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My second draft has gone fairly well so far. I have primarily worked on adjusting my context and introduction paragraphs as recommended by the first peer review we did last week. I plan to continue my revisions the rest of this week, focusing on the actual body of my paper. I am most concerned about my use of quotes from the primary text, as I have used a lot of block quotes in my paper. I will try to cut those out and incorporate them throughout my analysis more often. I am also concerned about the correctness of my MLA citations which I will also review. I will have to go back eventually and adjust my annotated bibliography as well, incorporating some other sources I found later on that have come to be integral to my analysis of Beloved.

I was thankfully able to crank out a completed first draft of my entire essay within the last week as I wanted to have all my ideas on paper in some way to be reviewed. I feel as though I have really nailed down the ideas and points in my paper, but I may need to revise and edit for clarity. Of the things that I think I need to revise most, I will probably focus on my introducing paragraph and conclusion. I might also review my background since it is quite long and I may not need all of it to make my later points. It was helpful as a reference point for later arguments since I tried to incorporate as much background as I could to see what connections I could make as I went.

I would most like to hear feedback on the clarity of the paper. It can get rather wordy at times, and it incorporates discussion about a religion which I am sure many people are unfamiliar with.

I was particularly interested in a section from Isabella’s readings. In “Menstruation by Forty”, the narrator contemplates at one point how their child will look and turn out. They particularly focus on the child’s connection to their ancestry, the way in which a long history of genes will come together to form a unique made up of all the history behind them. The narrator connects genes to historical experiences, contemplating if historical experiences imprint themselves onto inherited genes. They contemplate if they will have the survival experiences of a “slavic peasent” or the working hands of a “Yugoslavian”. It contemplates the degree to which epigenetics is an actuating force in forming a new human being.

Drafting so far has gone really well! I began drafting from the beginning with my introduction and context portion. I spent most of this time researching the Haitian zonbi and its particulars to create a contextual background for my larger metaphor about Beloved. I believe this context will be crucial for enabling my audience to see the parallels between zonbis and slavery and how Beloved confirms and reimagines this religious and sociocultural historical connection between them. In doing this research I also made note of a particularly large point of significance: my argument about the way in which slavery creates the symbolic world for the formerly enslaved can extend beyond motherhood into every aspect of their lives, as the practice of Vodou among secret societies demonstrates. Furthermore, there is an additional avenue for me to explore as I reach my conclusion and application. While material zonbis are depicted as a form of zonbi with the least capacity for resistance, the potential for rebellion against sorcerers is possible. Imagining this resistance and its ensuing liberation and transformation will be especially interesting in Beloved where the dialectics of master and slave are thoroughly complicated by identities and relationships.

In reflecting on my research and writing for class, I have found my topic to be incredibly interesting. I feel as though I will be able to say quite a lot about my topic as I have researched. While it isn’t included in my discussion leader sources, I found many more sources related to the history of zonbis in Haitian Vodou which illuminated the connection between the conceptualization of zonbis and the transatlantic slave trade. I learned that zombification was used as a threat against enslaved Haitians by other Haitians employed by their enslavers. Being enslaved in the land of the living only to be enslaved again after death, either spiritually or through a physical raising of the dead was the ultimate form of psychological torture used to maintain control over enslaved Haitians. This, along with the practice continuing into contemporary Haitian society, will be an interesting source of analysis for Beloved, especially since it is Haitians reenacting the practice of slavery against other Haitians.

I decided to outline my paper by first outlining my outline. I know my brain works better when I have an outline that is thorough and clear, so the difficult part for me has always been starting and getting it to that point of clarity and organizational cohesion. So instead of going immediately to typing on a document that I would constantly have to restructure and revise, I mind mapped my outline on Microsoft OneNote. I was able to draw and use shapes and arrows to create a whole picture of all I would want to say. Then, I looked it over and gradually transferred it over to a typed document to organize topics and points in a way which I felt made sense and progressed properly. I found that mind mapping gave me a lot more ideas than I initially had, and once I began organizing them, the clear points of transition made it even easier to see new connections and points of interest I wanted to touch on. Most importantly, I was able to create a clear progression in discussion topics, where each section clearly builds in scale from the first.

Doing this outline also helped me realize that I might be missing some important information that will help me make more connections between zombies and Beloved. Despite all the information on zombies I already have, I think I will have to spend a little time looking for maybe one or two journal articles that strictly explore the rules, ritual, and mythology surrounding Haitian zonbis, as there is much more to work with in this area that I imagined. I would particularly like to focus in on the nuances between a captured zonbi and one risen from the dead via magic, as there is an apparent distinction between the two zonbis, and each of their implications could provide valuable context and pieces for my metaphors.

I thought a lot about Kate’s question about Stone Butch Blues, and I think the text reveals that the answer is a product of the environment in which the lesbian women in this story exist. There is a sense in which the distinction between ‘femmes’ and ‘butches’ is a matter of preference, comfortability, and identity. Being a butch is about being more comfortable as a woman without being comfortable embodying and living by heteronormative conceptions of womanhood. Furthermore, they exist in a space where their existence is constantly threatened. Their sexual orientation and their gender expression are criminalized, putting them under the constant threat of cops raiding the bar and arresting or hurting them. In lesbian communities, therefore, it makes sense that some of these women, those that comfortable and connected with themselves when they take images physical strength, domination, and power, become the butch to protect other members of the lesbian community.

Overall, my research went fairly well. Finding useful sources was not too much of a problem, although, finding my last few sources proved to be a little difficult. This was often because discussions about zombies in a literary or philosophical often focused on looking at the zombie outside of its gothic connections. The zombie is often explored as a tool to better understand human embodiment; it was less often explored or used as a metaphor for relationships, things, and people. I was able to find a significant portion of articles which explored the zombie as a metaphor in literature and in real world politics and social theory, which will be useful for building the metaphors I wish to develop in my analysis. I was even able to find one source which directly related Beloved to zombies, though it primarily focused on thinking of the character Beloved as a zombie as opposed to a ghost or delusion.

When I read Megan’s assigned readings, I was definitely struck by the way in which the author of Elena Vanishing personified anorexia into this haunting voice in both the content and form of the novel. It is portrayed as a ghost with innumerable demands as to how Elena lives her life down to the smallest details, haunting also the page since this voice is emphasized and set apart by it being written in italics. If the reader only paid attention to the writing in italics, this novel would be spoken and directed by the anorexia ghost rather than Elena and her narration. What is more interesting is Elena’s strange self-awareness. Anorexia is something with a voice and form to Elena, and she can recognize and identify when it speaks. It is not like typical ghosts which are shrouded in mystery or are unknowable and invisible to the people who they are haunting. Anorexia makes itself known; it is an overwhelming presence that Elena is aware of and is in a pact with. Anorexia makes a demand and Elena listens and obeys with a relative degree of willingness and awareness. She believes in Anorexia’s plan and attitudes for Elena’s life, and so Elena follows along, almost in a hypnotic state. This, in some sense, makes this haunting more like a possession, a takeover of Elena’s body.

I had some trouble nailing down what I wanted to say in my paper. I started with something very broad, and getting to a specific point of coherence, particularly finding a “so what” was difficult, especially when, upon doing research, many of my ideas were already written about by many other scholars. In an effort not to sound like them or imitate their papers and work, I kept searching until I was inspired by a song by the Cranberries titled Zombie. They compare the experience of PTSD caused by war to a zombie, returning from the dead to terrorize the mind of those afflicted. This metaphor I found to be really compelling, and it inspired me to think about this metaphor in the context of Beloved. I thought about the novel’s concept of “rememory”, a sudden and violent thrust of the stories narrative back to the past, bringing the characters with it. These felt like zombies to me, memories and history that won’t die, that may never have died, and they keep coming back. Most importantly, I thought about the ghostly figure of Beloved herself, a literal example of a zombie coming back to haunt and, following the metaphor, infect her mother Sethe, asserting her control, hypnotizing her and corrupting her present as a physical manifestation of her infected past.