Confused.

I was sitting on the train from New York City to Boston as I read part IV of Foe. The book was moving up and down, and side to side as the train jumped around. I was caught off guard, to say the least, with the content. The first question that popped into my mind was “who is narrating?” because all of a sudden Friday is almost dead, and Susan Barton is dead (right?), but the letters she wrote were real? Or she never existed in the first place—probably the more likely scenario given the nature of our course. I was so confused I read part IV over three times. Not sure that made any difference.

What I think—right now, but will probably change once I am mind-blown in class—is that Foe writes this chapter in the first person, from his own voice. He includes a lot of repetition from Susan Barton’s letters, so maybe she did exist in the story and she did write those letters to him.  Then, I thought…okay well clearly Susan and Friday died in the original shipwreck and then everything else is made up by Foe because the narrator does say he finds Susan with the dead captain who died in the original shipwreck according to the Susan Barton earlier in the book. But once again, I don’t know. But then, as you continue to read, I am confused once again because Friday was in the bed almost dead, and then he has a chain around his neck and is not dead. So is he dead? Is he alive? Is Foe going back in time and making no sense? Did I read this book all wrong?

Maybe someone can make sense of this ramble of thoughts, because I sure cannot.