The Grasshopper And The Bell Cricket By Yasunari Kawabata

1202 Words3 Pages

In modern fiction, one can conduct his or her story by writing it in a simply descriptive way as if they were merely telling a story, or on the other hand, they could make their story one that hits deeper than just entertainment for the audience. The story “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket”, written by Yasunari Kawabata, is a children’s fiction story that is written in a third person narrative point of view. The author, who sets himself as the narrator, is describing what he sees as he stumbles upon a group of young, neighborhood kids as they frolic along the bank of a stream near dusk time. He points out the extreme care that the children take in creating their lanterns, and he sees the passion and enthusiasm they have while apparently searching for bugs along the bank and in the bushes. As the story goes on, the author moves from a tone of describing and being literal, to a more serious tone that causes some serious thought. He seems to be attempting to convince the audience of something emotional. This emotion he is conveying seems to be conveying is pulled from amongst the simplest things. How does he gather these thoughts from such occurrences? How do we as the audience pick up on his subtle hints of emotion?
The setting of this story obviously takes place on the campus of a school as the narrator is walking around the campus. The time period is unclear to the audience because there is no illustration of when this story might have taken place or been written in the writing itself. However, based on the names of the children that he states at the end of the story, we are able to conclude that this story was written and takes place in an Asian country, most likely Japan. As the narrator is walking throughout the play area...

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...them directly, that he believes will help them as they move on in life. As he starts off his story, attempting to describe what he sees in front of him to the audience, it quickly turns into a personal attraction to the lives of these kids that causes him to ramble on with higher intentions, that in reality, will never be reached. As an audience, we are able to pick up on his hints of emotion by the way that he uses such detail in his description of the scene. He makes his feelings and thoughts well known, and we can sense the emotion that he begins to attach to these young, random children. Kawabata chooses to make his story a mix of descriptive writing and meaningful writing. He wants the story to be fun and in a story-telling manor. However, he also attempts to add some depth into the story by adding emotion, feelings, advice, and a sensitive tone to his story.

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