Familial Obligation
Both the narrator and her lover feel some semblance of responsibility or obligation toward their family. On the part of the narrator, she feels that the weight of her family’s survival hangs on her shoulders. Her father’s death, her mother’s depression, and her eldest brother’s gambling problems have left her with little support and no means of improving their dire, poverty-stricken circumstances. As such, she risks social condemnation in hopes of providing for her struggling family.
Her lover, on the other hand, bears the burden of expectation. He is the son of a wealthy foreign investor, and his father holds a bevy of expectations for his son, his familial and financial successor. The young Chinese man is wealthy, but his social position is entirely contingent on the fickle whims of his traditional father, who finds his son’s affair with a white woman inappropriate. Indeed, their relationship is burdened not only by social expectations but also by familial ones, too.
Physical versus Emotional Intimacy
When the narrator and her lover become intimate, she experiences a sexual awakening. Although they do not often speak, she feels they communicate physically, speaking their love through touch and sensation. However, she still feels disconnected emotionally; she began the affair to serve a practical purpose. As such, she does not take him seriously as a romantic partner,...
(This entire section contains 225 words.)
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seeing him only as an outlet for physical desires and financial necessities. He confesses his love to her, but she does not take him seriously, imagining that his words stem from lust or a desire to keep her with him.
Many years and several countries later, both have long since gone their separate ways. Each has married, had children, and built a life for themself. One day, the lover reaches out to confess his love, which he explains has not diminished since she left Saigon many years ago. Looking back, she feels confused and contemplative and wonders if she misread the situation and if she indeed loved him then. As she wonders, Duras questions the nature of the oft-delineated line between sexual gratification and romantic love. It is muddy, she argues, exploring where one form of intimacy ends and the other begins. She questions whether physical love can exist where emotional love does not, wondering whether one can live without some semblance of the other.