Post #14: Analyzation of Marguerite Duras' excerpt of "The War"

 

Word Count: 313

Marguerite Duras was a novelist, playwriter, and screenwriter. She was born in Vietnam to a French family and moved to France when she was 17. Once there, she participated in a resistance during WWII and later wrote numerous plays and novels. One of them, “The Lover” helped her reach a wide audience in America as well. In this excerpt from “The War”, she combines her diaries in her search for her husband after the concentration camps.

From this excerpt, Duras gives off the impression that she is a unyielding person. She is also introspective and is great at analyzing events and breaking them down in her writing. She manages to carry a refreshing sense of clarity, understanding, and storytelling, all at the same time.

The way that this excerpt is written is gives off the idea that her main audience for someone close, wither a friend or for herself to reflect on in the future. Duras’ relationship with the audience is like that of a close friend she is writing a letter to.

The text is developed through daily experiences and emotions in a pattern that illustrates Duras’ life in a very descriptive yet retrospective lens. Some portions go over her life like a diary, with events being described as if you were seeing them unfold next to the writer and at the same time, with a hint of knowledge that implied a sense of understanding beyond the current context. This is evident on 237 when she says in reference to the priest’s encounter with the other woman writing, “A total split, with on the one side the solid, uncompromising front of the women, and on the other just the one man who was right, but in a language the women didn’t understand”. In certain events, Duras provides bits of clarity and understanding that is evident of a recollection in telling her story.