Radical Liberation

At first with the discussion of the class that Martine was crazy, I didnt agree with what was said.  Then after finishing the novel, I see where these inferences where coming from.  The act of committing suicide can definitely be tied to insanity but we must try to look deeper into the reasons behind this tragedy.  The rape is definitely the cause of all of the trauma that Martine went through because her life was never the same after that.  She was often trying to escape her past memories by leaving the area that she grew up in and where the incident took place but it would always haunt her in the form of nightmares.  The fact that she couldn't comfortably have sexual relations with her boyfriend Marc also shows evidence of being deeply scarred by the incident.  Other forms of trauma are the voices that she hears when she discovers that she is pregnant with another child.  She tries to cope with this stress by escaping physically and also mentally by suppressing it by not showing it through her exterior interactions with others such as Joseph, Sophie's husband.  All of these forms of dealing with the stress is not enough because after so many years, it still resonates in the same intensity within her.  So by taking her life, she finds the most radical type of liberation that a person could find.  But i just wanted to justify that Martine was not just crazy.  I think she was severely emotionally damaged by the incident.