Gloria's Blog

In Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, the names of the characters can reveal a lot about the plot and their own personalities or motives. Antoinette’s name gives meaning to her own character and also reveals some of Rochester’s feelings towards her. Antoinette’s name is very similar to her mother’s name, Annette. I feel like Antoinette sees her name as part of who she is, it shows her culture and place where she grew up which could give her a sense of at least somewhat belonging to a group of people. The name also connects her to her mother, which is a positive thing in Antoinette’s view but a negative thing for everyone else looking at her (including Rochester). Antoinette might appreciate this connection to her mother, since Annette herself didn’t show any love towards Antoinette it could give Antoinette a sense of belonging to the family that she wouldn’t have otherwise. Other people see Antoinette as following in her mother’s footsteps and eventually going off with an Englishman...

In class on Thursday our group presented an article by Robert R. Brock that claimed that Camus wrote The Stranger to be a criticism of the death penalty. Brock argued that the reason that Camus doesn’t give any background to the Arab and never brings him up in the trial is because that would have distracted from the point of the trial, which is supposedly to draw attention to the severity of the death penalty. I think that there is definitely validity in Brock’s argument that the book is criticizing the death penalty, although there are certainly many things to get from the writing in The Stranger . The part that convinces me of this argument the most is after Meursault has been convicted to the death penalty and we see his agony everyday worrying that today will be the day that he’s executed. Meursault says he “ended up sleeping only a little bit during the day and then, all night long, waited patiently” and at the slightest noise he would panic and think that som...