Jack's World War Rock-n-Roll Jukebox Diner

In 'Wide Sargasso Sea', by Jean Rhys, the effects of colonialism can be felt throughout the novel. We can see it in the dynamic between the blacks and whites, how the plot progresses, etc. Therefore, when Rochester was mistaken for a zombie, my mind didn't go immediately to the decaying, walking dead, but rather the Caribbean voodoo origins of the concept. In traditional folklore, zombies are reanimated bodies completely under the control of their bokor, or master. The zombies have no free will of their own, and are in effect slaves. Commonly, zombies have been interpreted as a metaphor for slavery. What's so interesting about the fact that zombies are mentioned in the story though, is who it's being applied to. Rochester, the white, upper class, male, is mistaken for a zombie by a girl. Does this show a paradigm shift in the way that the West Indies work? Additionally, the definition of the zombie in folklore sounds eerily familiar to Antoinette's future pre...

In class, when we were discussing Kamel Daoud's response novel, The Meursault Investigation, I was  intrigued by the notion that the Stranger was not an immediate account of the events of the novel, but rather a novel written by Meursault in prison. It got me thinking about how Meursault could be an unreliable narrator. Meursault's lack of emotion during most of the novel, and the way he shot the Arab made me wonder if Meursault was a psychopath. Meursault does not feel anything when shooting the Arab, save annoyance at the sun's rays. Could Meursault be writing his memoirs to try to seem more human? The lack of emotion for most of the novel could be because he fails to keep his mask of humanity on, before realizing his mistake and overcompensating at the end. I think that this interpretation of the Stranger adds an even darker element to the novel, as it calls to mind the disturbing memoirs of serial killers from their bars. The Stranger almost becomes a literary versio...