Compare and Contrast Between The Lover and The Book of Salt

Yihe Shen
Prof. Diane
T&C
March 12nd 2020
Compare and Contrast Between The Lover and The Book of Salt
The Lover is a book that was written by Marguerite Duras in 2011 and was translated from French. This book has almost similar lessons with Monique Truong's The Book of Salt (2004). This piece of work will get deep into the two books and compare and contrast how the themes of colonial servitude and indentured labor are brought out. My concentration will be on Do, the maid in The Lover, and Binh, who is the main character in The Book of Salt. Binh shares the same fate with Do in some instance while totally contrasting on other cases.
The stories in the two books revolve around colonial time when there were forced labors. Most characters are forced to cope up with the situation that they do not like while others decide to flee. Binh flees his current position but finds himself in a situation that is no better than the previous. This contrasts to Do who chooses to stick to her brutal employer. The narrator, who happens to be a family member to Do's boss, tells us how her mother used to mistreat Do who decided to stay despite all the tough times she was facing.
Binh is a gay cook who hails from Vietnam but has been forced to flee to French after his father disowned him because of his sexuality. It coincidentally happens that French colonized Vietnam and Binh has to face discrimination that comes with colonization. Flashback to when he was disowned, he did not want to go to French. He says I needed a ship that would go out to the sea because there the water is deep, more profound than the hemmed-in rivers that I could easily reach by foot. I wanted the deepest water because I wanted to slip into it and allow the moon's reflection to swallow me whole. 'I never meant to go this far', I said to Bafio. What I meant was that when I boarded the Niobe I had no intention of reaching the shores (Truong 250). This shows that he did not want a happy life since his father did not support him for the happiness he chose. This is neocolonialism. Being gay is Binh's decision and his father disowning him means he wanted his son to behave precisely as he wished to or else face the consequences, Binh chose the latter. On the other hand, Do moved out of her home with the main aim of developing herself economically, as the narrator alludes in the book. This makes Binh very different from Do as far as they are moving away from native homes.
In The Lover, Do is very loyal. She works for a foreigner who despite mistreating her, she still remains loyal. The narrator says "she is the housekeeper who will never leave my mother even when she goes back to France, even when my elder brother tries to rape her…. even when her wages stop being paid" (Duras 20). This shows a very loyal personality. This loyalty comes with the fact that she has no better place to run to. The fact that she was brought up in a religious background keeps hers strong too. This kind of loyalty is what Binh lacks. He does not remain loyal in the face discriminations. In fact, he is already looking for a better job, although her job situation is better than Do's. He has not missed his salary, unlike Do whom the narrator tells us that she sometimes misses being paid her salary.
Do and Binh have a choice of choosing what is best for their lives. However, Do resolves to hold on to her toxic employer. She sticks by her employer's side even when she fails to pay her wages. Her employer's son sometimes rapes her but she does not give up. This shows how far colonialism has gone into bringing discrimination. She cannot do anything because she has the colonialism mentality that the colonizers are better than her. This is similar to Binh's case to some extent. Binh has works in an environment that he does not enjoy but has to work. He does job which is of lesser status showing neocolonialism. The two are, therefore, trapped in colonial minds despite living in the modern world.
Binh, on the other hand, decides to break free. He opts to leave his home country in search of freedom. It is, however, evident that he just wanted to be away from home because of being mistreated in line with his skin color. These discriminations make Binh quit his job and go to many interviews in search of jobs. This contrasts to Do who on the other hand, decides not to take risks and maintain her career.
The two books share another fundamental similarity in that indentured labor is for economic development. Do resorts to being a maid so that she ...