Abstract
Representations of the hostile, uninhabitable, and threatening land haunt all of the novels of Marguerite Duras' Indochina cycle. The literal and symbolic importance of natural disasters is already noticeable in The Sea Wall (Un barrage contre le Pacifique), the first novel of the cycle. This article argues that the diegetic space in The Sea Wall is inscribed on a land where various forces intertwine to create a turbulent and uninhabitable territory, where living is nothing but surviving. The protagonists adopt various mechanisms in order to leave their trace in a space that rejects them systematically and that is invaded from all directions: on a horizontal axis by the waves of the Pacific, and on a vertical axis by laws of the colonial cadaster. Having no other capital to invest in the economy of the space (dominated by monetary exchange), the deprived small settlers resort to a last pledge that would guarantee their survival: their bodies, which merge with the space they claim and who are simultaneously colonizers and colonized.
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