Using Sex as a Drug in Chang-Rae Lee's "The Surrendered"

Short Analysis Two: Chang- Rae Lee’s The Surrendered

Debra Moreno Blouch

            In the middle of Chang- Rae Lee’s The Surrendered, when Sylvie decides to break off her relationship with Jim after being introduced to Ames Tanner, the narrator provides insight to Sylvie’s feelings towards Jim. “She loved seeing Jim and loved his gentleness and modesty but it was really a love of cloistering and smallness and her own physical pleasure, all of which she already understood were signs of her ugly narcissism, her insoluble weakness”(226). This passage relates to the work’s theme of the characters using sex like a drug in order to feel better about themselves, and in order to cope with their lives after the atrocities they have experienced.  Sylvie likes to be secluded with Jim in his modest apartment where she is able to drink opium and get sexed up in order to momentarily forget her past. She feels safe with Jim because he too is scarred and feels ruined by the effects of the war. Sex works like the opium in satisfying her insoluble weakness of wanting to escape her mortal self. She does not love Jim himself and the act of sex is not a love act. She is using Jim and their sexual acts in order to satisfy her preoccupation of her own needs, specifically, to escape her past if only momentarily. Because of this, she views herself with ugly narcissism.  For Sylvie and other characters in the novel, The Surrendered, sex is used along with drugs or like drugs in order to find peace if only momentarily within themselves.