I personally had issues with the ending. Though some people in class pointed out it is very sad my first impression when reading the ending was that it was too perfect. To me it seems a- perfect "completing the circle" and satisfying the readers- kind of ending. It seemed too neat that after years her lover would call back to desperately let her know that "until death" he would love her.
As i was contemplating reading the ending i sort of assumed that the ending would be anticlimactic with her leaving Saigon and that would be that. The vignette writing was what made me think she would not truly have an ending. After reading the ending i had to sit and ponder like Harry said in class " Is there one thing (or many) to get out of this book. Truly i don't think this book is written in a style where readers are to "get" or pinpoint something out of it. Though i do agree that it is a book representing of "ecriture feminine" and had slight post-colonial elements. as discussed in our group however i do not believe that the entire text can be read using a post-colonial lense. The post colonial elements in the text are her actions that contradict the social colonial order. She is "marginal" and "other". however this does not last in the long run and she returns to the "right way" for a girl of her class and nationality of the time and place. As a concluding side note i thought it was very interesting that despite her very low social status and dirt poor family, she was still considered of higher status that her chinese lover who was tons wealthier. All in all i appreciated the book for what it was but i dont think it was my favorite of the stories we have read.
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I noticed that not only does the chinese man say he will love the girl to death, but the girl says she will love Helen L til death earlier in the story. Probably the girl's love of Helen L will never come to fruition because of the public stigma against lesbians. However, it does seem appropriate that in the article by Jonathan Dollimore about the cultural politics of perversion that Freud believes that all are innately bisexual. She does seem good at following her instincts, like about how to interact with the chinese man to get the ultimate benefit to herself and her family.
Also interesting is that the girl wants to die after her younger brother dies, in a sense showing that she loved him til death (or past it, I guess) too and so much so that she wants to join him.
I understand your point in terms of the ending but I would also like to note that it's not particularly "neat". For one thing, she never says that she loves him but he clearly has continued to love her. To me, that just makes his character so weak and fragile and perhaps, a little destroyed because of his relationship with this woman who was really only a child. I found that particularly troubling.
I agree with both Charlie and Nora, that the ending was indeed quite construed, yet did not actually tie everything together in a nice little package. I think that the Chinese man coming back and professing his lover for her is a quite bizarre ending. One would have expected to be happy, like at the end of chick flicks when the guy and the girl get together finally. But, as Nora pointed out, the age difference and the fact that she is in fact a child puts the reader in a very strange situation. I was happy that she should have someone who cares this much about her, but disturbed by their kind of relationship, in that is it almost incestuous in the characterization of the Chinese man as a father and the girl as a daughter.
I agree a little bit that the ending did have that feeling of "happy" stereotypical endings. However, considering that she wrote this on her death bed I have to think, did she write it for herself? Did she want to create a "happy" ending to the story, one which might be her last?
Usually it is not helpful to think about the author, but for me when I imagined Duras as an old woman, I imagined her recounting this story to me and imagined an ending with a bitter-sweet aspect. The bitter, saying goodbye to her love. The sweet, the telephone call.
I think the fact that we are referring to the ending as the end is in itself a little contrary to the writing. Right? Because it's so completely non-linear, who knows if the last couple of paragraphs are really the "end," it could even be that first page wherein the stranger tells her she looks beautiful ravaged.
I loved this style. I've looked a lot at the idea of ecriture feminine and L'Amant really has a lot of the characteristics described by that term. I think it is pretty unique; maybe uniquely feminine, maybe just unique. But I dug it.
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