Symbolism In Cat's Eye

Additionally the central image of Atwood’s Cat’s Eye is clearly a blue cat’s eye marble, which re appears a number of times during the course of Elaine’s turbulent journey toward maturity. Particularly, where Elaine elaborates on the game of marbles itself, its value seems to be its beauty. Although she does play marbles at school risking, the loss of her cat’s eye marbles, she actually risks losing the blue one. Instead, she keeps it in her red plastic purse. Her brother, a far better shot, hides his own marbles in a glass jar that he buries deep in the ravine. However, the cat’s eye seems to serve another function as well since when Elaine is without it, she seems peculiarly vulnerable. Eventually, at this stage of the novel, then, the cat’s eye marble, the encounter, and more specifically the metaphor of the ravine, represents a particular way of seeing, but also what Elaine saw during those traumatic years of her childhood. Apart from, in the next half of the novel an encounter between Elaine and Cordelia which highlights the contradictions of feminine identity was inscribed.The turning point comes, as Cordelia throws her blue hat down into the ravine, enacting the very scene anticipated when Elaine stared into the blue at the centre of her cat’s eye marble (151). Consequently, what Elaine has seen vanishes in the ravine. Ultimately, The moment of resolution and forgiveness, as well Elaine’s acknowledgement of the bond between herself and Cordelia, is strongly framed in