Misperceptions

When reading Percival Everett’s Zulus, I couldn’t help but have my expectations shaped by other novels and ideas about dystopian environments that I have been exposed to. My perceptions of the rebels in the book, for instance, matched Alice Achitophel’s in that I assumed they were attempting to reform or simply destroy the government that runs the city Alice lives in. In many popular works (like the Star Wars example used in class), rebels are often portrayed as moralistic, plucky, and resourceful do-gooders who are alienated by the oppression around them.  Much to my surprise, I did not find this pattern in Zulus; Everett’s rebels are described as just as empty and cruel as any city official (if not more so), the main difference being that they live in a pretty rural camp. The Body, or camp government, imprisons Alice for being pregnant, with the plans to harvest her baby and use her for her ability to bear life. This action contrasts greatly with the non-action of the city government; even though Alice runs from them in fear, in reality it seems that the system is simply ineffective and careless. Alice is relatively safer when she returns to the city than she ever was living in the rebel camp.

Since readers are mostly confined to Alice’s thoughts, I suppose I could attribute my surprise at this realization to the fact that Alice was expecting the rebels to be saviors as well. However, I think the links across different texts and stories affected my expectations of what Everett’s novel would be like. From a Structuralism perspective, a critic could say that the underdog fighting against the oppressive power is a common archetype. Considering I’ve been taught in school to find patterns across literature (another example of unknowingly using bits and pieces of literary theory as the years went by), I could say this affected my expectations too. In addition, there’s currently a huge amount of dystopian fiction in popular culture. This can be seen everywhere; there are shelves in chain bookstores devoted to “Young Adult Dystopian Fiction,” and numerous television series in which a hero struggles against dystopian oppression. While Percival Everett’s work is of higher literary value – probably a pretentious assertion – I still brought all of my previous experience with dystopian fiction to the table when I began reading Zulus. Whether this is good or bad I am not sure, but I can’t deny that many of the book’s developments defied what I expected. Patterns I am used to were broken once I realized that Everett’s rebels were sheep (as Alice calls them), the resistance efforts Alice believes that Geraldine and Sue Kabnis are involved in are really about burying the dead, and humanity is ultimately decided to be without hope at the end of the novel. As a result of these broken patterns, I was forced to think deeply about the text and ultimately appreciated Zulus for the statements it made about humanity and the world. I’m glad that my presumptions upon starting the novel were torn apart as I read, for this also forces me to be careful about how my expectations and judgments shape my reading experiences.

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