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Eastern vs western literature
Literature and different cultures
The sailor who fell from grace with the sea symbolism
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Yukio Mishima’s novel The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea is a powerful allegorical novel written in Japan after World War II. It is deeply steeped in Japanese culture, and much of its deeper meaning can be lost to the western audience. One such example is the use of Summer and Winter as the titles for the two parts of the novel. In Japan, kigo and kidai are words and concepts that are traditionally associated with the different seasons. These range from obvious, such as the connection between summer and heat, to obscure, such as autumn and remembrance of the dead. Mishima wrote waka, a form of classical Japanese poetry from a young age and would have been familiar with these connections (“Yukio Mishima - Biography”). Within the novel, Ryuji experiences changes in his characterization, from a honor-bound sailor looking for a good death to a man trying to feel like he belongs with his new lover, to the worst thing of all (in the mind of Noboru), a father. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea’s division into summer and winter informs Ryuji’s shift in characterization through reference to traditional Japanese seasonal concepts; furthermore, this adds additional allegorical commentary on the cultural changes within Japan.
Ryuji, at the beginning of the novel, is considered “unsociable and eccentric” by his crewmates (15). He views himself as a “heroic figure against the brink of man’s world” convinced that “there must be a special destiny in store for [him]” (17). Ryuji reduces Fusako to a sexual companion, losing his interest in her when she is no longer “embrac[ing] him” but instead pouring coffee, spending his thoughts “calculating how far he might be able to go” (22). He looks at men that “read letters [...] and l...
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...niscing about the life style that he had held just the previous summer and forsook for comfort, much as the Japanese did in approaching westernization. Mishima uses the traditional meaning of seasons and their cyclical nature in parallel with Ryuji's behavior and passion for his goals to enhance the allegorical meaning; as seasons repeat, Japan in his mind must regain the glory of its summer.
Works Cited
"Japanese Haiku Topical Dictionary" Japanese Text Initiative. University of Virginia Library
Electronic Text Center, n.d. Web. 10 Apr. 2014. .
Mishima, Yukio. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. New York: Vintage International, 1994. Print.
"Yukio Mishima - Biography." EGS Library. The European Graduate School, 2012. Web.
09 Apr. 2014. .
In Sandra Benitez’s novel, A Place Where the Sea Remembers, we get to know the lives and struggles of the residents of a small town in Mexico. Each character faces a conflict that affects the course of his or her life. The conflict I chose was the conflict that Marta was with her child and how her anger about the child made her do things she wished she could take back. It all starts with Marta and her sister. Marta is pregnant and thinks she can't take care of the kid so she wants an abortion. Then once Choyo Marta’s sister husband found out he insisted to take the kid once he is born. So then Marta decided to take care of the baby until it was born but then after time went by the husband of Choyo said that he wouldn't be able to take the kid because he was already going to have a child with Choyo. Once Marta was told this she let her anger get the best of her which then lead her to
The author shows the reader the sea just as the sailor does as death, but more than death
In “What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why?” Edna St. Vincent Millay says that “the summer sang in me” meaning that she was once as bright and lively as the warm summer months. In the winter everyone wants to bundle up and be lazy, but when summer comes along the sunshine tends to take away the limits that the cold once had on us. She uses the metaphor of summer to express the freedom she once felt in her youth, and the winter in contrast to the dull meaningless life she has now. There are many poets that feel a connection with the changing of seasons. In “Odes to the West Wind” Percy Bysshe Shelley describes his hopes and his expectations for the seasons to inspire the world.
Royall, Tyler. ""I Am I": Genji and Murasaki." Monumenta Nipponica 54.4 (1999): 437, 475-476. JSTOR. Web. 26 Feb. 2011.
Herman Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor is a critically acclaimed novella set around the shores of England in the last decade of the Eighteenth Century. The plot revolved around a young Sailor, Billy Budd, who was extracted from the ship he was originally on, The Rights of Man, and was oppressed to a British naval warship named the H.M.S. Billopotent. There were numerous allusions used throughout the novella that enhanced the meaning of this great work. The allusions used pertain towards myths, the Bible, History, and other works of literature. All of them together illuminate the true meaning of the entire novella.
Over the course of Japanese history, arguably, no artist is more famous for their works than Katsushika Hokusai. During his 88 years of life, he produced over 30,000 pieces of artwork, and heavily influenced Western styles of art. His most famous piece was created around 1831, a Japanese styled piece titled, The Great Wave off Kanagawa. This piece has stood as a defining piece of artwork in the Japanese culture for over 180 years, analyzed by students and authors for the interpretations filling the paper. The relationship between Hokusai’s painting has directly affected the Western point of view of Japanese style. The English author, Herbert Read’s novel interprets the painting distinctly differently from a Japanese point, American poet,
“They were leagues from home - indeed, without a home - and in Ngonyama's eyes I saw a displacement, an emptiness like maybe all of his brethren as he once knew them were dead. To wit, I saw myself. A man remade by virtue of his contact with the crew. My reflection in his eyes, when I looked up, gave back my flat image as phantasmic, the flapping sails and sea behind me drained of their density like figures in a dream. Stupidly, I had seen their lives and culture as timeless product, as a finished thing, pure essence or Parmenidean meaning I envied and wanted to embrace, when the truth was that they were process and Heraclitean change, like any men, not fixed but evolving and as vulnerable to metamorphosis as the body of the boy we'd thrown overboard. (124)”
It is important to consider the meaning of home when analyzing The Seafarer. The narrator of this poem seems to feel a sense of belonging while traveling the sea despite the fact that he is obviously disillusioned with its hardships .The main character undergoes a transformation in what he considers home and this dramatically affects his life and lifestyle. Towards the end of The Seafarer the poet forces us to consider our mortality, and seems to push the notion that life is just a journey and that we will not truly be at home until we are with God.
Mishima, Yukio. The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea. New York: Knopf, 1965. Print.
Shirane Haruo. et al. Early Modern Japanese Literature: An Anthology 1600-1900. New York: Colombia University Press, 2002. Print.
master at his art and he keeps practicing it in order to better himself. The
Obtaining a goal can bring success to one’s outer “world” and to one’s inner spirit, the mind and soul. An achievement may bring recognition and respect from surrounding peers. It can also encourage one’s self esteem as well as give them more courage. In Ernest Hemmingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, Santiago receives outer, material formed success by earning the respect of his fellow peers and by attaining more physical strength. He also receives inner, spiritual formed success by gaining more self esteem.
The fear of being sent, either by force or self enforced, into exile was a common fear of the Anglo-Saxon society. This exile could be interpreted both as an exile on Earth and exile from Heaven to Earth. To be exiled means to be utterly alone with only thoughts to accompany a person. The possibility of exile was terrifying to the Anglo-Saxon people because they were so dependant on the village or town they lived in along with the people in it. A warrior would live to serve his lord in battles. Without a lord or community, there was nowhere to go and nothing to do. As the Christian religion crept into Anglo-Saxon culture, religious metaphors also began to show in the ancient text. The exile these people feared could also be interpreted as being banished from heaven to live on earth. From this interpretation, it was thought that if one lived a good life, he or she would be reunited with God eventually.
Yukio Mishima’s Temple of the Golden Pavilion represents the hardships, evil, and rebirth throughout the timeline of the war and after, creating the individual experience and perspective of a young man fighting his own personal, internal wars. This is highlighted through first person accounts of brutal acts of military officials and the contrast of the beauty in
Mishima, Yukio. (Translated by John Nathan) The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, New York, Vintage International, 1993.