Love Unlimited

"I was seeing a mature woman, a woman who has had her fill of everything, but
is still being asked from, demanded of, persuaded into giving . . . She
loves--oh, yes, but somewhere in her is a deadly weariness" (129).
Doris Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974)

Points for Reflection

D. Lessing's The Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), 108-223

1. Let’s reconsider an earlier question given our considerably expanded knowledge of this fictional world--why might Lessing refuse to explain the contours of the cataclysm that is reshaping society? Why choose not to explain the mechanism of the tragedy, the geographical specifics, etc.?
2. Does the Ryan family (including June), represent a superior way of life in this apocalyptic landscape? Do they model for others the manner in which one should approach existence if one wants to survive? [Tiffany L]
3. Do the social rules which govern relations between old and young appear to change dramatically in this apocalyptic world, or remain the same?
4. What of the social dynamic apparent in interactions between the sexes, between male and female? Have the assumptions been altered by circumstances or not?
5. Choose one of the narrator’s trips behind the living room wall in today's reading, and wrest a coherent interpretation of that visit’s significance from the evidence at hand.
6. Look back over the events that immediately precede/precipitate the narrator’s visits behind her living room wall, and form an argument about the relationship between “reality” and these surreal ventures.
7. Is the narrator insane? Is psychosis the best explanation for her seeing and hearing things behind her living room wall?
8. Is the teenage Emily more of a woman-like child, or a child-like woman? [Rusty H]
9. Does this novel have a feminist agenda? If so, of what sort? Is it preoccupied with the injustices done to women throughout time? Is it determined to put men in their place? Does it provide a balanced view of the position and roles of both men and women? (Please respond to whichever combination of these questions will help you generate a focused response.)
10. Does the novel ultimately provide an optimistic or pessimistic response to the question of whether humanity is able to survive in the face of a catastrophic, world-wide crisis?
11. Tie the narrator's final "personal" visions of Emily (183-86) to the experiences of Emily in the apocalyptic space inhabited by our characters. Form some clear interpretive connections between the two (in service to, as always, a coherent argument).
12. Does the latter part of the novel validate or counter the reader’s former assumptions about the nature of the unidentified apocalypse that is ravaging humanity?
13. Does the novel hold forth the possibility that the wild, Morlock-like children under Gerald’s care may one day be re-humanized, or are they utterly unredeemable?
14. In the novel’s final lines, the narrator finally encounters and identifies Someone, some “Presence” (99) formally only sensed by the narrator. Who is the likeliest candidate for this Presence? Who is it?
15. Does the novel’s title refer to the experiences of a single individual, or is the narrator’s experience intended to be read as representative of all humanity’s experience?

The Kiss (1895)
Edvard Munch

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu