The Woman in the Dunes

The lure of finding a new species of beetles pulls the man to the seaside village, but aside from providing the premise for the man’s journey, insects of all types serve both as a motif and symbol throughout the novel. The man describes becoming interested in beetles after noticing the unusual flight pattern of one near his house. He learned that its flight would draw potential prey away from their nests. Once he realizes he’s trapped in the dunes, he feels that he is the prey, “lured by the beetle into a desert from which there [is] no escape—like some famished mouse” (50). He attributes his imprisonment to his own shortsightedness—focusing on limited details rather than the wider context—a practice he believes is intrinsic to the work of an entomologist who “must concentrate his whole attention within a radius of about three yards around his feet” (15).

Throughout the novel, the man draws on his knowledge of insects to make sense of his circumstances and the people around him. He often compares the woman to an insect—further evidence of his myopia, limiting her to a series of perceived individual elements rather than viewing her as a whole, fully realized person. His initial sense of her intent to seduce him to keep him trapped recalls his earlier appreciation of a beetle with “the elegant Japanese name of ‘letter-bearer’ and present graceful features [that] actually [has] sharp jaws […] ferocious and cannibalistic by nature” (12). He views her desire to keep shoveling the sand as “quite like the behavior of the beetle” (38) and observes that her appearance when wearing a plastic cap at dinner to keep sand out of her food makes her look “like some kind of insect” (63). He bases these comparisons on the simple, ordered existence of insects who live without having or needing a purpose beyond survival.

The man employs insect-like comparisons for himself as well in order to navigate his confinement, revealing his own insecurities in the process. In his imagined interview for the book he would write about the experience, the interviewer points out that prior to his entrapment in the sand, he was just a teacher, not a writer, commenting, “It really was the experience that made you. A common earthworm won’t attain full growth if it’s not stimulated” (111), an unflattering comparison that reflects his disdain and perceived insignificance of his career and accomplishments. When the man says of the woman’s appeal that “her charms [are] like some meat-eating plant, purposely equipped with the smell of sweet honey” (91), he is once again putting himself in the position of an insect-as-victim. In both cases, the comparisons are dehumanizing.

As the man descends further into existential dread, he returns to the behavior of insects to provide him with understanding. He sees a spider attracted to the lamplight, a behavior usually only associated with flying insects. When he sees a moth flit around the lamp, though, he guesses that the spider knows to watch for its prey there. He also puzzles over how moths are drawn to human-created light and not moonlight. In both cases, the creatures have learned new behavior in order to survive. He muses, “This crazy, blind beating of wings caused by man-made light…this irrational connection between spiders, moths, and light. If a law appeared without reason, like this, what could one believe in?” (206). The laws of nature, of the man’s world, are changing, and the man believes he must adapt just as these creatures have adapted.