Why Write a Love Story?

The act of getting yourself out into the world is such an exhilarating experience that it brings a high. Even if you are just presenting in front of the class you feel this shaking, a fear of the unknown reactions yet an excitement that your words will impact someone with a feeling. Pouring yourself out onto the reader/listener is an action that you have to ponder over and proceed with slowly, carefully. These are your words; you want your audience to understand exactly what you are going through. This is why Annie Ernaux in "Simple Passion" proceeds with such delicacy, talking about writing in the midst of this passionate love affair. This allows the reader to get a sense of not just the actions going into the story but also the emotions and careful thoughts that we undergo when making life choices. "Simple Passions" explains Ernaux's feelings by both talking about her feelings in the process of the love affair and also by having another dialog about her writing through the book.

Throughout her progress in writing "Simple Passions" Ernaux stops, practically stumbling into an almost apologetic excuse for her catharsis. This periodic stopping not only keeps the reader on their toes but also gives them a moment to analyze her emotions in a non-passionate form. This way any reader, even a sociopath can catch what she is really hinting at in her writing. This is especially prevalent in a particular stop when she explains her writing saying, "Quite often I felt I was living out this passion in the same way I would have written a book, the same determination to get every single scene right, the same minute attention to detail." (Ernaux, 20). In this sentence she explains not only what she is feeling in this passion, but also why she is writing this book in a halting manner. I took from this sentence that she was saying, "bear with me, I'm just trying to get everything exactly right".

Another key to her dialog about writing was her thoughts about individuality. Our perception of individuality is so obscure. Most of us want to stand out and not be a part of the crowd but how do we do that? There are over 7 billion people on this Earth and yet are so sure in our belief that no one else has experienced the same emotions. How many times has a poor psychiatrist probably heard the worlds, "no one understands me"? This obscure perception of individuality continually occurs during Ernaux's writing. She bounces between talking about how different and intense her love affair was to her talking about the women who expressing similar passions and watching movies where she could place herself as one of the characters. She seems to crave this individuality by keeping the secret of her love affair to herself hiding it from the world. Yet when she talks to these passionate women with their desires, she feels a hatred for them and the thought that her passion could be so dull as to be common. "When I continually responded to the other person by saying 'me too, it's the same for me, I did that too.' suddenly seemed futile, removed from the reality of my own passion. Rather, something was lost in these outbursts" (Ernaux, 14). This story is of her having a large outburst which is in its own way telling the audience that they are no different, they can have their passion but it is only the same as everyone else’s. By writing this love story she is telling the world that they are no different. We attempt to maintain our individuality while trying to find a good book with characters that we can relate to.