East of Eden

            East of Eden is the perfect book to use to analyze my question. One of the largest themes throughout the novel is how much our parent’s impact us, especially when it comes to parental favoritism. Mirroring the story of Cain and Able, Cyrus favored his son Adam over his other son Charles. This sent Charles down a dark path, desperate for his love and consumed by envy Charles beats his brother to the edge of death with a baseball bat. Throughout his life Charles was unable to overcome the influence that Cyrus had on him. His insecurities always had more of an influence over him than his morality had over himself. Another thing that can limit the capacity of free will is mental illness. The perfect example for this is Cathy. Born with psychopathy Cathy does not have sense of morality. In fact, she has a point of view of the world that is like the witches of Macbeth “Fair is foul, and foul is fair”. She views the world with an almost animalistic perspective, giving her little to no choice in her actions. Most of the choices she made were based on either self-preservation or a desire to escape. Because of her disability her choices were not her own.