Childhood in Yasunari Kawabata´s The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket and Alice Walker´s The Flowers

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One may ask how is it that two stories that are written by different authors from different cultures at different times can similarly resemble each other’s features? “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” written by Yasunari Kawabata and “The Flowers” written by Alice Walker are two stories written about childhood. Although both short stories include similarities in their themes of innocence and use of detail and symbolism when describing the emotions that correlate with growth, the stories contrast in their perspectives and settings.

When compared, both Walker’s and Kawabata’s short stories reflect related themes about childhood and innocence. In “The Flowers” the theme surrounds the subject of childhood by telling a story about a little girl named Myop. Myop, according to Walker, “She was ten, and nothing existed for her but her son”( __), this reflects Myop’s young age and innocence. The theme in Kawabata’s story resembles similar aspects of childhood and innocence. In “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” Kawabata expresses the theme of his story through narrating his observations of children chasing insects with beautiful lanterns. Kawabata strongly insinuates a theme of childhood and innocence by comparing “The bobbing lanterns, the coming together of children on this lonely slope” to a “scene from a fairy tale”(1)

Both Walker and Kawabata include vivid details and frequently use symbolic literacy when referring to the emotions that correlate with the end of childhood and innocence in their stories. In “The Flowers”, Walker uses symbolism to express the end of Myop’s innocent childhood. In Walker’s story after Myop steps on a skeleton, Myop lays down the flowers that she had been collecting on her explorative nature ...

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...lings only through what he observed while on the other hand, by using an objective perspective, Walker is able to describe Myop’s feelings without any personal bias. Walker writes, “She has explored the woods behind the house many times”(1), this illustrates the narrator knows more about the character than what is being observed in the present.
While both “The Grasshopper and The Bell Cricket” by Yasunari Kawabata and “The Flowers” by Alice Walker include similar themes about childhood, one could contend that these stories are distinct from one another. Undeniably, both authors correlate childhood with innocence and the two authors use literary symbolism when describing their attitudes toward the imminent end of innocence. However, the stories contrast significantly by their setting, perspectives, and attitudes towards the end of innocence.

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