Anna's 20th Century

There is no doubt that a reoccurring characterization of Antoinette, as well as multiple other characters, was madness. Antoinette, before anyone was able to make any judgement calls that were purely based on her and her alone, was labeled as crazy. The familial connection to Annette fostered a whole set of additional characterizations that may or may not have been merited. Unfortunately for her, with the foreshadowing of Jane Eyre, it ultimately lead to her fulfilling the preconceived ideas of her sanity. Over the course of the book, beyond part one, she becomes very displaced, leading her to be solitary and void of super personal relationships, which we as readers see that she longs for. The lack of such relationship, is what I believe to be a major part of her madness. We see that ultimately it leads to her giving Rochester the potion, he main fault in the book, a point which we all agree she held responsibility for. Her fragmented memory calls into question the reality of Antoine...

During the first day of discussion on The Stranger , we were asked to write down our initial reactions to the story as well as the narrator himself. I wrote down things like off-putting and matter-of-fact, but didn't have a full justification for thinking those things. As the story went on, I felt empathetic for Meursault, however I was offput by a lot of the ways that he handled situations or filled his time. I think that much of this stemmed from his focus on the physical world as opposed to the critical and emotional reactions of what is going on around him. The first example of this is what triggered my response in my notebook, when Meursault is told that his mom has died and his subsequent reaction was not one of emotion but of question over the day in which she died. At first I thought, oh he has an interesting way of coping with emotion. I don't fully agree, but everyone deals with emotional trauma in a very different way. However, as the book went on this hyper-focus ...