Cat’s Eye

by

Margaret Atwood

Teachers and parents! Our Teacher Edition on Cat’s Eye makes teaching easy.

Stephen Risley Character Analysis

Elaine’s older brother. As a child, he collects comic books and marbles and seems to have no trouble fitting in with the other boys. Rowdy, brave, and a brilliant student of math and science, Stephen initially demonstrates an interest in biology like his father; later, he develops a passion for quantum physics that forms the basis of his career. The older he gets, the more distant he grows from his family. Elaine knows little about his later life, except that he lives in San Francisco, marries a woman named Annette, and continues to work as a quantum physicist. He returns to Toronto to give a talk on his research, which is erudite and beloved by a large audience—Elaine does not understand him, however, and their interactions after the talk show the inequalities in their relationship. While Elaine remembers songs he sang in childhood and other details of their life, Stephen seems to have forgotten much; the nuclear family clearly means less to him than it does to Elaine, and he comes across as an independent and perhaps more closed-off person. Stephen is also obsessive and somewhat absentminded in his later life. For example, he once gets caught on a private military testing zone he had wandered onto to chase a butterfly. He is ultimately killed on an airplane that has been overtaken by terrorists. In the end, Stephen’s brilliance scares his mother, his father, and his sister—none of whom fully understand Stephen, though he continues to affect them even after his death.

Stephen Risley Quotes in Cat’s Eye

The Cat’s Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Stephen Risley or refer to Stephen Risley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Art, Science, and Religion Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once […] But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Stephen Risley
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

We like scabs. We pick them off—there isn’t room for a whole arm or leg under the microscope—and turn the magnification up as high as it will go. […] We look at earwax, or snot, or dirt from our toes, checking first to see that there’s no one around: we know without asking that such things would not be approved of. Our curiosity is supposed to have limits, though these have never been defined exactly.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Stephen Risley
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5 Quotes

We cross the wooden bridge on the way home from school. I am walking behind the others. Through the broken boards I can see the ground below. I remember my brother burying his jar full of puries, of waterbabies and cat’s eyes, a long time ago, down there somewhere under the bridge. The jar is still there in the earth, shining in the dark, in secret. I think about myself going down there alone despite the sinister unseen men, digging up the treasure, having all that mystery in my hands. I could never find the jar, because I don’t have the map. But I like to think about things the others know nothing about.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Cordelia, Stephen Risley, Grace Smeath , Carol Campbell
Related Symbols: Cat’s Eye Marble, The Bridge
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 13 Quotes

My brother Stephen died five years ago. I shouldn’t say died: was killed. I try not to think of it as murder, although it was, but as some kind of accident, like an exploding train. Or else a natural catastrophe, like a landslide. What they call for insurance purposes an act of God. He died of an eye for an eye, or someone’s idea of it. He died of too much justice.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Stephen Risley
Page Number: 424
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire Cat’s Eye LitChart as a printable PDF.
Cat’s Eye PDF

Stephen Risley Quotes in Cat’s Eye

The Cat’s Eye quotes below are all either spoken by Stephen Risley or refer to Stephen Risley. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Art, Science, and Religion Theme Icon
).
Part 1 Quotes

Time is not a line but a dimension, like the dimensions of space. If you can bend space you can bend time also, and if you knew enough and could move faster than light you could travel backward in time and exist in two places at once […] But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another. You don’t look back along time but down through it, like water. Sometimes this comes to the surface, sometimes that, sometimes nothing. Nothing goes away.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Stephen Risley
Page Number: 3
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 2 Quotes

We like scabs. We pick them off—there isn’t room for a whole arm or leg under the microscope—and turn the magnification up as high as it will go. […] We look at earwax, or snot, or dirt from our toes, checking first to see that there’s no one around: we know without asking that such things would not be approved of. Our curiosity is supposed to have limits, though these have never been defined exactly.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Stephen Risley
Page Number: 40
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 5 Quotes

We cross the wooden bridge on the way home from school. I am walking behind the others. Through the broken boards I can see the ground below. I remember my brother burying his jar full of puries, of waterbabies and cat’s eyes, a long time ago, down there somewhere under the bridge. The jar is still there in the earth, shining in the dark, in secret. I think about myself going down there alone despite the sinister unseen men, digging up the treasure, having all that mystery in my hands. I could never find the jar, because I don’t have the map. But I like to think about things the others know nothing about.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Cordelia, Stephen Risley, Grace Smeath , Carol Campbell
Related Symbols: Cat’s Eye Marble, The Bridge
Page Number: 156
Explanation and Analysis:
Part 13 Quotes

My brother Stephen died five years ago. I shouldn’t say died: was killed. I try not to think of it as murder, although it was, but as some kind of accident, like an exploding train. Or else a natural catastrophe, like a landslide. What they call for insurance purposes an act of God. He died of an eye for an eye, or someone’s idea of it. He died of too much justice.

Related Characters: Elaine Risley (speaker), Stephen Risley
Page Number: 424
Explanation and Analysis: