Zombi culture in "The Wide Sargasso Sea"

I'm not sure about other people, but for me, I was really confused about what was the "zombi" that we see show up multiple times in the novel. For one, the spelling threw me off as usually, "zombi" is spelled as "zombie". However, there also seems to be some cultural differences between the zombi that the novel refers to and the zombie that we think about today. To the islanders, a zombi is much more than a walking corpse that eats people as depicted with the image on the side. In a book The Glittering Coronet of Isles that Rochester was reading, it describes the zombi as a "spirit of a place, usually malignant but sometimes to be propitiated with sacrifices or offerings of flowers and fruit" (107). In this sense, a zombi seems more like deity and it makes sense why the islanders would be afraid of Christophine since she was rumored to be able to control these beings.

Reading about zombi gave me a sense of deja-vu. Some time ago, I read the book called The Serpent and the Rainbow, which some of you might have heard of. The author Wade Davis goes to Haiti to discover the secrets behind the zombies that the Haitians were talking about. At first, the book was rather shocking. Zombies were always just part of my imagination before, about as real as vampires and werewolves. Apparently however, the Haitians were able to create a death-like state by applying various medicinal powders onto the wound. The person would re-awaken into a psychotic state that would resemble a zombie. The person could also be more easily controlled because they "knew" they were dead. This all sounds kind of absurd to me, but it's interesting to find out that the zombi that the novel refers to has such an unique back story.

Trial of Meursault

Haven't done a blog post in a while, but hopefully this one will be interesting to make up for it. I was going through The Stranger again, looking for information for my response paper, and I was quite intrigued by the trial that basically took up half of the novel. I found the whole trial very ironic. Meursault, who we know throughout the book as indifferent and rather silent, is now denied the chance to speak in court when he actually wants to speak. When he does get to speak, he fumbles his words and says that it was because of the sun, causing the audience to laugh at him. It is moments like these that really make me sympathize with Meursault. I love what Camus has done in The Stranger. He manages to present Meursault, who was clearly guilty killing the Arab, in such a way that the readers are able to connect and empathize with Meursault.
Going back to the trial, I found the whole event rather preposterous. We mentioned this in class too, but none of the lawyers seem to tell the right story of Meursault. From an outsider's perspective, the prosecutor does portray him with quite a lot of accuracy. It isn't too hard to understand where the prosecutor is getting his information and yet Meursault's lawyer also provides evidence that is kind of correct and yet doesn't present and accurate picture of Meursault. During this whole time, Meursault has been meaning to speak but can't because his lawyer doesn't want him to. This frustrates me even more because not only does Meursault want to speak but can't, but his explanation for what happened sound pretty ridiculous anyways.
Camus's portrayal of the court of law doesn't really reassure me of the system that humans have created. The idea that truth will come to light and prevail in court doesn't appear in The Stranger and our system is criticized instead. The movie that we watched, The Man Who Wasn't There, also had a similar portrayal of our court of law.
SPOILER ALERT
Freddy Riedenschnieter (best I could do) chose which story would stick the best in order to try to prove that Doris was innocent. In the end, he ended up giving this rather confusing and ridiculous explanation that didn't have anything to do with Doris. This movie complemented the image that Camus was depicting, that the court system is flawed since the court authorities try to make up their own story that goes along best with the evidence, even if the story is false.
On a side note, I recently started to Suits which, along with most TV shows, separate the characters from good and bad pretty quickly. I've always wondered about the back stories behind villains and The Stranger is definitely helping increase my curiosity.