God was angry that Cain had sinned, so he said to him, "Now you are under a curse and driven from the ground, which opened its mouth to receive your brother's blood from your hand. When you work the ground, it will no longer yield its crops for you. You will be a restless wanderer on the earth. (Genesis 4:11, 12)" .
Steinbeck personifies the Serpent in the character of Cathy. Cathy is a person who looks for the evil in each person and tries to draw it out and exploit it. Steinbeck says, "There was a time when a girl like Cathy would have been called possessed by the devil. She would have been exorcised to cast out the evil spirit, and if after many trials that did not work, she would have been burned as a witch for the good of the community. (Steinbeck 73)" Cathy must change her name and appearance and move often to continue her corrupt work. After murdering her parents, she becomes Catherine Amesbury and later changes her name again to Kate after shooting Adam and leaving her sons. Cathy has to put on different faces regularly. To Faye, she is the sweet, adoring daughter, but to the girls who live in her whorehouse, she is the merciless punishment enforcer. She must constantly watch her steps and plan any action from start to finish to make sure she will be able to carry it out. Virtue is remembered and honored from generation to generation. Samuel's teachings and philosophies are often relied on long after his death. Lee incorporates Samuel's teachings into his upraising of the Trask twins. Cathy begins to realize reluctantly near the end of her life that the evil on which she thrived caused her downfall. She had trained herself never to trust anyone and in the end Cathy even began to doubt herself. Both the serpent and Cathy decieved all they came in contact with. The serpent, manipulated Eve into eating the apple and Cathy killed Faye for her money and manipulated Adam into believing she was an innocent woman with good moral standards until she shot him.
