The Invention of Morel

The Invention of Morel –


As I started out reading The Invention of Morel I started to really like the main character and thought it was sweet that he fell in love with Faustine. I thought it was cute that he made a garden for her and that he would sit and watch the sunset with her and how he loved her even though she ignored him. I read the first half of the book thinking that this man was cute trying to find ways to make the woman fall in love with him. I also found his jealousy of Morel cute because it saddened him when Morel was with Faustine. While discussing the book in class we briefly mentioned how he was clearly a stalker of Faustine. I started looking at him in a different way, and the actions he was portraying in a different way. I realized how stalker-like he really was and how it even got worse through the ending. In the beginning he was just watching her constantly and following her and trying to be around her. He soon starts to sit and talk with her. He would get angry if she was with Morel and he wishes it were himself. Before he discovers if they are actually real or not he debates whether he should abduct her, go with her on the boat, or die of misery. He has either fallen so deeply in love that he is not thinking clearly, or he is just insane. As you are being reviled the secret you start to realize how obsessed the convict has become of Faustine. He finds out that it is just an image he is seeing of a woman, and that she is already dead, yet he still fascinates over her. He wants to get off this island to find her and tell her he loves her in hopes that she wont be creeped out. He soon realizes that she isn’t alive anymore and that he has no hopes of getting off the island to find her, yet he still doesn’t give up. At the end he even adds himself into the whole creation of these people to make it look as if him and Faustine were actually in love with each other. He hopes that if anyone were to find them there that they would think they were passionate lovers. His obsession doesn’t stop there either. At the end he says, “My soul has not yet passed to the image; if it had, I would have died, I (perhaps) would no longer see Faustine, and would be with her in a vision that no one can ever destroy.” (Casares103) This obsession has gone so far that he dreams that when he dies he will live happily with Faustine and no one can stand in the way of that. Now I have finished the book and have looked closely at the “relationship” or lack thereof between the main character and Faustine. I would have never labeled him as in love with Faustine, just that he has a fascination with her. How can you really be in love with someone if you have never had an actual conversation with them, and you know absolutely nothing about them besides what they did everyday for a week of their life, and what they look like. It is also amazing to me that he would still fantasize about Faustine and have hope of love with her even after he realizes that she is no longer living, and the image he is seeing of her is like a picture on TV. He was so “in love” with her that he was planning on abducting her and still hopeful that she would return his love. To me he sounds crazy and I don’t think a way to make someone love you would be to stalk them crazily and then take them by force. I think that maybe he had such high hopes of a real life again and real love that he went crazy trying to get Faustine to fall in love with him. Also, even after he realized she was not actually there he didn’t want to take away that hope and chance of love so he did whatever he could to make it real. He may have been crazy, or he may have just had so much hope that he lost common sense.


Another part that I found very interesting, and kind of confusing was the fact that the convict kept thinking that the people were out to get him and kill him. Even as Morel was reveling they were not real he thought that they were going to search for him and kill him. I don’t know if it was because he was a convict or if he knew that he was stalking Faustine that he thought they were going to come after him. I realize that he kept thinking that maybe it was all a trap, but nothing seemed to give him that big of a clue that they were. They seemed like innocent, harmless bystanders and none of them seemed violent or like they saw him. Also if he were really afraid of them you would think he would have never presented himself to Faustine. I wasn’t too sure about why he was so afraid of them finding him.