Dadie's The Hunter and the Boa

Originally I wasn't going to post about today's reading, I was saving that for Achebe's Things Fall Apart since it seemed like what a lot of other people were doing as well, but I just HAD to rant about the way Dadie ended his story...well, it was more like a parable than a story, kind of an Aesop's fable slant. If there's one thing I hate hate hate when I read it's cliffhangers (affectionately known as cliffies), the kind that makes you mull over it for hours on end thinking about what the character would have done. In The Hunter and the Boa, a poor hunter sets traps along the river every day with no results. Then, one of his traps catches a boa but the boa promises to make him a very rich man if he would let it go. The hunter lets the boa go and it gives him two gourds, telling him to throw one of them to the ground as soon as he gets home and keep the other one so he can understand the languages of everyone who live on earth. After the hunter followed the boa's instructions, he lived happily and was able to understand the dogs when they talk. By listening to what the dogs say, he was able to profit from various natural disasters and became very rich.

 Ten years later, the dogs were talking and they said the hunter will die if he doesn't return the second gourd to the boa, thus forfeiting the ability to understand the language of everyone on earth. Furthermore, he will lose all the riches and be even poorer than before but he will have his life. The hunter is then put into a torturous position and tries to decide among the lesser evil all the while being tormented by the happy sounds of his family and the dogs teases him, aware that the hunter can understand animal speak, and they repeat, "What's wrong with your master? Does he know that he's going to die?" 

The fable ends with an open ended question, asking the reader what they would do if the tables were turned.  I have to wonder if anyone would really be able to choose between two equally important decisions. 

Child's Play

While reading the biography of Higuchi Ichiyo alongside to her short fiction Child's Play, I found her life span to be unbelievably short and limited by gender expectations of 19th century Japan. Because she was female, society prevented her from receiving a well rounded westernized education like most middle class male writers. Ichiyo, who was forced to withdraw from grade school at the urging of her mother who argued that it was impractical for a girl to continue with schooling, was enrolled in a poetic conservatory by her father. Ichiyo became the sole breadwinner for her mother and younger sister following the death of her father when she was 17 and moved the family to the outskirts of Tokyo's red light district in 1893. She became pupil to fellow writer Nakarai Tosui, who was the inspiration behind her literary diary, "In the Shade of Spring Leaves" (1891-1896). Although her story Umoregi was the breakthrough story that won over the literary world, her 1895 work Child's Play, or Growing up, was considered her best work. I gather that the story came from her own experiences living on the edge of the red light district running a small shop in the alleys.

The story was very depressing to me, as if the children were all doomed to fall into the trap of determinism, where they were destined to end up with the same miserable fates as their families (Shota ended up being a pawnbroker like his dad, Midori a prostitute like her sister). After Midori was publicly humiliated by Chokichi, she "broke her pencils and threw away her ink; she would spend her time playing with her real friends." (1821). The story got a little hard to follow the more I read into it, but on page 1833, the part of the song that Shota sings reflects Midori's fate:

                 "Growing up,
                      She plays among the butterflies
                      and flowers.
                  But she turns sixteen,
                  and all she knows
                  is work and sorrow."

After Midori became a prostitute, her whole personality changed too. She was once very outgoing and considered Shota her best friend. By the end of the story, she no longer spoke to Shota and she grew quiet, never going out to play with her friends again. The process of growing up took away her innocence and she ends up behaving like someone half her age.

Meeting Ms. Hirshfield

This past Thursday, May 29, I got to meet Jane Hirshfield as a requirement for my Poetry of the Sacred class, and also for my creative writing workshop. Hirshfield wrote a lot of the books which we are using in class currently, and also served as translator for many poems we read in Poetry of the Sacred. I honestly did not expect her to be so approachable; judging by the photos on her book covers, she seemed to be friendly yet aloof. When I stopped to talk to her following the morning meeting, she was very down to earth and honest. I was very curious to know if she had any doubts regarding the quality of her poetry, and if she was ever surprised by the reaction of the public to her poems.There were many occasions where I thought my poetry wasn't as good as they could have been, yet people who read them always praise me on how good they are. It reassured me to know that someone who is as well known as she is still has insecurities regarding the quality of her poems, and has been plagued by writer's block many times. I also enjoyed seeing her read her poems to the audience that night, and it made me realize how much I enjoyed spoken poetry as well as written poetry. When a member of the audience asked her, what advice do you give young people who are writers, Hirshfield said something that stayed with me long after the evening ended, "Always leave your window open a little more than you're comfortable with."