This read had me quite puzzled at times, it seems we cannot get a simple love story in our class. WHERE IS THE ROMANCE?!?!<\/p>\n
Starting off being 15 and a half, Duras is a baby, she’s vulnerable to the world around her. As she’s on the ferry, she notices the limousine and it’s occupant, the man. After his proposition to drive her wherever she needs to go to Saigon, she gets into his car and his driver transfers the luggage. She states how she won’t need to take the bus anymore, instead being able to be driven everywhere in style. This relationship immediately dawns on me that she’s being exploited but Duras writes it as she understands the circumstance but has become a woman of the world. In a way as the video states, she’s understanding of the line that she’s crossed with her participation.<\/p>\n
As the relationship continues, it quickly evolves intimately. As we read, we see that her family is extremely poor, with each family member living out of the home and fending for their own food. This is why in a way, she seeks out the man’s security which he offers her. The relationship flips in moments when the narrator explains that the man is being exploited while the little girl is the looker. The man’s age is mentioned, he is 12 years older than her, while she is 15.5 he is 27. The man doesn’t have the resolve to love her beyond their hidden romance and take her in opposition to his father. He’s reliant on his father’s money but invested in her halfway.<\/p>\n
Insanely, as the man takes the girl and her family to dinner, her brothers do not speak to him, instead engulfing themselves in food. They all treat the man as the older brother does, not even speaking to him nor caring of what he has to say. The man pays for the food. In front of her elder brother, the man ceases to exist as a lover to her “In my elder brother’s presence he ceases to be my lover. He doesn’t cease to exist, but he’s no longer anything to me.” p. 56. He becomes shame embodied as a man. They all order Martells and Perrier. The relationship at home is strained, as we see how the mother is fascinated with her elder son, giving him praise and glory for being strong and violent, while she looks down on the weak. She compares her eldest son to her brothers, farmers in Northern France, and he has her attention to himself. The youngest brother, Paulo, dies, and the girl is on her own, tearing herself away from the dysfunctional family and in her mind having her older brother die as well. There is a lot going on, and I feel the girl seeks to escape her situation, forever or even for a short while. Much later, her older brother dies as well, but it doesn’t seem to affect her much at all, since she wrote him off once her younger brother passed.<\/p>\n
To the class, I wonder, how would the girl’s behaviour been different had her family been less toxic and terrifying? Would she have gotten into the limousine? It almost seems to me that her lack of security put her into a position of further vulnerability whereas the man offered that security through his “bottomless pockets”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This read had me quite puzzled at times, it seems we cannot get a simple love story in our class. WHERE IS THE ROMANCE?!?! Starting off being 15 and a half, Duras is a baby, she’s vulnerable to the world around her. As she’s on the ferry, she notices the limousine and it’s occupant, the …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107681,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[21,24,20,22,25,23],"class_list":["post-84","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-duras","tag-colonialism","tag-family-ties","tag-marginalization","tag-poverty","tag-security","tag-self-belief"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107681"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=84"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/84\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=84"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=84"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/neilsharma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=84"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}