Cat's Eye

Content Warning: This section references bullying and suicidal ideation.

Elaine’s blue cat’s eye marble is a central symbol representing her troubled childhood, her relationship with Cordelia, and her development as an artist.

As a child, Elaine learns she can see the world through the marble in a detached manner, creating distance from her own emotions. The marble gains talismanic power: she keeps it in her pocket, where she can hold onto it and see through it, but it simultaneously looks out of her pocket “through bone and cloth with its impartial gaze” (166). This is the origin of Elaine’s artistic gaze, linking the symbol to the theme of Vision and Visual Art.

As Elaine ages, she forgets about the marble but, where Stephen buries and therefore loses his own multitude of cat’s eye marbles, Elaine’s marble keeps reappearing throughout her life, reflecting the persistence of the traumatic memories of her childhood. When she rediscovers it while going through her parents’ possessions, she looks into it and “see[s] [her] life entire” (420), finally reconnecting with the haunting repressed memories of her past. It is therefore through the marble (and through artistic representations of the marble) that Elaine begins to reclaim her own memories.