Examine the significance of repetition in Duras's Le Ravissement de Lol V.Stein - Essay Example

The Significance of Repetition + Introduction The story of Le ravissement or the ravishing features in Jacques Holds, a medical doctor who is now 36 and has worked for a year in the hospital under Pierre Beugner in S. Tahla. Interestingly, he is also the lover of Pierre’s wife, Tatiana Karl and meets her weekly in a hotel outside the town’s environs. He, however, visits the Pierre’s often and it is during one of those visits that he sees an unknown woman who Tatianna later calls Lola. Hold notices the wild look of desire written all over the new woman’s face.

Following that, Hold hears about Lol’s suffering from Tatiana that occurred after she (Lola) was rejected by her fiancé for an unnamed femme fatale. Lola seduces Hold to her party, tells him that she knows of him and Tatiana and that nevertheless, she has chosen him to be her helper cum lover. Hold is unable to escape this trap and soon finds himself in a romantic web rather than a mental reconstruction. Their conversations of Tatiana are substituted for Anne-Marie in Lol’s imagination and Hold begins to substitute for Michael.

In my opinion, Hold is the proper subject of the story. By engaging in intercourse with Lol, he portrays her as a hysterical patient dumbfounded by Tatiana’s beauty and who now stops gazing at an internal oedipal triangle which creates a myriad of explanations in the repetitive triangles of desires. The significance of repetition in this case is provoking the reader’s mind. By so doing, the reader is immersed to a context in which there are two members: the writer and the fictional character.

This repetition is also fundamental in invoking the moral questions in the mind of the reader. While in creates room for empathizing with Lol (a) V. Stein, it also introduces us to the thin line and the similarities between Hold’s fictional world and the actual world (Duras 1960). The reader is given an avenue to sympathize with Lol and Hold whose subjectivities are lost by making themselves unconscious objects for the text. The narrator’s identity is hidden from the first part of the book.

This can be interpreted as a literary trick to draw attention to Hold. As such, this makes him a viable person or tool to emphasize on the restaging of Lol’s disturbed memory that she is unable to handle well. Hold is seen as a stereotypical middle class ladies’ man. He is also the lover Tatiana, who is the only eye witness to Lol V. Stein’s suffering. This introduces the reader to Lol’s incessant need of restaging her disowned sense of loss with a man she considers erotically active and also capable of guarding her secret.

This acting out, or compulsive repetition, can be interpreted to show a social enactment of historical trauma. It, however, does not qualify to be termed as psychopathology. Also, after quoting the stories of other people, this repetition can be interpreted to show that the narrator is the same person, and not Hold, which Lol is looking at with ravishing eyes. We will consider Hiroshima mon amour to be able to explain the significance of repetition in depth. In Hiroshima mon amour, the events surrounding the demise of the female protagonist’s lover are aimed at preserving her from moving outside this memory (Duras 1960).

Also, she can get consistent meaning for words such as here and now. The flashbacks in Lol V. Stein are also attempted to maintain the lost loved one (Duras 1964). In my opinion, therefore, the main function of the repeated memory for both the women is to jealously guard and preserve their loved one’s memory. The discrepancy in the repetition is that while one wants to rid herself of the attachment to her fiancé, the other seeks to keep them intact.ReferencesDuras, M 1964. Le ravissement de Lol V.

Stein, Gallimard Press, Paris.Duras, Marguerite 1960. Hiroshima mon amour. Gallimard Press, Paris.