Post by Kyra Benjamin on Sept 4, 2015 3:56:12 GMT
This story wasn’t as…wild as the Third Night, but the plot held me just as much and had a greater twist in my opinion. I truly thought most of the family including Anju would be reunited at the end since she spoke so surely. The story starts off quite mundanely and continues that way until about near the end when the children have their nightmare and Anju takes on a change. From there the story dips into what feels like magical realism as there seems to be some divine intervention going on in the form of the image of Jizo Anju kept and passed to Zushio. Not all stories need to have a moral or lesson learned, but from this a message of perseverance and things will somehow work out/a deity will save you.
There are terms I wonder about in terms of this story’s translation, for instance the names Sansho gave Anju and Zushio; in the Japanese text did he call them ファーン and リリー or was it the Japanese names for the plants and is there any significance to this?
Additionally, the plot point of slavery in this story is interesting as it, at least as it is shown here, is nothing like what we know in Western slavery in terms of violence and the like. But a lot of common elements with it and Western novels about slavery are shared: being tricked into capture, separation and possible reuniting of family, branding, escape from bondage and being aided by kind strangers, and finally somewhat regaining previous life with some loss.
There are terms I wonder about in terms of this story’s translation, for instance the names Sansho gave Anju and Zushio; in the Japanese text did he call them ファーン and リリー or was it the Japanese names for the plants and is there any significance to this?
Additionally, the plot point of slavery in this story is interesting as it, at least as it is shown here, is nothing like what we know in Western slavery in terms of violence and the like. But a lot of common elements with it and Western novels about slavery are shared: being tricked into capture, separation and possible reuniting of family, branding, escape from bondage and being aided by kind strangers, and finally somewhat regaining previous life with some loss.