Cat’s Eye: Part 8 Summary & Analysis

Although Elaine seems to have lost the sense of religious faith that she developed as a child, her relationship to churches, and to the Virgin Mary in particular, carries over for the rest of her life. She seems to be drawn to the aesthetics of the church as much as anything else—the extravagant willingness to dedicate everything to the practice of religion. While Elaine herself cannot be consumed by dogma, she seems to have an interest in obsession and in belief, these qualities that can order people’s lives and provide comfort.

The Virgin of Lost Things that Elaine finds in Mexico is a particular example of her interest in belief, although instead of placing a lost object in front of the statue the way that the visitors did, Elaine sits herself in front of it, implying that there is a degree to which she still sees herself as a lost thing.

Elaine’s weakened sense of self traces back to Cordelia, whom Elaine saw echoed in her own children. Even as an adult, Elaine has a hard time protecting her self-worth, and still sees herself as nothing thanks to one toxic friend who pushed her to see herself that way. This suggests that a person can form their identity in relation to the way it is reflected back by other people. In Elaine’s case, this means that extended pain and conflict with another person can indelibly shape her own identity.

The change in the British royalty remains an important one even for these Canadian students, which shows the long-running influence of the war on their national culture—at the same time, Elaine’s relationship to the English monarchy becomes more complicated with time. The changes in her daily routines are drastic in this section—with the end of her relationship to Cordelia comes a change in school, which means that she no longer has to cross the fateful ravine. This symbolizes a positive change for her, as the ravine was associated with death and decay.

Although only a year has passed, Elaine forgets her most traumatic memories, which makes it seem that she might move on unscathed from this period in her life. However, she perceives this as missing time, not as an improved and unbroken set of memories, and this missing time messes with her identity. Elaine feels uneasy because unspoken memories have entrenched themselves in her psyche, but she can no longer put words or mental images to them. Most significant is the anxiety she feels around the destruction of the bridge. While she perhaps should feel relief at the destruction of a place full of such bad memories, she instead gets caught up in the sense that something important has been left either buried (this could be the marbles that Stephen buried) or in the air (which might represent the Virgin Mary, or Elaine herself).

Time starts to pass more quickly as Elaine moves through school, and it’s remarkable how unremarkable the series of events that she records are: first boyfriend, first television set, and first short haircut. The objects that Elaine finds, both in her room and in the trunk, are significant in that they represent moments of the past that were once very important but do not contain strong residual emotional weight for Elaine. This shows that one of the ways that time passes as layers is through objects that last through time, even if memories do not—for instance, Elaine does not currently access the memories in connection with the marble, and she cannot access the memories of her mother in relation to the items in the trunk—however, those objects exist as a sort of congealed version of the time that passed with them.

Although this reunion between Elaine and Cordelia feels like it ought to have some intense tension, the result is decidedly anticlimactic. Although Elaine still seems to regard Cordelia as an authority, in this case on teen womanhood and coolness, their interaction lacks the bullying and power plays of childhood. Furthermore, Cordelia has clearly not been as successful as Elaine, being held back for something inane while Elaine has skipped a grade—the wheels of power between the two appear to be shifting. At the same time, Elaine still pressures herself in comparison with her peers and tends to put herself down as juvenile and underdeveloped, which indicates that this process of internalizing shame is still part of her.

Elaine seems to be dissociating, which means she has a sort of mental block in place so that she cannot fully experience her feelings. Although this is likely a consequence of her bullying, she does not directly make that connection. Her relationship to Cordelia now seems like a generic female teenage friendship, and the two of them insult boys (implying a divide between the genders) and listen to popular records. The past appears to have been forgotten.

The world that Cordelia’s sisters develop for themselves leaves her out, which sheds some light on Cordelia’s childhood behavior—it seems like she treated Elaine much the same way that Cordelia’s older sisters treated her. This reveals an underlying theory of identity formation: instead of necessarily rejecting traits in one’s bullies, sometimes a person actually takes on their bully’s traits, perhaps as a method of assuming control. Otherwise, Elaine and Cordelia’s relationship appears fairly stable at this point, with their main hobbies involving minor bouts of acting out—while one wonders why Cordelia feels the need for theft, it ultimately appears to tie into this anti-social rejection of adults and norms that Elaine also shows at other points in the story.

The passage of time has treated Elaine’s family well, as represented by their financial success. Their father choosing how to decorate the house marks another way in which this family differs from typical families at the time, as women were expected to be responsible for household areas. Elaine’s mother, however, is an idiosyncratic woman, as demonstrated by her unique dancing hobbies and her lack of regard for the opinions of others. Elaine appears to have a conflicted relationship with her mother in this sense, as she both experiences shame and jealousy in regards to her mother—because Elaine does not share this quality of not caring what others think, she has a harder time understanding her mother.

Stephen has changed and is growing more distant from Elaine, diving both into his studies and his male friendships—his process of growing into adulthood involves rejecting the family and belittling his father’s long-held passions, which reflects a common coming-of-age trend of needing to reject the past in order to move forward.

Elaine resents learning about her father’s past because of the vulnerability inherent in doing so. The war influenced him—and, by extension, Elaine’s childhood—more than she had realized at the time. His career as a scientist is now implicated with military connotations, as this passage reveals that his research was considered relevant for the war, for inexplicable reasons—this shows the hidden connections between science and violence, a theme often discussed in relation to World War II given the invention of the highly catastrophic atomic bomb.

The things that Elaine learns in school are a marker of times where girls learned home economics while boys learned more mechanical skills, though these classes do train her for independence—making things, instead of relying on others. Her interaction with Stephen while doing dishes shows that their relationship still has some closeness even though they’ve been growing apart in recent years. Only when forced to do dishes together do they interact extensively, but Stephen does share his world with Elaine, showing that he has not completely rejected his sister. The information that he shares with her about time will shape her indefinitely, as she did not previously know that time had so many dimensions. The reader already had this information and knew that Elaine would learn it from Stephen eventually, as the novel opened with a scene that follows this one, where Elaine explains this information to Cordelia.

This anticlimactic summer marks the end of the section, which has been characterized by little action and an acceleration in the passage of time—the years take fewer pages to cover, and the events that do occur lack drama. In some ways, this testifies to the power of forgetting, as Elaine writes letters with her brother, who mostly neglects her during the year, and with Cordelia, who had bullied her so viciously as a child—she does not hold grudges or seem to perceive the past as part of the present, but instead develops a kind of antsy relationship to the passage of time.