Annemily's Blog

We talked in class about whether which narrator we found more sympathetic.  Even though Rochester narrated a huge portion of the book, trying to portray himself as worthy of sympathy, I don’t sympathize with him very much at all. He has a lot more freedom to make his own choices than Antoinette does and with that freedom he ruins Antoinette’s life.  I wanted to examine Rochester’s past to see if it could help me understand the choices he makes any better.  Rochester certainly has a complicated relationship with his family. At the very beginning of part 2 as they are traveling to the honeymoon house he thinks about writing his father a letter: “I thought about the letter which should have been written to England a week ago. Dear Father…” (61). The fact that he can’t bring himself to write to his father suggests a strained relationship. When Rochester later mentally composes the letter, the bad feelings are even more clear: " Dear Father. The thirty thousand po...

Meursault sleeps a lot. When he isn’t sleeping he’s often sleepy. I think his sleepiness is a sign that even if he doesn’t narrate it or even realize it himself, he is processing a lot of complex feelings. Near the beginning of the book Meursault falls asleep on the bus: “It was probably because of all the rushing around, and on top of that the bumpy ride, the smell of gasoline, and the glare of the sky and the road, that I dozed off. I slept the whole way” (4). Then while he’s keeping the vigil he falls asleep twice: “It was pleasant; the coffee had warmed me up and the smell of flowers on the night air was coming through the open door. I think I dozed off for a while” (9). And later on: “Then I dozed off again.” (11). It makes sense that he would be tired since it’s the middle of the night but since he sleeps for the whole afternoon and most of the night it’s a little odd that he’s still tired in the morning; right after the vigil he notes “I was tired” (12). The most plausibl...