Hello to all my faithful and wonderful blog readers!
That was a joke. I’m 100% positive that there are zero people that faithfully follow this blog.
In our ASTU (at UBC) class we recently read the book Zeitoun by Dave Eggers. This book is about one man’s struggle and the injustices against him during the 2005 hurricane Katrina. The main character, Abdulrahman Zeitoun, courageously stays in New Orleans (even though his family left for Florida) during the devastating hurricane and aids others as much as he can. But he is unfairly taken to a make-shift jail in a Greyhound on the false account of looting. This book ends with a sense of uplift and hope that we can all overcome our struggles, no matter what the circumstances. After reading Zeitoun I decided to Google what the family has been up to in the past ten years and to also to put a faces to the names. I was shocked when the only articles that appeared on Google were about how Zeitoun had recently been in jail for assaulting his wife, Kathy, and then allegedly hiring someone to kill her on his behalf. In the novel Kathy and Zeitoun appeared to have such a loving relationship!
We discussed in class how this affected our initial impressions of the novel. Some class members thought that Zeitoun’s present situation should not change the overall message of the novel. I agree that the novel portrays a sense of hope but it’s hard to see the book in the same light once the main character is brought down from his heroic pedestal. Throughout the novel Zeitoun is portrayed as the valiant protagonist who deeply cares for his family and others. However, I just can not see him in the same after learning about what he did to his wife.
Our discussion in class made me wonder if it was actually the author who changed the character. Everybody loves a hero so perhaps the author changed the actual personality of the protagonist in order to make a more interesting and engaging novel. In the media things can be portrayed in whichever way the author chooses so maybe Eggers knew that their marriage wasn’t perfect but decided to fabricate a story that would be more appealing. Eggers has also made no public announcement or comment on what has been happening with the Zeitoun family. I understand that he would have had to establish a deep connection with the family and throughly get to know them in order to write this novel but something just seems fishy to me. It just seems too odd that a man who was portrayed as such a heroic man could completely change in less than a decade.