The Sea Wall
by Marguerite Duras
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At a glance:
- Author: Marguerite Duras
- First Published: 1950
- Type of Work: Psychological realism
- Time of Work: The 1920’s
- Setting: The Pacific coastal plain of French Indochina and the colonial city of Kam
- Characters: Ma, Joseph, Suzanne, Monsieur (Jo) Joseph
- Genres: Long fiction, Psychological fiction, Novel
- Subjects: Mothers, Parents and children, Colonialism, Sex or sexuality, Alienation, 1920's, Ambition, Money, Widows or widowers, Floods, Southeast Asia, Indochina
- Locales: Asia, Indochina, Kam
The Novel
The Sea Wall, which documents one form of colonial oppression by chronicling the intimate life of an idiosyncratic family, is a masterpiece of narrative strategy. The characters’ intense, often abusive relationships are shaped by spiritually debilitating cultural conditions and defy conventional moral expectations.
The narrative begins when Ma and her two children have lived on their land concession for three years and recounts the family’s history to date: Ma, widowed soon after moving to the colony, obtained the land from the colonial government...
(The entire page is 2114 words.)
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