Reading The Sea Wall, by Marguerite Duras, one may be tempted to assume the title is merely selected to set the scene, perhaps even the tone. The sea wall takes on the form of a solid entity with a defined reality, past in existence and present in memory. Nonetheless, this is misleading. The sea wall is not merely the backdrop against which this novel's action is set, and it is not merely a jumping off point in the life of the mother, an excuse for writing. After all, the sea walls in Suzanne's family's past were multiple; the title is singular. In reality, the sea wall is the main character of the text, but the sea wall in the text is not always the wall washed away on the coasts of Vietnam.

One scene which plays well through a Pessimist perspective, and one that defines the character of the sea wall, is the beating scene, pages 108-10. In the context of the novel, Suzanne's mother has accused her of prostituting herself for a diamond ring, which the mother is not at all displeased to have. For the purpose of this paper, the motives of the argument don't much matter, and the context does not much matter; what matters is the sides that are drawn.

There comes a point in Suzanne's suffering when she becomes resigned to endure, to no longer resist. That passage is of particular interest.

As soon as Suzanne made one movement, Ma hit her. Realizing this, Suzanne, her head in her arms, did nothing but protect herself, patiently. She forgot that this force came from her mother, she endured it as she would have endured the wind, the waves, or any impersonal force. It was when Ma fell back again in her chair that she was again frightened of her, because of that face dazed with effort. (page 109)

This passage brings in the sea wall. In order to endure the suffering brought on by the personal agent of her mother, Suzanne sees her as a force of nature. When her mother becomes personalized again, in the last sentence quoted above, the horror returns. Suzanne has learned that suffering is a force of nature, and one that cannot be stopped. It can only be endured. Seeing her mother's face again personalizes the horror, and prevents Suzanne from seeing it as only a force of nature.

What force of nature she calls her mother is of particular note. The mother is "the wind, the waves, or any impersonal force." These are the same forces that battered and destroyed the sea walls. It would appear here that Suzanne is the sea wall; she certainly withstands the attacks of Mother Nature personified, as the force of the wind and waves. However, in this scene, there is another passage to cast doubt on this concept.

It was quite two years since she had beaten Joseph. Before that, she had often beaten him, until that day when he had grabbed her by the arm and gently immobilized her. Stupefied, at first, she had ended up by laughing uproariously with him, fundamentally glad to see that he had grown so strong. Since then, she had not beaten him, not entirely because she feared him but because Joseph had told her he would not tolerate it any more. Joseph thought you had to beat your children, especially your daughters, but not too hard and only as a final resort. But since the crumbling of the sea walls and since she no longer beat Joseph, Ma beat Suzanne much oftener than before.

Is Joseph another sea wall, like Suzanne? When he becomes no longer resigned to the suffering, he causes it to stop. Has he ceased to be the sea wall? It is no coincidence that the crumbling of the sea walls and the cessation of Joseph's beatings are mentioned together. It seems it is not the person of Suzanne who is the sea wall, because Joseph had, in the past, a sea wall, and the loss of it caused him to be no longer beaten. This is still suggestive, though; there is another scene that goes into better detail to explain what the sea wall is.

Earlier in the novel, a scene plays out which not only helps define who or what the sea wall is, but also demonstrates a scene of failure in Suzanne's life, and in the concept of the sea wall. This scene occurs on pages 56-8, when she allows Monsieur Jo to see her nude.

Many subtilties demonstrate themselves in this passage. One of the first the reader has to deal with appears mere paragraphs into the selection, that being her enigmatic smile. "Surprised," Duras tells the reader, Suzanne, after being propositioned by Monsieur Jo to be a passive object of lust, "she began to smile, but did not reply." What caused her surprise, and what caused her smile? These must be addressed before the nature of Suzanne's failure can be shown.

In the context of the passage, one supposes the surprise was due to her self-objectification, in the sentence immediately preceding: "Suzanne surveyed herself from head to foot: this was what Monsieur Jo wanted to have a look at, in his turn." One expects she is no stranger to the concept of lust; she does not seem to misunderstand Monsieur Jo's intent. Her surprise, and her happiness, can likely be attributed to one of two causes. Perhaps it is a matter of pride, to think that she is desirable to another. Perhaps it is a matter of power, to think that she can control another's actions and feelings with her body. Perhaps they are both the same. In either case, she seems to be made happy by that fact that, for whatever reason, she has something Monsieur Jo wants. In her world, this makes her sexuality a commodity.

Throughout the novel, Suzanne's sexuality and her sense of self-worth are caught up with the concepts of money and exchange. In this scene, it is no different. She is fully aware of the nature of his request. She has been asked to show herself to him before, but she had never before complied. Setting the scene for this episode, though, Duras draws the reader's attention to the terms of exchange. Suzanne contemplates the phonograph before she contemplates her body. This phonograph appears to disappear for the space of almost six paragraphs, this being the very passage where she observes herself, is pleased, and convinces herself to expose herself to him, to objectify herself as a commodity. These intervening paragraphs deserve closer attention.

He makes the request. She considers herself, and seems pleased. He makes the request again, and she protests, "weakly." After her surprise and her smile, this weakness seems to be clear. She is not weak in her resistance; she has resisted before. If she is weak in her voice, it is due to her conflicting desires. Rather, she seems weak in her protest. She is not entirely honest in saying she does not want to expose herself. (She says as much herself: "Her refusal had been mechanical.") Indeed, the thought seems to have pleased her. Then follows a passage that pretends to explain her willingness to concede to his lusts:

He had a great desire to see her. After all, it was the natural desire of a man. And there she was, worth seeing. There was only that door to open. And no man in the world had yet seen this body of hers that was hidden by that door. It was not made to be hidden but, on the contrary, to be seen and to make its way in the world, that world to which belonged, after all, this Monsieur Jo.

The Sea Wall is a novel. In a situation like this, the genre must be remembered, because Suzanne is not a perfect narrator. As with the narrator in The Lover, who only "discovers" she was in love on the boat leaving Vietnam, she makes mistakes. She presents what she wants to believe, and not merely what is. One is tempted to believe her, but for the fact that, as previously mentioned, this is not the first time this offer has been made. This offer is only different in that it includes a quid pro quo. But more on this in a moment. There is one more vital sentence.

Immediately preceding this barrage of self-justifications, the reader is treated to a very telling sentence. Setting up her apparent conflict of interests, we are told, "Suzanne, inert, walled in, allowed herself to drift." If nothing else, the wall should draw the attention. That done, the verb "to drift" should make clear she is not talking about a shower wall. One in a shower does not "drift." Rather, one appears to be seeing a sea wall. Persons in the ocean drift.

Then, the reader may recall some words applied to Monsieur Jo, in the self-justification. He is subject to, indeed she claims he is now driven by, "the natural desire of a man." He is not merely an aspect of the world, but represents it, when she speaks of "the world to which belonged, after all, this Monsieur Jo." (She does not mention, but makes clear, that she does not feel herself to be part of this world. If she is meant to be, she is cut off by the door behind which she is hidden, behind which she "drifts.") As with Suzanne's mother, Monsieur Jo has become the sea, the forces of nature against which Suzanne tries to pretend she is subject to -- and separate from.

One asks oneself again: If Monsieur Jo is the sea, is Suzanne the sea wall? She can no more be in this scene than Joseph was in the last. For Joseph, the walls broke down. He was not the wall. She appeared to be, but this scene shows she is not. Walls do not drift. Walls are not hidden. The sea wall is something between she and Monsieur Jo. Whatever it is, it breaks down when the phonograph is brought back to the fore.

Suzanne is forced to remember the true reason why she was going to expose herself. Whether it was pride or power, it was pride in something that was getting her a phonograph, or the power to get a phonograph. She is not an exhibitionist; if her motive were mere pleasure at showing herself nude, she would have done so long before. She refuses to accept this, though, and refuses to accept complicity in this exchange. Suzanne tells us "that the world had prostituted her." Her efforts to protect herself from the pain of admitting her own lusts and prostitution, the denials that form her sea walls, merely cause more pain when they are torn down. She continues to acknowledge that he is a force of nature, calling him a "beast" and a "swine." The fact she echoes Joseph's words here is irrelevant. She is faced with the world of nature, the world of suffering, with which she can only deal if she denies the involvement of humanity in it. "He was not a person: he was only a misfortune." "Monsieur Jo," she tells us, was "another misfortune like the broken sea walls, the horse that died." What she will not accept is that he is not the broken sea walls, but the force that broke the sea walls, the sea walls in a state of being broken. He cannot have been the sea wall if she was hidden from him by it, drifting behind it. He is the will of nature, from which she tries to separate herself.

The sea wall was her own illusions, her own humanity, her attempts to separate herself from her own complicity in the prostitution, in nature, in the world of suffering.

There is one more scene in the novel of particular interest on this topic, a scene where she does succeed, however temporarily, in being saved from this world. This scene appears in the cinema, on pages 151-3.

The context of this scene has her, dressed like a prostitute, wandering the streets on the poor advice of Carmen. The respective motives of Suzanne and Carmen are unclear. As she walks through the streets, some by now familiar themes stand out. For one, the crowd, although never directly called a force of nature, although their opinion does "spread like wildfire," becomes increasingly dehumanized. The crowd begins as individuals, although walking generally in groups, and becomes "all these people" and "everyone" on page 150. The people eventually cease to be people, becoming "the entire city," and by page 151, where she had started by noticing the presence of individuals and distinctive groups, she now sees that Joseph and Monsieur Jo are not there, conspicuous in their absence.

Some implication of the force of nature personified by this mass of people is provided in the way she is described. She is "completely hemmed in," which echoes the wall but does not necessitate it. However, the crowd is also "splattering her and again splattering her from behind." The sea wall again makes its appearance, but in this passage, Suzanne's personal actions are played up at the expense of her usual attempted fatalism in the face of nature.

In tandem with the development of this dehumanization of the populace is the development of the theme of the artificial, as in the shower when she tried to separate herself from the force of nature represented by Monsieur Jo and shared by her own lusts. She comments on page 150 that there had never been anyone like her, "not on this stage." This perspective of herself as both observer and observed attempts to draw her out of the world while being in it, but this attempt is most fully developed in the theater itself, in the "chosen," "artificial and democratic night" of the cinema.

The structure of the narrative encourages the reader to identify Suzanne with the girl on the screen, and indeed she does so as well. This draws her increasingly from the masses of humanity, from whom she is taking cover in the theater. Humanity is placed "in the foreground, ... while she existed far off," because Suzanne is also separating from her concept of herself. The character on the screen is not someone with whom Suzanne empathizes; she is someone with whom Suzanne identifies. This identification allows Suzanne to alienate herself from herself, and become the observer of her own life. She becomes the spectator, free from the pain of existence while still able to enjoy the spectacle of it from a safe distance.

Water metaphors abound. Storms, ships, shadows in canals all show an identity of the figures and events on the screen with the sea-based forces of nature Suzanne builds her sea walls against. The images begin to have their humanity flicker, as they become bodies, heads, lips, jaws, poorly adapted physical organs, but not faces or people. The images become totally dehumanized, entirely forces of this watery nature and "suck like octopuses." But this dehumanization, and these images of water, are finally distinct from Suzanne. She is not threatened. She is not building her own artificial sea walls, or assaulted by forces of nature. She is detached, dead in herself as ego. She is able to watch sex in its entire brutal animality, without getting caught up in dreams, hopes, "the look in his eyes that he should have had." She is able to escape both the shame at seeing her sexuality as a commodity to be sold, and the responsibility of admitting to her own lusts. She is able to watch "the attempt," not just at sex but at happiness. She is included in the audience who would ignore the failure that comes with the reintroduction to real life of the characters in the adventure.

One wonders if the final word of this section confirms this death, "for at that point the screen lit up and assumed the whiteness of a shroud..." This shroud is not a symbol of death, or at least it is not one directly. This shroud is a symbol of resurrection, for with the rising of the light, Suzanne is plunged once more into the totally humanized horror of existence. She immediately goes out, in search of an individual. She cannot ignore her own failure. She has to return to the world of life, after the ego death afforded her in the theater, when she was observer unobserved, even by herself.

The Sea Wall does not have a happy ending. Suzanne continues to hope, to sit by the side of the road and wait, eternally disappointed, for the hunter of come. It does not matter if she sits by the side of the road by her mother's old house, or with Joseph in the city, or in Carmen's brothel. The fact is, she waits, she hopes, and she remains disappointed as each artificial construct she builds to separate herself from the pain of existence is pulled down.

The Sea Wall does, however, also afford the reader a scene of happiness, or rather of liberation. From the scene in the cinema, the reader sees that the sea wall need not be constantly with her, but that it can only be escaped when she ceases to live as an individual human being. The sea wall can be escaped, but only when Suzanne refuses to build it.