Contextual Material

To contextualize The Lover, I have included a picture of the ferry, a map of the Mekong River, as well as a picture from a scene taken from the movie version of the novel, and a photo of the Japanese occupation.

The picture of the ferry and the map of the Mekong River are important contextual pieces to look at because Duras uses the ferry as a symbol for many things throughout the novel. There is a reoccurring theme of freedom that the ferry represents. Although it is not a character in the novel, it plays a big role in a sense that it is where beginnings start, and things die. The ferry runs up and down the Mekong River and serves as a way of transportation. The river itself represents the constant flow of possibilities.

Freedom is also represented through the ferry because it is on one of Duras’s many ferry rides to boarding school that the Chinese businessman first notices her, and on the ferry that her Chinese lover watches her leave for the last time. To Duras, the ferry is her escape. She no longer has to abide by her mother’s rules, she can do exactly as she pleases. Once she got on the ferry she knew that she was out of her mother’s reach so she could be whoever she wanted to be.

I included a picture from the ferry scene as my second contextual piece because it is because it lets the reader visualize what the young girl looked like, and the Chinese man’s reaction. This picture is a good portrayal of how the relationship starts off. In the picture, the young girl looks calm and in control, and the older man, dressed to fit his social class, is so intrigued at the sight of her. This contextual piece clearly illustrates who is in control of the love affair.

My last contextual piece is a picture taken during the Japanese occupation. This piece is important to the novel because Duras’s younger brother dies in December 1942, during the Japanese occupation. In the novel she has only good things to say about her younger brother. He is the only person in her household that she can confide in. The way Duras describes him in the novel as a warm caring person. His death had a major impact on her life. In The Lover, Duras says, “Since my younger brother was dead, everything had to die after him.” That line portrays how heavily her brothers death weighed on her.