Desert By J. M. Le Clezio: Novel Analysis

The word “desert” is derived from the Latin words deserere and desierto, which mean “to forsake” and “thing abandoned”. It now also connotes lifelessness, emptiness, and extreme conditions. J. M. G. Le Clézio uses this word as the title of his novel, Desert (1980, translated from French by C. Dickson), which follows the stories of two young Berbers during and after French colonization in Morocco. In this novel, Le Clézio suggests that colonization is comparable to the desert in its power and potential to destroy lives, and that the only way to survive its harsh conditions is through deep connection to the desert as an aspect of nature. The challenges of death, hunger, anxiety, and exhaustion are repeated throughout Desert. Death is a part of life for the

For Nour and the Tuareg, this hunger is not only for food, but “for hope and for freedom, hunger for everything that is missing and that digs out a dizzy hollow in the ground”(36). The desert lacks sufficient provisions, causing a “gnawing hunger”(36) that is impossible to ignore. The people of the Project are also hungry. Le Clézio writes, “some days are longer than others, because you’re hungry. Lalla knows those days well, when there’s not a penny in the house”(147). Poverty causes hunger in the Panier neighborhood as well. Despite her pregnancy, Lalla does not eat enough and “she’s hungry; her body is weary from having worked in the hotel”(234). Lalla can sense the hunger of those around her too; “hunger for gentleness, for light, for songs, hunger for everything”(240). This hunger is similar to Nour’s hunger in the desert; a desire for something necessary that is lacking. The Project cannot provide for basic necessities and the Panier cannot provide gentleness, light, or song, which causes the hunger that is characteristic of the desert and now also present in communities formed as a result of French colonization, and its inverse, immigration to