Connection Lost. Please Reconnect

     In Wide Sargasso Sea, we see that near the end of part two, the one thing that really tips the scale from potential love is the action of two forms of Obeah on each other. Antoinette poisons Rochester's drink with a potion to give him a lust for her, and Rochester works to change her name to be more "English." This has been mentioned in class already, but this occurred right after she and Rochester were about to start connecting.

     This connection appears through the fact that they both have similar relations with other people. Rochester has been unloved by his father in favor of the other son, who also inherits all of the land. Rochester is given none of the estate, and so has to find power elsewhere, as well as make it look like he actually succeeded in gaining power, rather than just having it fall in his lap.

     Antoinette also has not been given much love throughout her life. She grew up surrounded by people who hated her, a mother who cared more about her son than Antoinette, to the point of ministering to him rather than comforting her daughter. When Coulibri burns down, her only friend denies her with a rock to the face, and her mother dies, Antoinette is lost trying to find a physical connection with someone, and never finds it.

     They also are both lost socially whilst in Jamaica. Antoinette has always been separated from the powerfully rich white landowners there, and is unable to connect socially with the black population either, due to the fact that they all used to be slaves under her father's plantation. Similarly, Rochester is plunked down in Jamaica with no connections to anyone, because he is an outsider. He looks and tries to act like a rich stereotypical white man, and so won't try to connect with the locals, and is too far detached from the elites to be much of anything to them. Furthermore, the fact that he is disconnected from the time stream they all have been living in, he always thinks he's missing something.

     This looks like a match made in Heaven, with two people who have been denied by their families and are disconnected by the situation they find themselves in suddenly getting married to each other, but there is a problem: neither is willing to admit their feelings to the other. Antoinette never has had a person in her life to talk to about important things, really, and so doesn't feel comfortable doing so with Rochester, who she hardly knows. Rochester is playing the part of the rich white man, and so won't share his past experiences with someone so low on his spectrum (technically), and so they are both silent.

     That is, until someone else provides the information Rochester was lacking, which gives a weighted view that puts stress on their relationship. This leads to Rochester making Antoinette worried about their relationship, the thing she prizes above all others. Instead of talking and making up, the limited information they both have keeps them separate, which eventually leads to the end of this book.

     With the idealized views they had constructed of this relationship (Rochester of an estate that he has power over, and Antoinette of a loving relationship), to watch it crumble away is distressing, and so they both turn to forms of "Obeah" to reassert their view: Antoinette obtains a drug to make Rochester love her, and Rochester changes her name, asserting his dominance over her. Through this, they inadvertently create a permanent break between them, which could have been easily avoided if they just talked it out, like Christophene had said from the very beginning.

The Sun is a Deadly Laser

     Throughout the whole of The Stranger, we see various instances of heat and the Sun appearing wherever Meursault goes. One way to look at the way the Sun plays a role in Meursault's telling is that it represents inward stress and feelings that are boiling up to critical.

     The first time that we see any occurrence of this amount of intense heat is at his mother's funeral. He mentions that as they walk to the cemetery, the old man that is with them faints, and there are tears of sweat streaming down his face. These things are obviously present in the world - the man wouldn't faint otherwise - but they also have a symbolic meaning for Meursault. He is trying to suppress the emotions of loss and sadness through various means, but that merely stresses out other feelings in his body, such as his heat sense and sight.

     The second time we see this idea appear is whenever he, Raymond and Masson go to confront the Arabs and fight them. Once again, we see the Sun play a role in the events. He first remarks how the Sun is just unnaturally bright as they walk up to the Arabs. It isn't incredibly intense, just there. This represents the fact that Meursault's overall calmness hasn't been overly violated as he doesn't even participate. When he and Raymond return, however, Meursault has made the conscious decision to return, threatening his overall neutrality. The Sun is shatteringly bright, demonstrating Meursault's crumbling wall of neutrality. As they stand, confronting the Arabs, Meursault offers to take the gun, and the Sun glints off of it. This action and its subsequent glint show that he is starting to take sides.

     Finally, he confronts the main Arab head-on going completely against his impassive nature, and as he walks the whole beach seems to be on fire with the Sun being blindingly bright. When he finally meets up with the Arab, who is relaxing in the shade (away from the Sun, the exact place Meursault mentions he wants to be), the Arab eventually pulls out the knife which glints in the Sun, representing the fact that if he follows through with anything other than walking away, it means the end of his neutrality. Meursault makes the decision to stay, and with that comes an explosion of heat and blinding sunlight, during which he pulls out the gun and fires, sealing it.

    The final times we see the heat appearing is during his trial and at the very end. During the entire time Meursault is in the courtroom he mentions the enormous amount of heat, especially after the break and being confronted by the prosecutor. This represents the fact that he has many emotions, just like at his mother's funeral that he is keeping down, as he even says that there are times when he wants to cry or jump up and say something, but stops himself. At the end of the book, he goes off on the Champlain and he is taken from him. In this moment, he has this revelation of the way the world works that embodies his feelings, and the cell suddenly feels cool, as he has burned off all of the bottled up emotions, as he says has happened, and he is totally psychologically calm.

     The Sun, sunlight and heat are things that have symbolic meaning for Meursault. They represent repressed feelings and ideas that threaten his overall neutrality and calmness. Only in times where those feelings have been vented can he feel the coolness of the area around him.