Reading & Questions for Prevost, Manon Lescaut, Chapters I-III

Read the first three chapters of Manon Lescaut and answer any 2 of the 4 questions below. These questions are designed to get you inside the text, so you can actively think about the book instead of merely skimming it. So please avoid facile 1-2 sentence answers, and please don't merely restate the question. Try to think 'out loud' as you write, and don't worry if you're wrong or don't 100% understand the book. It's better to write your way to understanding than to read a summary somewhere and post an answer you didn't come to yourself (in which case, you learn nothing). Just enjoy the book and respond honestly and thoughtfully. 

ALSO, you can bring your responses to class next week, or you can e-mail them to me. The benefit of bringing them is that you'll remember what you wrote during our discussion, so if I call on you (and it's a very small class!), you'll always have something to say. :) 

QUESTIONS (answer any 2 of 4):

Q1: In the Preface, the narrator writes that "I have to portray a young man who obstinately refuses to be happy and deliberately plunges into the most dire misfortunes" (3). Many at the time would object to writing about such a "lost" man and wonder why the author is reveling in bad behavior amidst a low moral background. How does he defend his story and his preoccupation with "deliberately unhappy" people?

Q2: The narrator also notes, in Part One, that "this narrative is perfectly accurate and faithful...it even reproduces comments and emotional digressions which the young fellow put in with the most natural ease of manner" (11). Clearly this is a work of fiction, so why is he trying to hard to claim that this is "real" and that every word and event is taken from real life? Are there other works you know that do this? For similar reasons?

Q3: What makes des Grieux (and many others) fall so madly in love with Manon? While the novel claims this is merely love at first sight, what other factors helped to spur on the attraction? In other words, what makes so many people willing to ignore her faults and do her favors? Especially since at the beginning of the book, she's a convicted criminal.

Q4: While this is seemingly a tragic love story, how do we know that the author (Antoine-Francois Prevost) is very cynical about the nature of love and the conventions of romance? Why might we call this an anti-love story, one that questions how people fall into patterns of romance rather than sincere expressions of sentiment?