"All my energy and mind were devoted to that new end of winning the person. All my satisfactions lay in that direction; and the new kind of fulfillment, continuously new" (Naipaul, 175).
The passage wherein Salim recounts his first sexual encounter with Yvette is particularly striking as it is the first time we see the narrator break away from his usual, matter-of-fact, slightly indifferent outlook. The ardor with which Salim describes the experience I believe speaks to the idea that Salim as a moralist, particularly a sexual moralist, in search of purity. The feelings of excitement he once felt toward bought-sex turned into an attitude of boredom and eventual self-loathing. Salim undergoes a nearly euphoric experience with Yvette, who little is mentioned of during the act. Here his ennui is utterly reversed and the need to dominate Yvette overwhelms him to the point of becoming violent- a means of liberating him from the repression and self-hatred he had felt thus far.
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