Cat's Eye, by Margaret Atwood is a novel that depicts the journey of its protagonist Elaine Risley. Her physical and spiritual journey is reflected in a Cat's Eye marble that ultimately allows her to see and understand her journey, as we have already done as readers. It is only when Elaine completes her journey that she “sees [her] life in its entirety.” Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayIn Chapter 1 of Cat's Eye, it was stated that “[Elaine] then began to think of time as having a form …You have no form. I don't look back in time but through it, like water. Sometimes this resurfaces, sometimes that, sometimes nothing.” The reader learns how Atwood describes Elaine's journey and how she (Elaine) views her own life. We see Elaine take a physical journey back to her childhood city of Toronto. It is this physical journey that mirrors Elaine's spiritual journey toward self-realization and enlightenment. As Elaine reaches new destinations, she has retrospectives or flashbacks to an important incident in her life that "helped" form her current spiritual state. We first meet Elaine and Cordelia (the "best friend" and the executioner) in the first section of the novel "Iron Lung". They are traveling on a streetcar in Toronto. The idea of ​​a journey immediately arises for the reader. “Stephen says time is not a line” are the first words written in the novel. This sums up the structure of Cats Eye and Elaine's lives. This section of the novel is written in the present tense, as we, the readers, actually are with 13-year-old Elaine. However, we quickly cut to Elaine at age 43 and learn that she is doing a retrospective on her childhood. It is then revealed that she is [physically in Toronto now, walking the streets, reflecting on the events of her childhood ("I reached the place where we were getting off the streetcar"). Just being in Toronto reminds her of her repressed feelings and emotions from her childhood: “[she] can feel [her] throat tightening, a pain along her jaw. [She] started chewing [her] fingers again. There is blood, a taste that [she] remembers…” Events like these occur throughout the novel to show Elaine’s journey. This particular event triggers Elaine's spiritual journey back to her childhood and the torment she suffered at the hands of Cordelia. Another way the novel describes Elaine's journey is through her art. Elaine Risley is a painter and has developed enough of a reputation to be included in the "retrospective" art exhibition. Eventually, these paintings help her see "[her] life as a whole", but for a long time, she does not actually understand what these paintings mean and why she created them. Her memory repression is revealed when her paintings are described by Charna and Elaine realizes that she doesn't really know what they are about. The paintings document Elaine's journey, highlighting important events of the journey. They are an expression of his memories through his subconscious. In Elaine's "Empire Bloomers" series, two authoritative images, Mrs. Smeath's and Miss Lumley's bloomers converge, showing Elaine's hatred of two figures who terrorized her as a child. This reveals her subconscious hatred of them, but she is unable to understand that this is the reason for the painting. Another predominant painting that created a “visual” aid to his journey was the “Three Muses”. Elaine (until she completes her journey) fails to recognize that the three people.