Adam, even in the state she was in when he and Charles found her?
So, my question is, was Adam simply in lust with Cathy and has been shocked out of it now that she shot and left him?
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