Haunted Shadow

John Steinbeck is one of the outstanding American writers, who won the 1962 Nobel Prize for literature. Steinbeck creates East of Eden towards the end of his writing career. The novel states the story of Cyrus and the Samuels, two families spanning a half of century. Steinbeck depicts human—the most greatest creature in the universe. From his work, the reader can understand human's inner conflicts and their childhood impact on it. Steinbeck masters the good skills of revealing the inner world of the figures. His later novels search for answers to the perplexity of life. The characters in East of Eden are psychologically different. Analyzing these characters is critical to reading this novel.In this thesis, a psychoanalysis approach of Karen Homey is employed to analyze three characters in the novel. According to Homey, if a child has a feeling of helplessness in a hostile world, including parents'rigid restriction and in justice, lacking affection or warm feeling, the child will unconsciously apply his/her own strategies against the potentially perilous atmosphere. Homey categorizes these strategies into three types:compliance, aggression and withdrawal. The above strategies often compromise to alleviate human's inner conflict. The predominant policy determines the behaviors of individual.This thesis focuses on the three main characters, Cal, Charles and Cathy who adopt different strategies respectively against their anxiety. Chapter One gives a brief introduction to John Steinbeck and Karen Homey's theory. Chapter Two explains the reason why Cal has anxiety and defensive moves. Chapter Three analyzes Charles's inner conflict deriving from his father's preference. Chapter Four focuses on the heroine—Cathy who takes her extreme way against her anxiety.Homeyan theory is a comparatively new method to analyze the characters in East of Eden. By exploring their behaviors, we can better understand the novel and learn a lesson and adjust our attitude towards the others. Thus, this thesis is significant not only for literature analysis but also for its importance in reality.