After reading “The Lover” by Marguerite Duras, the book is very powerful and emotional as the story center’s around memory, love and identity. The book is set in French colonial Indochina, where a young french girl begins a secret relationship with a rich chinese man. Moreover, through the narrator’s memories, the story dives into major themes such as desire, poverty, growing up and colonialism. The relationship between the french girl and the chinese man is not just simply about being romantic but delves deeper into how social class, race and cultural expectations can shape it as well. Because of these external pressures, love simply is just not enough as it seems in the book. The narrator reflects on her youth from an older age, which shows how memories can help us understand our past. Early in the book, she even reflects on aging and how she already felt changed by the age of eighteen, which shows how quickly she realized how much of her youth she had already lost. I think towards the end of the book, when her former lover calls her and says he is still in love with her really stood out to me as it shows how powerful their relationship was and how it affected both of them. After watching the lecture video, it highlighted how Duras returns to the story not to retell is but to reconsider it from a different perspective. I found that the idea of the “threshold” was interesting as it represents a space between memory and narration. In addition, Duras stands between her past experience and the act of writing about it, constantly revisiting and reshaping the story which helps explain why the book feels sort of fragmented and reflective instead of just being linear and chronological. It also shows how memory is never fixed and that it really changes every time it is told. Lastly, after watching the conversation video, it helped me understand more the unique style of her writing and why it feels different from other books. Duras focuses less on plot and more on emotion and memory, which makes the story feel so personal and universal where it really tries to resonate with how people usually feel in my opinion. The way where the characters do not say rather than through direct explanation where in the relationship, they rarely talk about their feelings but instead the silence used in writing forces us to interpret the tension is what makes the story feel more realistic. So the question I have is do you think the girl has control over the relationship, or is it the influence from her family situation and environment that has control?
Categories
The Lover
2 replies on “The Lover”
“…but instead the silence used in writing forces us to interpret the tension is what makes the story feel more realistic.” This caught my attention. Yes, the novel has a certain visual, almost painterly quality. And in certain art forms, white (or dark) spaces, or those lacking detail, are also significant. In this novel, what is left unsaid, whether by the narrator or through dialogue, is also important to consider.
Hey Tyler, great question… I was thinking about that the entire time of reading as well. To be honest, I think a girl her age would never have “control” in a relationship with someone multiple times her age. I think that is what made this story so sad. It depicts a girl so distant from the world to protect themselves from it. I believe her “control” was imagined, he took advantage of her, knew she was in a bad position, groomed her. As a young person all you try to do is to make it seem like everything is under your own choice when really you’re forced into situations.