The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea and Like Water for Chocolate

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Separation between lovers, sisters, or close friends can instill vivid emotions from characters in a novel. Emotions are often evoked through the sense-impressions, thoughts and memories of principal characters. At the same time, departure develops characterization, placing emphasis on a medley of styles and voices employed by writers. Both The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea (hereafter referred to as Sailor) by Yukio Mishima, translated by John Nathan, and Like Water for Chocolate (hereafter referred to as Chocolate) by Laura Esquivel, translated by Carol Christensen and Thomas Christensen, reveal a stark contrast between characters’ departures. In Mishima’s novel, departing is an emotionally painful affair between Ryuji and Fusako; whereas through magic realism in Chocolate, departure acts as a release from a tyrannical household, taking readers to a more personalised understanding of characterisation and gender stereotypes central to the narratives. This essay will compare the importance and consequences of departures in both novels.

The dramatic and emotional effect of Ryuji’s parting from Fusako in Sailor insinuates the incompetence and hollowness of women in a post-war Japanese society. Although Fusako accepts that Ryuji’s departure is temporary, she is positively traumatized. Fusako is in desperate need of a masculine figure, as she muses, “tomorrow, the thick fingers twined in her own would plunge over the horizon” (Mishima, 1965, pg. 73), allowing us to acknowledge the full extent of Fusako’s fear of abandonment. Ryuji’s, “thick fingers” symbolises his protective and dominant nature, while the hyperbole, “plunge over the horizon” is suggestive of Ryuji forgetting her over the vastness of the sea. The use of col...

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...ama Elena in Chocolate, and departures influence women to display an honourable degree of strength – birthing, reanimating, and recovering – in the novel. The departure of characters in Sailor, however, enables Mishima to explore Japanese in a moral and cultural decline when Emperor Hirohito surrenders. The misery that washes over Fusako after Ryuji’s departure projects her character as an epitome of the artificiality and absurdity of life in post-WW2 Japan. Nevertheless, Fusako’s development as the powerful and oppressive breadwinner of the household establishes recognition of the invincibility of women. In the eyes of this analyst, I can conclude that in times of hardship, female characters are the ones advocating values of their own with utmost control, and to that extent, successfully approach and react to the event of departure with determination and empathy.

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