I know I said that “Time of the Doves” was one of the books of all time, but this book is a strong contender for the book of all time. “The Lover” by Margurite Duras was an interesting book to say the least. This book’s subject matter was heavily sexual, which would be eyebrow raising in a normal setting, but completely weird considering that this book is about a 15 year old. I found the very in depth descriptions of her love and love-making to her older lover a unsettling to read as much of the description was about how young and undeveloped and innocent she was, and furthermore, Duras makes sure you know how taboo and messed up the situation is by referring to the protagonist as a child many times…
The first of the themes in this book that I wanted to talk about was, unsurprisingly, love. I thought that this book’s description of love was a lot more depressing in a guttural sense than the rest of the books. While the other books’ depressing was more of an infuriating feeling that makes you want to punch a hole in your wall out of frustration at the relationship, “The Lover” creates a feeling that is akin to chain smoking in the pouring rain after losing your job. Duras makes it very clear that The Protagonist has no feelings of love or is at least trying to repress those feelings while The Lover is deeply infatuated with her. this brought up a very interesting point of the two-sided predatory nature of their relationship. On one hand we have The Lover, who is being predatory in the literal sense as he is literally having sex with a child, and on the other hand we have The Protagonist who is using The Lover for sex and for money. I think that the kind of role reversal here was very perplexing.
One of the other themes that i found interesting was race and its impact on the story. The Protagonist’s whiteness is brought up many times and is a driving force behind many of her actions throughout the story. I found that she had a lot of white privilege, but also encountered a lot of prejudice for it. For example her lover’s father looked down on her for being white, but also she got preferential treatment from her boarding school because she was white. The Lover’s race is also an integral part of his character. The fact that he is Chinese is seen as a detriment to his character by The Protagonist’s family and the protagonist. Through my reading, it seemed as if all his other negative traits like his sickliness all stemmed form him being Chinese which irked me a bit. I also found that the Native Vietnamese population also were kind of looked down upon as lesser than the whites throughout the book which makes me question the ideology of Duras a bit.
All in all, this was a weird book. The sexual nature of it made it a uncomfortable read to say the least, and the age of the characters made it even worse. I found it difficult to find a real underlying meaning behind all the underage sex, but maybe I am too goldfish brained to comprehend the genius that is Margurite Duras.
My Question: Do any of you find that your race effects you ability to find love?
- Jon