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The Lover Book vs. Film

Decent Essays
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Mayra Perez
ENG 201
July 2, 2013
The Lover Book vs. Film Marguerite Duras publishes The Lover in 1884. A book that becomes one of the best sellers she had written. Almost a decade later it was adapted to film (1992). Both the book and the film are set in French Indochina and tell the love story of a French young girl and a Chinese man in 1929. In both versions, the love affair between a white and Chinese people is a taboo. Thus, their romance starts with an economic interest because the French girl is poor and the china man is milliner. They know that their relationship has to end when the time come. This won’t impede them from falling in love deeply. In fact, they relish their prohibited love. However, the film is different from the …show more content…

In the book, the young girl tells that her father died and ever since her family finances crashed. Her older brother is addicted to drugs. He still from his family and the end he kills someone and died alone in his room. Her younger brother was psychologically tortured by his older brother. A convincing illustration would be;
“They both have the same talent of anger, those black, murderous fits of anger you only see in brothers, sister, mothers. My elder brother can’t bear not being able to do evil freely, to be boss over it not only here but everywhere. My younger brother can’t bear having to look on helpless as this horror, at what his elder brother is like” (Duras,61)

The resentment within the young girl’s family is essential to the novel because one can understand the young girl better as she makes her decision. Except for the family problems being minimized, the main story line of the film The Lover is very similar to that of the book. While the number of characters, the type of narration, and the ending differs, the theme remains the same. In the end, the young girl and the Chinese man break up and live in different countries. But the Chinese man would always love her to death. In both versions, one can see that race is very important when it comes to love matters. Race and family issues are way stronger than

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