Repetition

I found many examples of repetition in WSS.  From the many references to looking-glasses to the end, where she dreams about what is about to happen, such examples defined the book for me. In class we talked about how she seems to be repeating the steps her mother took on the road to insanity. I agree, but think that it was harder to Antoinette to deal with this, since she also had to deal with the expectations that she would go crazy, even when she was young. As I mentioned in my last post, one example of repetition is how Rochester sleeps with Amelie while Antoinette is in the house, just as he will with Jane in JE. The fires at the beginning and end of the novel are another example. I personally think that Antoinette is planning to start a fire at the end because her strange logic tells her that her only hope for a return to her old life is to light a fire, to undo in a way the damage done by the fire that served as the start of her misery. That first fire served as the her last interaction with Tia, who was the most important person in her youth other than Christophene. This second fire would serve to separate her from Rochester, the reason she lost Pheena. I won't dwell on the use of mirrors in WSS,  but I think one of the reasons they are mentioned often is because they represent how life could have been for Antoinette was all the racial tension nonexistant. This is most prominent in her comparison to Tia as if through a looking glass, since the two could have been inseperable.
Using the repetition instances as guidance, I have reached the conclusion that the real culprits for Antoinette's tragic life were the people surrounding her as a child and throughout her entire life, not Rochester in particular. Yes, he was what made her go crazy when he could have saved her, but he was influenced by Cosway, the secret he assumed everyone but him was in on, and society's treatment of Antoinette and Cristophene in general.

Antoinette vs Jane

 When I learned that Wide Sargasso Sea was the story of Bertha from Jane Eyre, I was very intrigued. I never enjoyed Jane Eyre  very much, so I was somewhat hesitant in my judgment of this book. After reading it, I have decided that I do enjoy it more than its sister novel, mainly because the characters strike me as more complex. The one thing that prevented this book from being one of my favorites this year was that it was too slow to gain my interest. I would only gain interest in the book at the end of a section, when I would have to start all over again with the next narrator.
What I liked about WSS  were the emotions I felt while reading it. Antoinette was a very emotional narrator, which is the main thing that differed between her and Rochester. I really sympathized with her, since she fit with the pattern begun by the previous two books of being placed in an unfortunate position through no fault of her own. However, she is the most tragic of the three of them, since she is young when her troubles begin, and she does not even comprehend what is happening. I believe that her insanity was a direct result of her childhood trauma and her rejection by the man she loved. What I cannot understand is why he went out of his way to make her life worse. If he had left Antoinette in the West Indies when he returned to England, I could have tolerated him. But no, he took Bertha with him and completely ruined her life. I wonder how she felt about him getting together with Jane. It is so reminiscent of his night with Amelie, another intolerable act on his part. As long as he was planning to mislead people, why not just leave her in Jamaica and say she died or something? No one would frown upon him for that. The other thing I got mad at Rochester for was getting rid of Christophene. I think that that was what pushed Antoinette over the line. Pheena was the one person who could keep her in reality, the only reminder of the happy moments in her childhood.
I guess I got off topic from the comparison of Jane and Antoinette, but the main point was that I sympathize with Annie much more. Even in Jane's book, I viewed Rochester as a jerk, and thought Jane should have gone to a convent from the start. Even though I was kinda scared of Bertha and thought of her as a vampire, I felt bad for her being brought to England just to be locked in the attic.

Thoughts on The Stranger

      I liked this book. It was a quick, easy read, and had many things to reflect on philosophically (the best kind of reflection, in my opinion). However, I was just TOO stranger-esque. If the goal of the book was to make the reader very uncomfortable by encountering a very inhuman narrative, not just an inhuman main narrator, it was accomplished. The overall lack of emotion was striking, and the cool approach to life was not at all realistic, even among the minor characters. In fact, the only person who struck me as having normal human emotions was Perez, whose emotion was mocked in a way.
I think one thing that did not get enough attention in our class discussion was Meursault's relationship with his mother. The first line is about her, so she obviously means something to him, even if the feeling is not traditional love for one's mom. I think that he does care about her, he just cannot express it in ways understandable to the rest of society. For example, smoking at the funeral and not looking at her corpse. The court treats these actions as proof that he must be exterminated, but he simply thinks that once she is dead, why should it matter whether or not he smokes there? It all amounts to the same thing.
I would finally like to address Meaursault's revelation. The way I see it, he thinks that life has no other meaning beyond the act of being alive, which is the supreme hope and goal of humans. This makes it even more intriguing that he is dubbed inhuman, since he is the only person who knows what it means to be human. I think the main difference between Meursault and the others is that they are passionate about life while remaining ignorant about this truth about humans, while Meursault only starts caring once he realizes that its what he should do. (I'm assuming that he is correct in his newfound philosophy.)
To wrap up, I found The Stranger  a very good book in that is was easy to follow and was extremely intriguing, but it was too strange to enjoy in itself. On a side note, I cannot believe how many times i have used the word "strange" to describe this book... veeerrrryyyy interesting. While I don't personally agree with Meursault's beliefs (or, to quote a less politically correct friend, "F*** Meursault"), I think that the realization he comes to complicates the book, thus improving the difficulty of interpreting the novel. When we factor in what was going on at the time in France, the question of what Camus is trying to say become exponentially more intriguing. (I use that word a lot too with this book, but that's a good thing.) My overall opinion: The Stranger did not have very impressive prose or plot, but is great if you want to spark a heated debate on deep stuff.

The Uncontrollable

The Stranger is all about inevitability. We assume that Meursault had no control over his "accidental murder" of another man. He cannot control his actions during the act, and is equally helpless during the trial, when his fate is being decided by more strangers.
Camus represents this helplessness by using the heat as Meursault's foremost thought and motivating factor. While we can influence behavior of other humans and manipulate objects, the weather is one thing that humans are unable to alter. In particular, heat is very common. Meursault's reaction to it shows how he is different from "normal" people who would just live with it or turn on a fan or strip or something.
When he is about to leave to shoot the arab, Meursault thinks about the extreme heat and decides that no mater what he does, it amounts to the same thing. While this could mean that he will eventually die no matter what, I think it also means that he will be hot if he goes inside of stays outside. As he is about to pull the trigger, the glare from the arab's knife intensifies the heat, pushing Mearsault over the edge. Of course, he could do nothing to prevent the heat. In this situation, the heat represents his lack of control over what happened. Later on, while at trial, Meursault again notices the heat inside the courtroom. He is just sitting there while his attorney makes his case for him, against another attorney he has never met before, to be judged by a group of people he has never seen before and finally to be sentenced by another complete stranger. (On a side note, I think that this could be an alternate meaning for the book's title. Maybe my next post will be about that.) Again, the heat marks a situation in which Meursault has no control over his future.
To conclude, I think that heat has two roles in this novel. First, it represents the uncontrollable, reinforcing the argument that Meursault was fated to kill a man. Heat also brings out the contrast between Meursault and the average human being, who will react much differently and with less passion than Meursault does. (Another side note-- isn't it interesting how the thing he cares most about in the world is the temperature? More than his girlfriend or friends or mother.)

L'etranger et Le Compte

Last week I started rereading one of my favorite books, The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. For those unfamiliar with the plot, it is about a guy who gets accused of a crime (he's innocent) and sent to jail for about 15 years. When he escapes, he gets a bunch of money and takes revenge on the people who accused him. Anyways, I was reading the part where the protagonist, Edmond Dantes, is searching in a cave for treasure when I was struck by an existentialist parallel to Camus' The Stranger.

"Dantes descended, murmuring the supreme word of human philosophy: 'Perhaps.'"

I was immediately stuck by the similarity to Camus' point that we are all battling death even though we know we have no hope of victory. Of course, there are obvious differences. Meursault is hoping for life, while Dantes is just hoping for a fortune. Meursault actually realizes what is going on, while Dantes never actually has any understanding of "human philosophy." Then again, Dantes is a much more sympathetic protagonist, even though he is responsible for several deaths over the course of the book, not just one unnamed Arab. Of course, Dantes also does some good things, but i think the main reason we favor him over Meursault is because we relate to him more. Meursault is alien to us in his approach to the world and other people. He strikes us as lacking a normal amount of emotion and "common sense." Dantes, however, is very grounded in basic human reasoning. Seeking revenge seems the natural thing to do in his situation, as do his tendencies to help those he is close to. While he goes about his business with badassness, Dantes is in general a very relatable character, the opposite of Meursault. I think that, similar to the Jury's opinion in Camus' novel, even a morally questionable human is preferable to someone who is not identifiable as having a human mind. The main reason behind this is that familiarity is the first thing we look for in a character. The same comparison is found in the general consensus that Rochester's narration has more credibility that Antoinette's in Wide Sargasso Sea.