Symbolism: The Most Common Themes In East Asian Poetry

883 Words2 Pages

When people hear of the countries China or Japan they think of technology or all the products America gets from China and Japan. People don’t realize the connections through literature and writing from Eastern Asia. Many poems and short stories were written in the nineteen hundreds. The musical based poems had a clear structure which was parallelism. The main themes in the poems and short stories were also mainly in the other writings. Many of the themes included nature, true feelings,and hardship.

The main theme nature was shown through these stories: “Missing You,” “Bits of Reminiscence,” “Gifts,” and “Fairy Tales” are poems by Shu Ting. Shu Ting uses nature to symbolize the author's feelings. In “Gifts” nature was used to show the reader …show more content…

True feelings can range from feeling useless without your partner, to feelings on your culture, or feelings for what you believe in. The narrator in the poem “Missing You” by Ting is feeling useless and depressed without their partner. “A multi-colored chart without a boundary; An equation on the chalkboard, with no solution; A one-stringed lyre that tells the beads of rain; A pair of useless oars the never cross the water.”(Ting 167) In the short story “The Pearl” by Yukio Mishima the way the women act about the lost pearl symbolizes Japanese culture and how women have to act. The women didn’t tell any of the other women because she felt like she wouldn’t fit in and hurt someone's feelings. The women all feel that if they don't act or fit in the same then they will let down their culture. “Oh, how can I get you to understand my feelings? I only wanted to avoid hurting anyone.”(Mishima 142) The poem “Fairy Tales” by Shu Ting is about people fighting for what they believe in. When standing up for beliefs, some feel happy about it and are able to look past all the bad things that happen. “ You gazed past ailing trees, Past crumbling walls and rusty railing.”(Ting 169) While some feel happy others feel sad. “In pine trees after rain, Ten thousand tiny suns, a mulberry branch bent over water like a fishing-rod, A cloud tangled in the tail of a kite.”(Ting 170) True feelings can reveal a lot

More about Symbolism: The Most Common Themes In East Asian Poetry

Open Document