November
You are standing on a stage in a dark empty theatre. An old plump man with tiny round-framed glasses walks out and hands you a script, “read” he says. You look down at the unfamiliar script and begin to read it allowed. You are confused, you read things out loud that you later realize were stage directions or thoughts in one of the characters heads. You get frustrated, flustered and as you continue to read you feel this odd sense of tension growing. You stop. The plump man with tiny round-framed glasses walks back out on stage grabs the script out of your hands and in a deep boaming voice says, “Congratulations, you now know what it feels like to read The War a Memoir by Marguerite Duras”. Now you as the intelligent scholar that you are have indeed read this book but you begin to…show more content… She does not waste time talking or describing monotonous things. “The soldier looked at her. She was young and pretty” end of sentence, end of thought. This is now complete; Duras has finished and is ready for the next idea (pg. 15). She does not include the color of the girl’s hair, or the height of the girl. Does she have curly hair? Is she short, tall, round or sickly skinny? We do not know. For these questions and these descriptions do not matter to Duras just like they would not matter to a play writer. For it is not what the scene or characters look like that matter but it is what they do, what they say that matters. These abrupt descriptions create tension for Duras for she does not allow the reader to take time to “take a breath” and fathom what she is saying. She does not implement long lengthy descriptions of the other characters, the scenery itself or her actual actions. No. She is short, she is precise, she is done and then she moves on. This causes her writing to have a very fast pace for the reader is always moving from one situation to the next, never able to catch their breath. This is also seen
