...monster

"I believe there are monsters born in the world to human parents. Some you can see, misshapen and horrible, with huge heads or tiny bodies; some are born with no arms, no legs, some with three arms, some with tails or mouths in odd places. They are accidents and no one's fault, as used to be thought. Once they were considered the visible punishments for concealed sins.
And 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 egg can produce physical monsters, may not the same process produce a malformed soul?
Monsters are variations from the accepted normal to a greater or a less degree. As a child may be born without an arm, so one may be born without kindness or the potential of conscience. A man who loses his arms in an accident had a great struggle to adjust himself to the lack, but one born without arms suffers only from people who find him strange. Having never had arms, he cannot miss them. Sometimes when we are little we imagine how it would be to have wings, but there is no reason to suppose it is the same feeling birds have. No, to a monster the norm must seem monstrous, since everyone is normal to himself. To the inner monster it must be even more obscure, since he has no visible thing to compare with others. To a man born without conscience, a soul-stricken man must seem ridiculous. To a criminal, honesty is foolish. You must not forget that a monster is only a variation, and that to a monster the norm is monstrous." ~ John Steinbeck from East of Eden

Published in 1952, John Steinbeck's East of Eden is an allegorical novel focusing on the ever-lasting battle between good and evil. When i read this novel in high school, i can honestly say that the above excerpt scared me...because the more i think about it the more I realize that it actually makes sense. Steinbeck introduces antagonistic Kathy as a perfect example of this monster. Leaving the reader with no hint of conscience anywhere in the story, Kathy terrorizes one person's life after another, killing them either physically or mentally. As a reader, to have an inside look at an individual such as Kathy is gut-wrenching, but to think that there may actually be people like her in this world is frightening. Steinbeck's logic used towards proposing this is so convincing that it will be forever ingrained somewhere in my mind.

I could go on forever talking about this novel. Steinbeck repeatedly said that this book, a mixture of biography and fiction, was his life's masterpiece. The 34th chapter is the most famous part of this novel. A total of about 1 page, this chapter theorizes the meaning of life. "We have only one story. All novels, all poetry, are built on the never-ending contest in ourselves of good and evil. And it occurs to me that evil must constantly respawn, while good, while virtue, is immortal. Vice has always a new fresh young face, while virtue is venerable as nothing else in the world is."

If you haven't read this novel, you need to. Its just one of those books that sort of changes your perspective on most things.