Analysis Of Spirited Away By Kazuo Ishiguro's Coming Of Age

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Coming of age is known as a process full of hope and opportunity but this process is confronting in terms of finding a place or purpose in society. An individual cannot come of age without challenges and difficult decisions that may have significant consequences. People search incessantly for meaning and purpose in their lives. The novel “Never Let Me Go” by Kazuo Ishiguro a dystopian society that focuses on the search for identity and meaning through curiosity ad self-expression and “Spirited Away” by Hayao Miyazaki that follows Chihiro and her liminal journey through the realm of spirits. Both texts explore the complex challenges and perspectives that individuals meet when they come of age.

“Never Let Me Go” is a gripping portrayal of humans …show more content…

The semantic chain of “shriek”, “shudder”,” chilly”,” froze”,” supress” of how they were catalysed by Madame’s reaction positions confrontation that they should be feared, and destroys the girls’ childhood innocence. Moreover, the simile “it’s like walking past a mirror” when Kathy is realising what Madame thinks of her changes and re-evaluates her self-perception. However, even with the darkened awareness of the world Ishiguro deliberately aggravates the reader by the passivity characterisations he creates that conform to the society and realisation of the greater truth. The high modality language “After all it’s what we’re supposed to be doing isn’t it” where Ruth is conforming to the task that society has set for her and has not questioned it. Likewise, the very last line of the novel “drive off to wherever I was supposed to be.” Further reflects Kathy submitting to her fate and display no sign of …show more content…

The film explores the notion of change and challenge and one of the things that gives this film its unique feel and tone is its sense of liminality, used to describe an in-between or transitional state, specifically the transitional phase of a rite of passage which an individual lacks a defined social status. The lack of social identity is one of the reasons teen angst and anxiety is universal. “Spritied Away” is set in multiple levels of liminal spaces, the whole film takes place during a journey taking Chihiro from her old house and life to her new one. In addition, it takes place in a bathhouse bridging the real world and the spiritual world and on top of there a variety of crucial scenes that are set in literal transitional spaces like elevators, staircases, bridges, tunnels, cars, and trains. All these liminalities are reflections of Chihiro, on the cusp of the process of coming of age. Individuals have to go through liminal phases where we temporary lack a sense of self to grow, Chihiro in the beginning of the film was self-absorbed, passive and infantile. By purging her of her former identity and pushing her forward into a liminal state, Miyazaki helps her to confront the fear of emptiness that makes her so passive and helpless to begin with resembling Kathy in “Never Let Me Go”, only then she recognises she is not empty or helpless. In contrast to Kathy,

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