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.
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