On Demons and Monsters

And what East of Eden has to say about them.

Plate from the 1863 Edition of De Plancy’s Dictionnaire Infernal; Engraving by Louis Le Breton

I’ve noticed a lot of buzz about demons lately.

• In the Catholic Church, for instance, demands for exorcisms are on the rise. While there were only a dozen or so church-appointed exorcists in the United States in 2005, as of 2023 there were reportedly over one hundred.

• Demons are surfacing in popular media, too. In a recent interview with Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson elaborated his belief that supernatural, extraterrestrial beings — what we call “aliens” — are not only visiting us but exerting spiritual influence over us. While Carlson stopped short of naming such beings, he categorized them as playing for “Team Good” or “Team Bad.” And if you’re a supernatural being on “Team Bad,” I think it’s safe to say you’re a demon.

• Over at Astral Codex Ten, Scott Alexander has an interesting review of The Others Within Us, by Robert Falconer. Falconer practices a type of psychotherapy called Internal Family Systems (IFS), which posits that every mind contains a perfect, flawless Self. Unfortunately, every mind also contains sub-minds or “parts” that sometimes pursue agendas contrary to the Self’s healthy functioning (as if the parts have a mind of their own).

  The point of IFS is to work with a therapist to discover your parts, which have voices, names, and forms. You and your therapist then talk to your parts to understand their motivations and cajole them to change tack. It all sounds like a fad New Age therapy derived from Pixar’s Inside Out theory of the human mind. But then it gets really woo. Falconer and other IFS therapists assert that some patients have parts that are not sub-minds but in fact intruders, hellbent on sowing chaos and destruction. To wit: demons. Thankfully, and conveniently for IFS therapists, it’s possible to boot such demons from the mind with lots and lots more IFS therapy.

• And then we just had the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony, the centerpiece of which was an LGBTQ+/Fat Pride send-up of the Last Supper. In case the message was too subtle, the director threw in a giant Golden Calf and a Pale Rider . . . none of which had anything to do with elite athletes or French culture, leading many Christians to reasonably describe the ceremonies as “demonic.”

On the left is Breton’s illustration of the demon of gluttony, Behemoth; On the right, Barbara Butch. Yes, I’m aware the juxtaposition is snarky.

So yeah, demons are a thing right now.

The question is why. Every culture has a long-held belief in demons; they make appearances across religions and folklore. But what explains the latest uptick of demons in our collective consciousness?

In the Catholic Church context, some ascribe the growing interest in exorcism to competition with Pentecostal Christianity, what with its showy faith-healings and casting out of demons. In the pop culture realm, others point to the ubiquitous presence of demons in movies and TV since 1973’s The Exorcist, and the milking of Satanism for “edge” in music since at least AC/DC. And then there’s what Dr. Richard Gallagher, a psychiatrist who works with Catholic diocese to screen potential exorcism subjects for mental illness, sees as a “driving factor”: the decline of traditional religion. As he puts it, “When people give up a mainstream or more orthodox type of religion, they generally develop some kind of substitute belief system. That often involves ideas about energy forces, occult themes, and visitation by spirits.”

Then, of course, is the obvious explanation for the increased focus on demons: There’s just a lot more actual demons around.

I reject this explanation because I don’t believe in demons. Demons are a cope, a form of avoidance. They externalize and otherize our innate capacity for the cruel, the depraved, the unspeakable. They’re a projection of that truth we’d rather bury and ignore: We all have it in us to do some very bad things.

This is the real reason, I think, why demons have wormed (or flapped? wriggled?) their way into the zeitgeist. After all, it’s an election year, and shaping up to be one of the most violent and unhinged since the beginning of the American Experiment. What better way to channel your hatred towards the “other side” — a hatred you can’t really admit to yourself, especially when that hatred secretly extends to your own family members — than by imagining them as demonically possessed?

You see, I’m firmly in the banality of evil camp. Nowadays, Hannah Arendt’s catchphrase is conventional wisdom, but it’s easy to forget that when Eichmann in Jerusalem was published in 1963, the idea of ordinary, even mediocre men being behind the Holocaust caused outrage. As Amos Elon relates in his introduction to the 2006 edition of the book:

Eichmann’s alleged banality was the main reason the book provoked such a storm. Most people still assumed that murder was committed by monsters or demons . . .

But for purposes of this post — and to segue into a bit of literary discussion — let’s assume demons are real. (And if you believe they’re real, by all means comment below. I’m interested in your perspective.) Hell, let’s assume monsters are real, too, while we’re at it. If that’s the case, then the real issue can’t be the bare fact of their existence, which is outside of our control. The real issue is that we see them clearly and recognize them for what they are.

The Importance of Seeing in East of Eden

I recently finished East of Eden and let me be blunt: I couldn’t get enough of Cathy Ames. More highbrow readers praise Steinbeck’s use of Biblical allegory, his vividly-drawn generational saga, his loving yet brutally honest depiction of the Salinas Valley. Those readers are just giving Steinbeck some literary lip service, though. Secretly, they all tear feverishly through the allegory bits and the family drama and the descriptions of the crappy soil on the Hamilton homestead, trying to speed to the next Cathy chapter.

Cathy compels the novel. She’s the Über Villainess, and just when you think she couldn’t possibly be more malignant, she goes and tops herself. Incinerating her parents, seducing and destroying men, shooting the hapless Adam Trask, currying Faye’s favor only to poison her and reap the inheritance! Cathy’s brand of evil is over-the-top to the point of being ridiculous, but it keeps the pages turning. What’ll she do next? Roast puppies on a spit?

Steinbeck famously describes Cathy as a “monster” born to human parents:

. . . Just as there are physical monsters, can there not be mental or psychic monsters born? The face and body may be perfect, but if a twisted gene or a malformed effect can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?

. . .It is my belief that Cathy Ames was born with the tendencies, or lack of them, which drove and forced her all of her life. Some balance wheel was misweighted, some fear out of ratio. She was not like other people, never was from birth. And just as a cripple may learn to utilize his lack so that he becomes more effective in a limited field than the uncrippled, so did Cathy, using her difference, make a painful and bewildering stir in the world.

Florence Pugh is set to star in an upcoming adaptation of East of Eden directed by Zoe Kazan, whose grandfather Elia directed the original adaptation starring James Dean

Passages like the foregoing prompt lively online debates about whether Cathy is a sociopath under the DSM-IV. criteria. It doesn’t help that, in the novel, Steinbeck muddies the waters by describing Cathy’s feet as resembling hooves, and her little tongue as pointed and flickering — images that conjure the Devil or the Serpent, take your pick. And then the waters get nearly opaque when you learn that Steinbeck modeled Cathy on his second wife, Gwyn Conger, in revenge for her leaving him and taking their sons with her.

There’s no point in trying to suss out who was more at fault in the Steinbeck-Conger marriage; their personal accounts are self-serving and what evidence there is indicates they both behaved, well, monstrously. Besides, whether Cathy is a sociopath or a monster or Satan’s minion isn’t the real question. The real question is how Cathy’s true nature goes unrecognized by so many characters.

Cathy’s parents only see their innocent daughter, not their future murderer. The whoremaster Mr. Edwards sees only his pretty young lover, not his swindler. Faye sees a slavishly devoted daughter-figure, not the Machiavellan wench slipping strychnine into her food. And most importantly to the narrative of the novel, Adam Trask sees only the loving wife and future mother of his children, not the devious bitch who tries to abort their twins, then damn near ends him with a pistol shot. It’s enough for any reader — well, okay, for this reader — to throw down the book and scream, “For God’s sake, people, open your eyes!”

There’s a feminist argument that Cathy’s evil evades detection because she appears so pretty, vulnerable, and conventionally feminine — in other words, the model of The Patriarchy’s idea of a virtuous woman. But I think that argument is refuted by the existence of other characters who, despite Cathy’s prettiness, femininity and seeming vulnerability, see right through her act:

• Adam’s brother Charles, for instance, is innately distrustful of Cathy, even though she arrives at the Trask doorstep a victim, beaten to a pulp by Edwards. Charles, with his own capacity for violent brutality, shares some of Cathy’s nature — a point Steinbeck emphasizes a bit ham-handedly by giving both of them scars — allowing him to recognize her for what she is.

• Adam’s servant, Lee, also distrusts Cathy. His vision is clear-sighted because, like Charles, he shares a commonality with Cathy: He’s a pretender, too, an intelligent and educated man who speaks in pidgin because experience tells him Americans will only accept him as a Chinese stereotype. It takes an imposter to know one.

• And Samuel Harrison is disturbed by Cathy upon their first meeting, due to the similarity between Cathy’s eyes and those of a criminal he locked gazes with during a public execution he witnessed as a child. (Steinbeck depicts the criminal’s eyes as goat-like, again muddying the monster/demon distinction). Since Samuel is arguably the wisest character in the novel, he sees Cathy clearly due to his own internal moral clarity. But Steinbeck also takes pains to paint Samuel as insatiably curious; he reads voraciously (even William James on psychology!), tinkers with inventions, and is a stranger to no one in Salinas. The implication is that by staying open-minded and invested in the world and its people, one can hope to divine the hidden aspects of human nature, just as Samuel divines hidden water with a forked stick.

Why is it so important to see the evil staring you in the face? Clearly, survival is contingent upon it: Cathy literally poses an existential threat to others. But beyond your immediate survival, East of Eden suggests that seeing clearly is critical to timshel, the root theme of the novel.

Timshel, as all you East of Eden fans know, is the Hebrew word used in God’s address to Cain following the murder of Abel. It translates to “Thou mayest,” which, as Lee explains, means that God grants us the choice not to sin. Some might take a hard look at their fellow humans and conclude the odds of them making that choice aren’t too healthy. But for Lee, the fact that we often opt for sin is no cause for despair. Because of timshel, we have the power to choose the good and the right: a glorious power worthy of celebration.

“‘Thou mayest’- that gives a choice. It might be the most important word in the world. That says the way is open. That throws it right back on a man. For if ‘Thou mayest’-it is also true that ‘Thou mayest not.’ Don’t you see?” . . .

“. . . It is easy out of laziness, out of weakness, to throw oneself into the lap of deity, saying, ‘I couldn’t help it; the way was set.’ But think of the glory of the choice! That makes a man a man.”

Here’s where clear vision comes in: Choosing not to sin requires seeing the good staring you right in the face, every bit as much as the evil. Over and over again, Steinbeck emphasizes we are a tangled mass of light and dark. And perhaps the highest act of timshel, forgiveness, is not possible without recognizing the light in others, shadowed though it may be.

In East of Eden, characters blindly choose sin when their light goes unacknowledged and dismissed. Charles beats Adam to a bloody mess when their father, Cyrus, ignores Charles’ gift to him of an expensive pearl-handled knife; Cyrus fails to see how Charles, out of love, carefully considered what his father would like for his birthday and saved up for the present. Cal indirectly causes his brother Aron’s death when Adam rejects Cal’s money (enough to cover Adam’s business failures) because it was gained through war profiteering. Like Cyrus before him, Adam fails to see the loving intentions behind Cal’s gift. Just as importantly, despite his scruples over Cal’s money, Adam fails to remember how he accepted his inheritance from Cyrus without complaint, despite indications it was stolen.

None of this is to excuse Charles’s or Cal’s behavior; Steinbeck makes it clear they both acted horrifically towards their brothers. But it does suggest that counter-acting the generations of sin passed down from Cain demands not only recognizing the light in others, but the darkness in ourselves. We are our own demons, after all. I like to think this kind of self-awareness is what prompts Adam to forgive Cal with the utterance of the word timshel at the novel’s end. Perhaps Adam is finally free to conquer sin because he sees it in his own nature.

Does Cathy Choose?

In a novel that strenuously argues for free will, does Cathy have any? If she’s not only a “monster,” but “born that way,” then she would seem to be a human outside the scope of timshel. It’s a troubling moral wrinkle, suggesting Cathy’s not a person choosing evil but a merely a machine performing as programmed. Can you truly condemn someone with no agency?

In a top-notch essay, Hannah Ratner notes that at least one scholar, Hannah Noël, has chewed on these questions and “offers a way in which Cathy’s depiction can be read as consistent with the theme of timshel:

Noël argues that Cathy chooses not to see the goodness in others which she does not possess in herself. In order to avoid facing her own profound lacking, she convinces herself that everyone else is just as corrupt and immoral as she. In one scene, Cathy tells Adam, “my own mother and father [were] pretending goodness. And they weren’t good.”

“Do you mean that in the whole world there’s only evil and folly?” asks Adam.

“That’s exactly what I mean,” Cathy responds.

Thus, Noël states, “Cathy’s evil nature is not derived from an inherent genetic flaw within her character, but from her choice not to recognize the empathy that she lacks.” Had she chosen to come to terms with her emotional deficiencies, perhaps Cathy’s life would have taken a different trajectory.

This interpretation nicely explains Cathy’s suicide after Cal brings Aron to the brothel and exposes Cathy as their mother. Rather than Aron’s shocked face, Cathy is tortured by the memory of Cal’s, his lips “smiling with cruelty,” forcing upon her the knowledge that other people “had something she lacked.” Would a true monster give a second thought to their own moral void?

Seeing is a Choice

Hannah Arendt famously described evil as a failure to think. I think it can just as easily be described as a failure to see.

You probably know that, in the 1950s, Asch conducted a group experiment wherein he showed test subjects a line segment, then asked them to match it to a set of three line segments of different lengths. The correct answer was obvious, but when all the other members of the group unanimously and openly chose the wrong segment, the test subject would choose the wrong segment, too.

What you might not know, however, is that in 2005, neuroscientists replicated Asch’s experiment. And what they discovered is that test subjects didn’t merely choose the wrong segment due to social pressure to conform. They discovered that, when faced with thinking and seeing differently than the group, the test subject’s actual vision changed. They chose the wrong segment because they perceived it differently due to conformism.

Now, I’m an optimist by nature. I like the idea of timshel. In East of Eden terms, I share Lee’s love for “that glittering instrument, the human soul. It is a lovely and unique thing in the universe. It is always attacked and never destroyed- because ‘Thou mayest.’”

But in this internet age, when we’re all flooded with digital propaganda from competing factions, timshel seems especially vulnerable and worthy of protection. Then as now, East of Eden urges us to notice what’s right under our nose, to take the blinders off and look within, and to choose wisely — even if that means simply choosing to see.