Robin Evans

I find it very interesting that there are no names in this book. All of the characters are just referenced to by what they are in respect to the main character. This shows that the narrator is not completely invested with any of the relationships he has with the other characters. We can see that the narrator is getting emotionally attached to the kid. The narrator is getting concerned about the well being of the kid and he is actually seeing himself in the kid. Maybe by the end of the book we will find out what the name of the kid really is.

I found it very interesting that Henry actually allowed himself to look like he couldn’t speak English when he was meeting the parents of the kids. This a giant change from earlier where he would spend painstaking amounts of time trying to prefect his english english. This change happens right after the narrator switches from past tense to present tense. So the fact that he is with Lelia again has something to do with the change. Now that he is back with the love of his life, he no longer cares about what other people think about him. There is also another time where he pretends not to speak english. This is when he is having to deal with the press. This scene is important because he is allowing the entire world to think that he can’t speak english.

I found the scene where Henry is talking to Leila about the death of Mitt very interesting. It is very interesting because we get to see how the two of are different. Henry was able to quickly forgive  the other kids while leila is never going to move on with her life. Henry is able to move away form being completely depressed about Mitt’s death. He is looking at how he lived and how he was so happy and lucky. Han is the exact emotion he has for the death for Mitt. He is angry but also calm. On the other hand Leila is still in full rage of what happened. She is blaming 6 year olds on the death of their son. Don’t get me wrong she has the right to still be angry but she has no right to ignore the fact that it was a accident. Leila is a relatively unstable as a person and she is very in considerate about cultural differences.

The death of mama was very predictable. Reading the letter was the last nail in the coffin since it took away the one thing that was keeping her sane, Hope. Through out the book, we saw the mom’s life slowly degrade. In almost every scene she was being ground down. The first thing that happened was that she lost both of her children. One joined that military and the other just didn’t accept her the way she is. Most of her life was based on making these two people’s lives better but when they turned their backs on her, she started to crumble. So then she turned to the other major idea in her life. The fact that Japan is the best and she will live a amazing life when she goes back to Japan. When she realized that Japan is no longer the strongest, she lost her cultural identity and her national identity. These stresses finally made her snap and with that snap death soon followed. The putting up and smacking down of the cans was a very accurate representation of what was going on in her head. The putting up of the cans represents the mindset of saving money so she can go back to japan but the smacking down is the crushing of the dream that no longer exists.

I found it very interesting to see the contrast between the narration between Ichiro and Kenji. Ichiro as a very pessimistic person and his mind is that of a teenager. He is always getting very angry towards other people, and in reality he is not being mindful in what everybody else is going through. He has closed his mind completely to the new life that he has to live and is just focusing on the past. Kenji on the other hand is very mature and he has that mind of an adult. He is very aware of the harm he can cause to his family. He is able to gage what the family is feeling and is able to mediate what is going on. An example of this is when he is talking about how scared he is about his leg but he doesn’t talk to the entire family about it he only talks to his dad about it. An other example is when he is trying to ease the gilt that his dad is feeling. He clearly states that joining the army was purely his idea and nothing his dad would have said would have changed the idea.

Sample video! this is a very good movie!!

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