Rants and Rambles feat. Some Books

I think it's become pretty clear to everyone that there are many analogies for colonialism in Wide Sargasso Sea . But one of the strangest ones that occurred to me was the idea of Antoinette as Rochester's trophy. Rochester's master plan was to go somewhere exotic and take a wife back to England as a trophy. Granted, his intent of marrying a woman from the West Indies was to get money, but I wouldn't put it past him to plan on showing off Antoinette back in England. It's the classic "foreign person is a zoo exhibit" maneuver we see so often in colonialism. Of course, this isn't completely true for Antoinette since she's actually white Creole, but the idea of someone raised in a different culture seems to be enough for Rochester in this situation, especially since Antoinette is so connected to Christophine's culture. Antoinette is his prize, she is his proof that he accomplished what he came to do and didn't waste his time.  And to...

One of the more debated topics of The Stranger we’ve discussed is why Meursault is, well, the way he is. The Stranger makes us feel strange, and Meursault’s strong disconnection from us is the core of that odd feeling. People have attempted to give a psychological explanation to Meursault many times, and I read one of these explanations for my panel presentation. It was compelling, but almost too perfect. My group members and I found it a fascinating and mind-blowing article. It explained everything we found weird about Meursault. I myself found some relief in it because I could now understand Meursault.   But I feel guilty about that. Meursault isn’t really supposed to be understood -- in fact, nothing in The Stranger is necessarily supposed to be understood. It really is supposed to be left absurd and un-understandable.   We as humans have a drive to understand, to label, to categorize. When we come across something new that we don’t understand, we have to...

Disclaimer: I've already made a post this week. It's less angry than this. Go read it if you want. Or stick around for some quality anger spurred by Erin's post about what kind of insect Gregor is. When I started reading The Metamorphosis , I imagined Gregor Samsa as some kind of dragonfly. That was just my automatic definition of "insect". Obviously, I was slightly confused when Gregor didn't just fly out of bed when he woke up. Somehow, I didn't process that this meant he didn't have wings, so I asked some people in my class what kind of bug Gregor was. They told me they had imagined some kind of beetle. Since then, I've pictured Gregor as a cockroach. (For some reason, the beetle interpretation didn't settle with me. I just couldn't imagine it.) But then I saw the cover illustration.  I couldn't believe it. A drawing of Gregor's insect form, on the cover , of all places. I was enraged. In my opinion, this drawing is a...

On September 29th, I had a dream about cockroaches. In the dream, I walked into my room to discover my bed was covered in cockroaches of all sizes, from fly size to two feet long, who would suction themselves to bare skin like a kind of flying leech. The next Wednesday, October 10th, we had our first discussion on  The Metamorphosis . My dream about cockroaches couldn't have had better timing. The first day, we talked a lot about how  The Metamorphosis is dream-like, from the bizarre floor plan of Gregor's floor plan to the immediate appearance of the chief clerk when he doesn't show up to work. But one of the things I found strange about book I of  The Metamorphosis  was the reaction of Gregor's family, and especially his father, to his transformation. I couldn't understand why Gregor's father was so violent toward Gregor once he became an insect. Putting aside any past issues the two may have, if it's obvious to the family that this giant insect is Gre...

Yesterday during our discussion, Maddie mentioned to me that she hates Robert Cohn. It interested me, because I don't dislike Cohn that much at all. After giving it some thought, it raised the question: is Cohn annoying because he actually is annoying, or because Jake paints him as annoying? In all honesty, this could be quite a subjective question. If there are aspects of Cohn's personality that are irritating to you because they irk you, then perhaps Cohn is inherently annoying. There are certainly some characteristics of Cohn that I think could be quite annoying in real life. There's always something about every person that will be annoying, but I think there's a case to made for Cohn being painted as more annoying than he actually is. We know Jake doesn't like Cohn. It comes out in various ways throughout the book. Cohn is presented as the annoying friend who can't take a hint, who doesn't really understand social cues, who's clingy. He's the...

Peter's pocketknife is one of the odder things about him. It seems that whenever he's unsure about a social interaction he pulls it out as a plaything. But noticeably, the times when Peter touches his pocketknife are when he's around women. One of the first experiences we get of Peter is when he arrives unannounced at Clarissa's house. Almost immediately after sitting down with her, he "[takes] out a large pocket-knife and half [opens] the blade" (39). In all honesty, my first thought with this was "is that knife a phallic symbol?" This thought lingered in the back of my mind throughout reading Mrs. Dalloway.  As the book progressed, I found more and more that it just somehow made sense for the knife to be symbolic of Peter's phallus.  The pocketknife is performing a sort of double symbolism in Mrs. Dalloway . It not only represents a phallus, but it also represents Peter's attraction to many women (and in some cases, his love for a ...