Cat's Eye

Hello Gentle Reader

Have you ever played marbles as a child? No? Neither have I. However back in my day we played different kinds of games: Knucklebones, pick-up-sticks, spoons, knock, knock, ginger; and other such games. Childhood is full of them. However now day’s children play video games, no longer able to enjoy these fun – and somewhat naughty activities. Marbles however is a game that I have never played before. It never did appear all that popular around the place that I had grown up in, in my wee years of childhood. Those years – or rather almost my first two decades, of life were spent in a small town – a place that marbles were not very common to play at. Perhaps Marbles is a city child’s game. Though there was one tie I remember that while I was at my great grandparents home – back on their homestead (yes literally their homestead) which was later renamed by the family as simply “the farm,” – but such details are not important for this story; that my great grandmother told me and my sister that at the top of the stairs, there was a chest of toys. Now of course my sister and I went up stairs, and decided to look through the chest of toys that my great grandmother was talking about. I can still remember my fascination with the kaleidoscope which means (observer of beautiful forms) – I could not comprehend; then again I doubt I particularly cared; how the beautiful shapes and colours could possibly be made in such a tiny tube. Of course my sister wanted to see what I had, and quickly she had it in her hands, and up to her eye looking at the splendid colour. There were many other toys in this chest as well. Dolls, bears, knick’s and knacks – and then there was a bag. A strange little felt bag with draw strings, with these little spheres, of different colours and patterns. My sister and I were not entirely sure, what these were, and assumed, they were toys – because they were in the toy chest; but then we also though they were rather pretty to be toys. We placed these spheres (later we learned they were marbles) back in the particular bag, and placed them back in the toy chest.

There are many different kinds of marbles my Dear Gentle Reader. Most of these I have just learned about myself. There is the “Oxblood,” “Onionskin,” “Bumblebee,” “Ade,” “Turtle,” but the one marble that holds the most particular interest and appeal to the main character of the novel “Cat’s Eye,” by Margaret Atwood: Elaine Risley; is the title of the book itself the cat’s eye marble.

The novel itself was preceded by “The Handmaids Tale,” one of Margaret Atwood’s most controversial novels – frequently challenged, and often called pornographic and called anti-Christian. The novel structure in some ways or another is reminiscing of one of Margaret Atwood’s award winning novels which won the Booker Prize of the year two thousand “The Blind Assassin.” However it should be noted, now that “Cat’s Eye,” is not really written in the same form as the “Blind Assassin.” There is no real metafiction form, or false documentation. However there is extensive use of flashbacks. There is time distortion if one wishes to call it that. All readers and reviewers and critics, will say that the book itself is a great testament on the complete idea of how people deal with and experience time. Most of which quote the following passage of the novel:

“’ Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also... I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don't look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing.”’

However most of this can be explained with Elaine’s brother, who is somewhat, of a mathematical eccentric – he’s also the one that introduces marbles towards Elaine. Speaking of Elaine’s brother, Elaine’s entire family is not what others would say is a “typical,” family of the era. Elaine’s father is an entomologist, and the family usually spends most of their time and days in the Canadian bush – something that other children would see as a bit odd. They would see it as a bit odd. Their father leaves, for work in the morning and comes back at the end of the day. Their mothers hang out at home, does her housework, starts making supper and makes sure everyone is well fed. Then the father comes home. But Elaine’s family life is so very different. So very different indeed. It’s spent outside, and away from the rest of human contact and society. Her father doesn’t go home at the end of the day, her mother doesn’t clean house, her brother is a mathematical quack, who knows all about high mathematical calculations, and physics. Her mother doesn’t clean house. But she does take care of everyone. But things finally change, when her father gets a job at the university. They move into a house, and Elaine joins society once again. There she meets three friends: first there was Carol and Grace, but later on another one joins their group. A girl by the name of Cordelia. It is at this moment, when Elaine meets the first two girls, that she realizes that her unconventional background has not equipped her for the proper code of conduct of femininity. But everything changes when Cordelia joins the group. Everything becomes a twisted game of power and submissions. Elaine becomes to get bullied by her “best friends,” and accepts the punishment.

There is something about the next bit of work of this novel – the changing points, the interesting parts – or rather the beginning interesting parts of the novel. Reading this book at times or another, there is a feeling of childhood friendships gone awry, or those awkward teenage years. One can still feel the sting of those nasty words bullies say. Something as we get older – much, much older; to forget. The betrayal of friendships and sometimes even being part of the betrayal as it happens, and now in later years, looking back and shaking one’s head and wondering why that had happened, why one had gone right ahead, and decided to play along rather standing on the actually right side. Standing by ones friends, the ones that would or supposed to stand by you if you were in the same situation. Question would be of course, would they themselves, make the same mistake as you yourself had.

The bullying and the games, and the vicious pranks, and excluding attacks get crueller and crueller. They play a game (if memory serves correct) titled “funeral,” and place Elaine in a hole in the ground, covering the top of the hole with planks of wood, and leave her down there in the ground, in the dark. Walking away chillingly without a second thought. But things change significantly when the girls decided to take the cruelty to the worst level yet. The ravine is a place that all the girls are told to stay away from. There are “bad men,” down there, they are told or something like that. Drunks and drug users are most likely hiding down there. Not to mention whatever else just happens to lurk down there. For some odd reason or another, this part of the novel appeared to be the most vivid, of the entire novel. I could picture the cold of the dark ravine. The grey creamy winter sky overhead, with snowflakes floating down, and already changing in colour, as the sun begins to set. It is here that Elaine’s story begins to change. Somehow or another it begins to change. Half frozen now, she sees the Virgin Mary standing on the bridge, where her friends once stood and now she is left all alone, with her hallucination. But the Virgin Mary guides her to safety.

It is at this moment that it all changes. Elaine realising that she allowed herself to be the victim in the cruel games and pranks of her so called “friends,” she quickly finds new friends and moves on with life. It is at this moment, that things start to die down for a bit. But they are quickly picked up once again.

We learn of her affair with her art teacher, Josef – who if one were to ask me is a pretentious and patronizing hack of a man, who just simply tries to disguise himself as an artist. She then takes up love for the avant-garde artist Jon. What follows his marriage, a child, a suicide attempt, and divorce.

It is all quite interesting really. But the most interesting part of this novel is childhood. The childhood trauma, the evil that “little girls,” are to each other. My mother always told my sister as she got older: “girls are bitches.” It is quite true from my own observations on my sister had experienced with her friends during those awkward transition years when she was moving on in life, she had experienced this two faced, ordeal that girls posses. The phone calls. The nasty rumours. The threats of being jumped and beaten up. But much like Elaine, she made it through. Does she remember them though? Perhaps, she does. Perhaps she looks back those moments, and those “girls,” and laughs at them, and shakes her head, at the stupidity of those girls. But much like Elaine has – did my sister switch places with her tormentor and become the one with the power?

Throughout the novel though, the reader gets to see Elaine become a cat’s eye herself. Cold as the marble, with the slit of paint or colour or whatever it is in, its polished glass surface, feeling nothing. Not one thing. But as the novel points out, one way or another she is going to have to face her past one way or another. She can’t be cold as a shiny little piece of marble forever.

Thank-you For Reading Gentle Reader
Take Care
And As Always
Stay Well Read
*And Remember: Downloading Books Illegally is Thievery and Wrong.*

M. Mary