Marguerite Duras' The Lover.
Duras pays a great deal of attention to writing in her novel.  When does she mention writing?  What prospects does she face when she tells her mother? Make sure you use a quote and explain its significance.

Themes/ideas/images

• The desire to write is a frustrated one. The mother calls writing nonsense, it is not "real work" 21
• Once the narrator gets her math degree, the mother is done with her daughter.  After that, the narrator can go on to do as she pleases
• The narrator goes to France to be educated and to get free from her family
• Metropolis: Paris versus the Colony: French Indochina (Vietnam)
• Representation of colonialism (Do, the servant who the elder brother tries to rape but who, nevertheless, stays with the narrator's mother)
• Colonial relations: the narrator has priveleges--she sits in the white section of the bus (French colonials and the Vietnamese)
• The lover is an outsider--he is Chinese and lives in French colonial Indochina.  He is also an outsider to his own family because he is educated, in part, in France.
• He is wealthy--his father makes money in real estate
• The narrator is an outsider and poor--although she maintains the image of being priveleged--servant, they could refuse the slop that was served to them
• Mother subject to depression and is a teacher; she moves around; no father figure--only one income. She makes poor investments (property in Cambodia--water is encroaching upon the land, making it difficult to harvest rice)
• The elder brother--abusive to the younger brother and he gambles. Has a possible addiction to Opium

• Love and hatred in her writing in regard to her family--before she had to be cautious (7 *8)
• Unreliable narrator 27
• Memory is unreliable
• Revision of when the narrator met the Chinese lover--it was not at a bar as she had written before
• Narrator excels in French (literature and culture)
• Most important theme: memory and loss
• Use of contraries--hat allows the narrator to cross boundaries (those of gender; those dividing innocence and experience; adolescence and adulthood (and therefore sexuality)
• Ways of being, the creation of a distinct image and identity
• Family relations are difficult and violent
• Elder brother has assumed male parental role
• Narrator fears her elder brother's sexuality and abilty to attract
• Elder brother tries to rape Do, the house servant and companion of the mother

Characters
The nameless narrator
Paulo--brother
Elder brother
Marie Legrand--mother
The Chinese Lover
Helene

• The importance of photography and memory
• The narrator's face--reveals a loss of innocence
• River imagery
• The importance of writing and memory
• How is the narrator unmarriageable and what does this mean for her family?
• The family benefits from the lover's money
• The lover takes them out to expensive restaurants
• Lover is potentially a father figure
• He is an outsider--the brothers don't speak with him; they hardly look at him
• Prostitution
• Lover doesn't think marriage is viable--both b/c of his father and because of his own pride
• How are both the narrator and the Chinese lovers outcasts?
• Keep this story and film in mind to compare with Indochine.

• passive voice
• past tense
• expletives
• lack of integration of quotes
• poor documentation of texts
• too much plot
• no transitions or transitions that don't work
• few examples to support thesis
• too little of analysis (3 instead of 4 pages)
• misreading of narratives and their details
• misidentification of texts (play and a novel)
• not sufficient revision from the peer critiques

sloppy writing (no proofreading)