View a FREE sample

1. Briefly describe the lover's sense of engulfment in the section "I am engulfed, I succumb..."/To Be Engulfed.

The amorous subject, whether in a state of misery or joy, feels as if he is annihilated or will disappear. This is an intermediate state, free from the opposition between life and death and a "death liberated from dying."

2. In The Absent One/Absence, how does the lover interpret the other's absence?

It is always the other who leaves and the lover who remains behind waiting. Thus the lover sees absence as a kind of abandonment by the other. The lover believes that he is loved less than he himself loves.

3. How does the mother-child relationship relate to the lover's feelings about the other's absence?

The lover's sense of abandonment brings up childhood feelings about the mother's absence-her long days at work leaving the child alone, waiting. The child plays with a spool, throwing it away, and retrieving it to mimic the mother's leaving and returning so as to delay her possible death. The lover does the same through language.

(read all 60 Short Essay Questions and Answers)

This section contains 3,691 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample