COMPARE AND CONTRACT CHILDHOOD
The author of the flowers story, based her argument on the innocence that is portrayed her main character that is Myop. Myop happens to be a young girl who is 10 years old who only sees the simplicity and beauty that is found in life representing the summer period in her life. It is at this summer period that her innocence is clearly seen in her childhood (Walker 1). The authors approach to children is that they are innocent and that they know not of the reality of life not until their childhood innocence are over. The author describes the summer in a beautiful way giving a beautiful impression of childhood life.
The author in the grasshopper and the bell cricket, who is also the narrator, happens to be interested in using the children as his characters. As he is walking along the fence of the university which is a white board that symbolizes the innocence of the children, he watches the children as they participate in their chase for insects. The way he is watching the children is simple but yet again seems enjoyable thus captivating every reader to read the story. The narrator emotionally explains the feeling of enjoyment as he is watching the children as he expresses it by the wonderful description of the lanterns and the different colors that they had. The different colors symbolically showed that the children are different in personalities. The narrator feels a sense of attraction towards the children as he moves closer to them with his eyes wide open ready to see all that they were doing. The theme of love is clearly portrayed by the children as they are determined to make new lanterns’ “out of their minds and hearts” (Kawabata 1).
The future lives of these children is molded by their surrounding as the surrounding of the children in the story allows them to meet in groups to challenge one another and to express love to each other.
The two stories have a similar attitude of children as innocent. Both stories talk of how the childhood life of the children is simple with so much happiness and less worries about reality. Both setting has children who have not yet faced reality of how the world really is. It is through experience that their innocence is taken away and that’s the time they get to learn the reality.
The attitude of love is only evident in the grasshopper and the bill cricket story while in the flowers story the attitude of hatred is developed once the reality hits the character. Racism is not a part of the problem to the children in the grasshopper and the bell cricket story but it is a big problem to the flowers story. There is hope for a better ending to the children in the Yasunari’s story while there seems to be no hope even for the children to be born in the flowers story as the issue on racism was a part of the problem long ago and yet today in the narration it is clearly evidenced.
References
Kawabata, Yasunari. Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket. MereDUHth,27th August,2008.
Walker, Jane. Flowers. Gloucester, 1993.
