Beauty & Identities: Pages 17-27

Source: http://haleydavissculpture.com/painting/beauty-queen

Duras in the next set of pages develops the plot and the characters in The Lover. I'm starting to observe a pattern in her writing technique and what Juliana proposed as, "the interweaving motion of the text." It starts at one end and then submerges, finally appearing again at the other end. I also noticed how she always felt the need to clarify herself by the incessant repetition, and perhaps she's trying to convince herself that her memory recall is valid....and not as distant from her than she had initially thought so.

Jumping back to the themes discussed in the novel, the concept of beauty is further analyzed with her pride of her "white supremacy" over the native Vietnamese population. Her ethnicity and identity is significant in her life, but at the same time, yes another contradiction is posed in the novel. She enjoys shape-shifting identities to satisfy other's assumptions of her. "I know it's not a question of beauty, though, but of something else, for example, yes, something else--mind, for example. What I want to seem I do seem.....I can become anything anyone wants me to. And believe it. ....And when I believe it, and it becomes true for anyone seeing me who wants me to be according to his taste, I know that too." (18)

I think the quote displays how Duras was in control of her identity and almost manipulating other people because it deceives people. However, this type of "deception" doesn't exactly harm anyone or hurt people's feelings, quite contrarily it would hurt her mental state of mind by having to constantly change her identity for to satisfy the people around her. What I admire about Duras is that she's very blunt and honest when she writes, she doesn't beat around the bush, and she doesn't conceal her weaknesses or exaggerate her ability. Her criticism of women dressing up for the sake of seeking romance from other other men is a condemnation for materialistic desires. "You didn't have to attract desire. Either it was in the woman who aroused it or it didn't exist. Either it was there at first glance or else it had never been. It was instant knowledge of sexual relationship or it was nothing. That too I knew before I experienced it." (19) She also constantly reminds us that she was mature and advanced for her age, which I don't think is always a good thing in her case.

Page 27 ended with a new shift in the plot of her meeting a man who was "not white" (once again, emphasis on racial identity). She also admits that her mother's depression took over her family as a whole and it explains why Duras herself is very pessimistic in her narration. "Everything has grown up all around us. There are no more children, either on the buffalos or anywhere else. We too have become strange, and the same sluggishness that has overtaken my mother has overtaken us too." (26)

The Lover: Pages 3-16

Source: http://grantdoyle.wordpress.com/essays/autofiction-and-the-lover/

My first reading of The Lover was interesting to say the very least. Duras's style of writing is one that I've never come across in previous works that I've read, but surprisingly I do enjoy her style of writing. Although, The Lover fluctuates from one event to another, from one emotion, thought, memory leaping forward and turning backwards in time, her flow of thought is still somewhat connected to one another. Duras begins the story with a man approaching her and  "he introduced himself and said, "I've known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you're more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged." (3) The man's words really confused me, and its strange to think that someone would introduce themselves on the streets with such a personal statement on your appearance. However, his words were compelling and I realized that his introduction to Duras as an introduction to The Lover, and perhaps Duras wishes to begin with her reminiscence of her youth and beauty, but coming to a conclusion that she prefers what she has become, "ravaged".

Another theme that I found while I was reading was people's expectations of Duras in her childhood, especially from her mother. "What was enough for her is not enough for her daughter." (5)  Her mother's expectations of her education basically directed and guided her childhood. However, after her father's death, her mother no longer took care of Duras and her brother and despair took over  her mother's life completely, leading to the disintegration of her mother's life, what Duras associates with as the "dying of the light".

Duras, as the narrator of the story, seems to be constantly contradicting herself due to the uncertainty in her memories of the past. "The story of my life doesn't exist. Does not exist. There's never any center to it. No path, no line." (8) Her life is not sequential, one event does not logically lead to another, and so does her fluctuation of the stream of unconsciousness.

What I find most striking is how she always recalls her memory to the age of fifteen and a half, thus emphasizing the age of when every thing shifted and changed her  life."So I'm fifteen and a half. It's on a ferry crossing the Mekong River. The image lasts all the way across. I'm fifteen and a half, there are no seasons in that part of the world, we have just one season, hot, monotonous, we're in the long hot girdle of the earth, with no spring, no renewal. (5) The description of Vietnam's monotonous season actually contradicts her description of life with "no path, no line". However, her assertion of "no spring, no renewal", reflects her apathetic views towards life and the pessimism of her childhood filled with the fear of death and and never gaining her mother's love.

Page sixteen ends with Duras cutting her hair, rejecting her hair as being the definition her beauty and  ultimately defining herself as a whole."..I felt the cold scissors on the skin of my neck. It fell on the floor. They asked if I wanted to keep it, they'd wrap it up....I said no....Afterwords they'd just say, "She's got nice eyes. And her smile's not unattractive." (16) I feel like The Lover was written in order for Duras to explore her childhood and evaluate her progression through the years of her life. She gives a strikingly personal and honest expression of her life and why she is the person she is today.

The Life and Loves of Marguerite Duras

I've heard of Marguerite Duras before I read The New York Times article but was never really exposed to her works as a writer. My first impression of Marguerite Duras was "wow, she's definitely different from other writers I've read about." What intrigues me most is her multicultural life and her odd experience with love. I feel like her extraordinary experiences in life is what gives life to her writing. Many authors are inspired by the people they meet and different events which change their lives completely. In the article, The Lover is described as a "despairing, sensuous novel about an affair between a 15-year old French girl and a 27-year old Chinese man" and furthermore it's display "consuming infatuation and brutal shifts of powers.....echo[ing] many issues of modern colonialism".  I can already sense that The Lover is no ordinary love story and it will display extremities of passion and conflicts between the two lovers, which ultimately reflects Duras's experience with love. What's more astonishing is that Duras regards The Lover as an autobiography. Since she's had personal experience with these issues, I can definitely expect a genuine love story that doesn't romanticize but shows the reality of what we call "love". Another part of Duras's life which I found intriguing was how she was inspired by a "pale beauty named Elizabeth Striedter." To Duras she was a woman that represented, "a dark, mythic feminine power" and that she became a writer because of her. She's also the only writer I know that delves into film and creates different media besides literature. After encountering brain damage, alcoholism. strange sexual relationships with her brother and other men, and also involving herself with Communism, she's the most diverse individual I've read about.

I anticipate that The Lover will be a unique romance novel with passions that meets no boundaries, with dark eroticism intertwined with death.  Her obsession and madness with destruction and love will probably be the main themes in The Lover.

Final Socratic Seminar Reflection

Our class final Socratic seminar for The Reader discussed many different themes and events relating to the main characters, Michael and Hanna. I think we all agreed as a class that this novel was not just a "love story" but served as an allegory for the guilt carried by Germany's postwar generation as a result of the past crimes in World War II.  We clarified on the connection of Michael's guilt to the guilt carried by the postwar generation, but we also realized that "coming to terms with the past" had been a similar issue for both Michael and Germany as a whole. I also find it interesting how Michael doesn't really carry the burden of guilt the same way the postwar generation did, he sort of did acknowledge Hanna's crimes and went to Hanna's trials, but didn't actively or directly place the guilt on anyone. He's unable to blame Hanna because he always in the end accepts the blame as his own doing. We also agreed as a class that Michael and Hanna had an unhealthy relationship to begin with, and it was doomed from the very beginning. Some people thought that Hanna's death was a relief for Michael and proposed that she should have died earlier in the story because of how much she has damaged Michael's life. We, the readers, also have no clue whether or not Hanna was actually aware of the damage she'd given to Michael, but the scene when Michael meets Hanna for the first time since she was sentenced to prison, explains that Hanna finally understood how much Michael has changed. I am still confused by the complexity in the debate of guilt and who should be deemed responsible for the guilt and whether or not it's justified for a person to carry the guilt for the rest of his/her's life. I wish we could have discussed more of The Reader together as a class because The Reader consists of infinite debate on morals, justice, and dealing with the past.

Part III: Ch. 10 ~ Ch.12: THE END

I wasn't satisfied with the last chapter of The Reader because Schlink still leaves us, the readers, contemplating and questioning the characters' motives, their fate, and the consequences of their actions. Michael is said to have written numerous versions of his story and he writes it in order to come to peace with his past with Hanna and it enables him to think about his past and his feelings that he wasn't aware of before.

Michael was surprised to find a photograph of himself at a graduation ceremony, thinking "she must have gone to some trouble to find out about the photo and get a copy. And she had it with her during the trial? I felt the tears again in my chest and throat."(206) His tears are a sign of guilt and all of the emotions he had suppressed for so long, not knowing how to deal with these feelings.

I was also pleasantly surprised when the warden told Michael regarding Hanna's illiteracy, "...she didn't try to hide it any longer. She was also just proud that she had succeeded, and wanted to share her happiness." (206)   I wouldn't have thought that Hanna would've taken the effort to persevere and take on the task of learning how to read and write, but she indirectly had Michael's support and her environment in jail motivated her to read about the concentration camps and to communicate with Michael. I was tearing up when I realized how lonely Hanna was to the extreme that Michael was the only one she could write letters to, but Michael refused to answer her and continued sending cassette tapes.

I found it really ironic when Michael was confused when Hanna did not address Michael directly in her will and thought "Did she intend to hurt me? Or punish me?" because Michael had committed the exact same crime to Hanna, but then he as always, he would contemplate the opposite side of the argument, "Or was her soul so tired that she could only do and write what was absolutely necessary? "What was she like all those years?" I waited until I could go on. "And how was she these last few days?" (207) It also made me emotional knowing that Michael is finally facing the reality of Hanna's life in prison, realizing that he still cared and loved her but failed to visit her in prison, and it was too late for him to ask his questions to Hanna.

"It looked rigid and dead. As I looked and looked, the living face became visible in the dead, the young in the old. This is what must happen to old married couples, I thought: the young man is preserved in the old one for her, the beauty and grace of the young woman stay fresh in the old one for him. Why had I not seen this reflection a week go?" (209)
I felt that this particular quote was significant in the sense that it summed up the result of Michael and Hanna's relationship. They were the "old married couple" and Michael began to realize how his  idea of Hanna was always this youthful, strong, attractive woman even though time had passed and Hanna's past crimes were unveiled to him and both he and Hanna grew older with age, physically and mentally.

Source

Part III: Ch. 5 ~ Ch. 9: Hanna, In Retrospect

In this section of the novel, it seems like Schlink purposely reversed the roles of Michael and Hanna. After reading chapter nine, I regarded Michael as selfish and apathetic while finding myself sympathizing for Hanna's state in prison. My first impressions of Hanna were mostly negative and I pictured her a manipulative, insensitive, and irresponsible woman for engaging in such a relationship with Michael. However, I'm beginning to consider that Hanna and Michael share more similarities than they do in the their differences. In a way, although he was a fifteen-year old teenager, I think Michael also has his own share of irresponsibility and mistakes in his decision to be in a relationship with Hanna. He was given the choice in pursuing a relationship with Hanna or leaving her at any time if he so wishes. But of course he was too enamored and deeply attached to Hanna's presence to really ever think of hurting her.

But in part III of the novel, Michael has changed.

During the early stages of their relationship, Michael had known that Hanna would never open up to him completely, never love him to the extreme that he loved her. Hanna was selfish with her love, limiting the amount of space and time that she and Michael shared together, but now Michael refuses to directly communicate with Hanna, only recording himself reading books aloud to her. Michael confesses when he meets Hanna for the first time since she was in prison, "But I could feel how little my admiration and happiness were worth compared to what learning to read and write must have cost Hanna, how meager they must have been if they could not even get me to answer her, visit her, talk to her. I had granted Hanna a small niche....but not a place in my life." (198) His selfish behavior is almost identical to how Hanna had been selfish with her love for Michael. I also think it's worth pointing that during the times Michael was reading aloud to Hanna, they were treated as equals and Hanna was not dominant, but rather the listener and Michael the one with the power to speak. I feel like the act of reading aloud to Hanna was really what bonded Michael and Hanna's love for each other and represented how they both took care of one another.



Source

I also saw a different side of Hanna that I haven't seen in last two parts of the novel. I can finally empathize with how she genuinely feels, now that she's putting down her guard and letting go her pride. Hanna too makes a confession, something which she never really found the courage to tell him before, Hanna tells Michael, "I always had the feeling that no one understood me anyways, that no one knew who I was and what made me do this or that. And you know, when no one understands you, then no one can call you to account....But the dead can. They understand." (198) By the end of chapter nine, I gain a new respect for Hanna and I sympathize with her loneliness and guilt which she had to carry for all her life. I don't think her situation can ever be understood because no matter how hard she tries to better her actions in the future, it will never change what she had committed in the past, and that's a tragedy she has to accept.

Part III: Ch. 1 ~ Ch. 4: Michael Berg

Michael Berg moving on with his life,  avoiding the thought of confronting Hanna at all costs----Source

In Part III, Hanna is imprisoned and Michael reaches new milestones as he gets married and has a daughter named Julia. Although it may seem that he's moving on with his life after Hanna is sentenced to prison, Hanna becomes his personal "monster" that he is unable to face and overcome.

His unhealthy habits continue as he purposely harms himself to enjoy the pain, he took pleasure in skiing with few clothes on, "When I started to feel feverish, I enjoyed it. I felt weak and light at the same time, and all my senses were pleasingly muffled, cottony, padded. I floated. (168) I think in some ways the pain he purposely inflicts on himself is a mechanism to deal with this long-term numbness he's confronted with ever since his disavowal with Hanna. He realizes that even when he's taken to the hospital, the doctors can't treat his numbness, and he comes to a conclusion with his own diagnosis "that the numbness had to overwhelm [his] body before it would let go of [him]."

His guilt still follows him and just as how his generation is putting all the blame on their parents' generation, he wishes he could place the burden of this guilt on someone else. His only option of is "to point at Hanna." However the finger he points to her, Michael says, "turned back to me." Like every previous situation when he blames Hanna, his guilt returns back to him and he realizes, "I had loved her. Not only had I loved her, I had chosen her." (170)

Despite all the guilt that has accumulated and haunted him from his relationship with Hanna, "[Michael] admitted to [himself] that a woman had to move and feel a bit like Hanna, smell and taste a bit like her for things to be good between [him and his partner]." (174) I find it very confusing how he's avoiding the thought of Hanna at all costs, but at the same time he's yearning for Hanna and his memories with her. I don't think he misses Hanna necessarily, he just misses his memory of loving Hanna and how she made him the happiest he had ever been in his life. I don't think Michael is aware that he will never find "Hanna" in any other woman he meets and that his feelings towards Hanna and there's nothing he can do to change it. I'm not sure whether to attribute him as a weak character or a strong character because I think apathy makes you fit both categories.