For Wednesday: Duras, The Lover, pp.1-56

From the 1992 film of The Lover 

Q1: The book takes place in French Indochine (Indo-China), a French colony since 1887 (which is today Vietnam). People of many races and cultural identities live here, including the narrator, who is the child of a French schoolmistress. How does race play a factor in this society? How is she seen by others, including her lover, the mysterious Chinese businessman? Also, how does she see herself in relation to others?

Q2: How is the narration (and the Narrator) of this book very similar to Kokoro? What similarities do they have in their relationship to the area and to the way they tell their story? Why do you think many postcolonial works might adopt this narrative style? 

Q3: On page 34, the Narrator writes that "And I'll always have regrets for everything I do, everything I've gained, everything I've lost, good and bad..." Why do you think her affair with 'the Lover' begins this endless stream of regrets? What does she feel she has gained and lost? And why might it still affect her so many decades later (since she's writing the book in old age: Duras wrote it in her 70's about her childhood)? 

Q4: On page 54, she describes the stiflingly cruel atmosphere of her family, writing that "It's a family of stone...Every day we try to kill one another, to kill. Not only do we not talk to one another, we don't even look at one another." What clues do we get for the family's disfunction? Is it their mother? The status? The country itself? Or is this being colored by her regrets in the future? 

Schedule Changes for Next Week!

 A few schedule changes as discussed on Friday:

1. I'm moving the Paper #2 assignment back to Friday, since I want to have class on Wednesday instead. Friday's class will be cancelled so you can work on the paper, and...

2. On Friday, go to the Scissortail Creative Writing Festival! This is the largest writing festival in Oklahoma, and it occurs right here at ECU this Thursday-Saturday. Some of the region and the country's greatest authors will appear, reading their works, signing their books, etc. It's a rare opportunity to hear and meet living authors for FREE. You can find the entire schedule here: scissortail creative writing festival: 2022: Schedule of Readings (ecuscissortail.blogspot.com)

3. On Monday, I'll introduce some key concepts for our next two novels, and we'll start reading Duras', The Lover for Wednesday's class. We'll then pick it up again the following Monday. 

Also, here's the Paper #2 assignment if you forgot what it entails: ENG 3923: World Literature from 1700: Paper #2: The Birth of the Modern (ecuworldlit.blogspot.com)

See you next week! 

For Wednesday: Soseki, Kokoro, Part 3 (Chapters 70-94)

NOTE: Since Part 3 is pretty long, you don't have to completely finish it for Wednesday...but try to read the next 30 or so chapters, which for you should start around the time that K comes to live with them, and ends around he passage where he goes to the university library. Or stop wherever you please...just read enough to answer the questions below.

Q1: Sensei offers us contradictory views of his attitude toward K. On the one hand, he insists his goal was to “make him more human,” and to “infuse in him my own living heat.” But on the other, he is deeply jealous of him and becomes bitter when his ‘cure’ starts taking effect. What part of the story do you think he isn’t telling us (or the Narrator)? What might account for these contradictory reactions?

Q2: Why does Sensei never confess his love to Ojosan (or at least ask her mother to marry her)? He claims at one point that “I was very conscious of that Japanese convention forbade such things.” Do you think this is a cultural issue? Would this story be different in France or Russia at the same time? Or is his reluctance a more universal issue that transcends the taboos of Japanese courtship?

Q3: Why might it be significant that Sensei’s friend is not given a name, but an initial “K,” and bears a striking similarity of Sensei himself? And why do you think Sense is (apparently) unable to see this likeness himself? Or is his goal to make the Narrator see it?

Q4: How do Okusan and Ojosan begin acting differently around K? In other words, how does K’s arrival seem to help explain their relationship with Sensei? Are they as devious as he begins to suspect? Or is he the one manipulating them?

For Monday: Soseki, Kokoro, Part 3 (Chs.52-70)

NOTE: For your edition of the book, start around the passage where the narrator’s father is dying and he starts talking to his brother about the property; finish roughly around the part where Sensei moves into the house with the widow and starts falling in love with her daughter. In other words, read about half of Part 3. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Sensei writes that “although I despised women, I could not find it in me to despise Ojōsan...I felt for her a love that was close to pious faith.” Why doe she seem to fall in love with her—and is it truly love? Can a man who claims to despise women suddenly make an exception? And how did she convince him to reform his views?

Q2: Besides the fact that Sensei intends to die, why does he finally decide to tell the narrator his secrets? What does he have to gain from recounting the story of his secret shame? Do you think the narrator understand it himself?

Q3: How are the narrator’s and Sensei’s stories of coming to adulthood similar? Are both of them “egotists,” as the narrator’s brother calls Sensei (and people like him)? Do we begin to understand the hidden attraction of the narrator for his ‘teacher’ as we read his letter?

Q4: At the end of Chapter 62 (in my edition), Sensei writes, “But I believe a commonplace idea stated with passionate conviction carries more living truth than some novel observation expressed with cool indifference.” Why might this be an idea we’ve previously encountered in other works in the class? What idea is Sensei actually trying to get across here?

Paper #2: The Birth of the Modern

If you missed class on Friday, here's the paper assignment I handed out in class. Note the due date--March 30th! 

English 3923

Paper #2: The Birth of the Modern

INTRO: Both Kafka’s stories and Soseki’s Kokoro were written as the nineteenth century faded into the twentieth, and both captured something uniquely ‘modern’ that we don’t see in Voltaire and Lermontov. Simply put, when we read these works, we could almost believe they were written today—or just yesterday, not a hundred years ago. Some combination of their characters, themes, stories, and philosophies would translate well into a modern book or film…and probably has, in one way or another!

PROMPT: For this paper, I want you to find a modern work of art (book, film, show, panting, even an album) that you feel is the spiritual descendant of Kafka or Soseki’s work. Why can we trace many of the ideas and characters of this work back to, say, “The Metamorphosis” or Kokoro? Choose ONE of the two books to focus on, though in Kafka’s case, you can do more than one story. Explain how the more recent work seems to borrow, adapt, expand, or echo the themes in the earlier work, and use the newer work to explain what makes Kafka or Soseki so ‘modern.’ Don’t just do a compare and contrast, though: use the modern work as a lens to examine Kafka or Soseki’s book.

REMEMBER: your audience might not know the more recent work, so be sure to introduce it in enough detail so we can follow along and appreciate the connection. Quote/examine the newer work alongside passages and ideas from Kafka or Soseki. The more we have to guess, the less effective your paper will be. Help us appreciate both works, and understand how one was indebted to the other for its very existence.

REQUIREMENTS:

• No page limit, but use both works in your discussion
• You must QUOTE from the works and discuss specific passages to make your points; don’t just summarize or generalize
• CONTEXT: make sure we understand what story/novel you’re discussing from class, and make sure we understand the general story or background of your modern work
• DUE Wednesday, March 30^th by 5pm!

For Wednesday: Soseki, Kokoro, Part II

Be sure to read through Part II for Wednesday, or get pretty close. We'll take a reading break on Friday so you can get caught up if you need to, and of course you'll have all of Spring Break to read as well (beach reading)! 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Sensei tells the Narrator, “We who are born into this age of freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the price we pay for these times of ours.” What do you think he means by this? Why does freedom and independence lead to loneliness, especially among the young? Is he criticizing the Narrator for being too Westernized?

Q2: Related to the above, Kokoro is in many ways a novel of fathers vs. sons—or how the different generations view one another. Why does the Narrator dislike or misunderstand about his father? Similarly, why does his father dislike about him? Consider the lines, “In the old days children fed their parents, but these days they devour them.”

Q3: How does the Narrator begin to see cracks in his ideal vision of Sensei toward the end of Part I and in Part II? What does he reveal to the Narrator, and is he right to say that “the man seated before me was not the Sensei I loved and respected but a criminal”?

Q4: At one point, the Narrator notes that “Since Sensei and my father seemed exactly opposite types, they easily came to my mind as a pair, through both association and comparison.” How might this explain Sensei’s attraction for the Narrator? Is he merely the ‘ideal’ father he always wanted? Or does the pairing suggest they’re more alike than the Narrator cares to admit?

For Monday: Soseki, Kokoro, Chapters 1-25

NOTE: If you have a different version of the novel, Chapter 25 is just a few chapters before the end of Part I: Sensei and I (which ends at our Chapter 36). So read all or most of Part I, in that case. 

Q1: In some ways, Kokoro is a novel about the traditional Japanese way of life giving way to the modern, Western world. How does the narrator and some of the other characters represent this change? Where else does the novelist show us these changes?

Q2: Several times, the narrator proclaims Sensei as a remarkable man and a philosopher. On one occasion he even exclaims, “I genuinely regretted the way the world ignored this admirable man” (Ch.11). How does the narrator communicate his greatness or uniqueness to the reader? Why is he a “sensei,” which is a term of respect which literally means “one who comes before,” but often connotes a teacher or wise man?

Q3: Sensei tells the narrator in Chapter 7 that “No time is as lonely as youth.” Why might youth (the age many of you are now) be lonelier than adulthood or old age? What do we lack in youth that we gain (or see) when we get older?

Q4: At one point, Sensei tells the narrator that “You had the impulse to find someone of the same sex as the first step toward embracing someone of the opposite sex...But I’m a man, so I can’t really fill your need” (Ch.13). Does the narrator want him to fulfill this need? Is he in love with the older man? Or is it, as Sensei suggests, a way to ‘test’ his attachment to another human being?