A Romantic Love Story Of 'The Sound Of Waves'

Bryce Elder

Jody Carter

English 1 PAP

17 May 2014

The Sound of Waves

The Sound of Waves is a romantic love story that starts slow, picks up steam, and ends as an enjoyable story. The novel starts by showing the reader the way of life around Uta-Jima, which is an island that the novel takes place in. Shinji, who is the main character and the protagonist, is an 18-year-old boy who fishes for a living.

Everyday the fisherman set out to sea to fish, and one day word got out that the island’s richest man was bringing his daughter back to the island. His daughter’s name is Hatsue, and she is supposed to be a beautiful girl. After coming in from fishing one day, Shinji’s mother wanted him to go up to the mountain and get firewood, that she had stacked for the days to come. During Shinji’s walk to the top of the mountain he thought about Hatsue the whole way. When he got to the top of the mountain he picked up the wood, and realized that there was a girl sitting on the other side of the pile of wood. It was Hatsue; Shinji was in shock that he was the first fisherman to see Hatsue. They were attracted to each other, and so they decided walk down the mountain to the beach and get to know each other.

After this meeting between the two ended, life went back to normal. Hatsue didn’t do a whole lot during the day, and Shinji fished from sun up to sun down. The two hadn’t seen much of each other, but one day storms rolled in, and Shinji came in from fishing early. His mother needed him to go get more wood from the top of the mountain again, but this time Shinji did not want to go up there because of the storms. He finally made it to the top of the mountain and went into the building that keeps the firewood dry. It was so dark in the buil...

... middle of paper ...

...ture in their mind of what the island of Uta-Jima looked like after winter. Mishima actually describes the island more than he did many of his characters.

Throughout the novel I enjoyed how Yukio Mishima mixed in Japanese history, traditions, and rituals into this love story. Not only did I enjoy the story, I learned some traditions behind the Japanese culture that I didn’t know. I didn’t like how Mishima allowed the narrator tell the story the whole time. I wished he would have used more character quotes and character conversations, so the reader could tell how the characters felt directly.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who likes a romantic love story, or anybody who likes to see people succeed after going through some tough times and overcoming obstacles that they have faced. The novel is well written, fairly easy to read, and overall a great book.