A Family Supper Short Story Summary

The short story, “A Family Supper,” by Kazou Ishiguro demonstrates the effects of distance on family relationships and the effects of death on a person’s thinking. Ishiguro develops these themes by manipulating the point of view, dialect, and imagery. The short story is told by the protagonist from a first person point of view. The point of view is significant because it determines how much information can be revealed by the limited first person narrator telling the short story. “A Family Supper” is told from a first person point of view, this helps readers become associated with helpful background information and access to the protagonist's thoughts. First, at the beginning of the short story, Ishiguro informs the reader about the fugu fish. He not only provides general facts but also reveals that the “fish held a special significance so [him] since [his] mother died through eating one.” background information about the protagonist is revealed as well when he explains that his “relationship with [his] parents had become somewhat strained” around the time of his mother's death. Details revealed through the narrator's thoughts are significant because they contribute to the …show more content…
Ishiguro describes his father as “A formidable-looking man with a larger stony jaw and furious black eyebrows.” The image of his father fits the cold nature of their relationship and history. Ishiguro also describes the rooms of his father’s house as “startlingly empty.” The empty rooms symbolize his father’s life now characterized by the loss of his wife, estrangement from his son, and the death of his business partner. Imagery is also used to reveal that the woman “wearing a white kimono” in the garden was his mother, seen wearing a white kimono in a photograph. Ishiguro seeing his mother is significant to the story because it foreshadows the end where Ishiguro’s father feeds the family the poisonous fish that took his mother’s