In ‘Prize Stock’ (1957), Oe Kenzaburo explores a complex set of power relations within human interactions and the traumatic impact of war on human lives. With the use of a black character, Oe creates an effect of de-familiarization to bring attention to the interactions within the community, forcing readers to re-examine what is seemingly ‘normal’. By challenging the perceived normality within human interactions, this text also highlights the fluidity and complexity of power relations, subverting the traditional fixed binary of ‘oppressor’ and ‘oppressed’. The traumatic impact of war on human lives is explicitly shown in the story as well, with depictions of violence and brutality of humans further contributing to the dehumanization of characters.
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The treatment of the black soldier by the villagers most obviously shows the inhumane side of war – his position as a prisoner of war in itself, along with the brutality of his eventual death, highlights the human fear of those who are ‘different’ and the tendency to use violence in an attempt to remove the perceived threat. The trauma that the war caused for Frog was both a psychological and physical one, for ‘the war ... was never in the world supposed to have reached [the] village. But it had come, to mash [his] fingers and hand to a pulp’ (390). Not only did he witness his ‘father swinging a hatchet, his body drunk on the blood of war’ (389), embodying the ugliness of mankind in their propensity for violence during the war, he also suffered from said violence by sustaining an irreparable damage to his body in the form of a crippled hand. With war being the context in which the text is set in, the story’s environment is one in which children grow up with violence and deaths being a norm. The trauma caused by the war is clear with how the story ends with Frog suddenly realizing that he ‘was no longer a child’ – highlighting explicitly his coming-of-age with the literal death of his …show more content…
The story ultimately challenges ideas of morality using morally-ambiguous decisions and situations such as the black soldier using a child as a hostage and shield out of a desire for self-preservation and the brutality of the adults who sacrifice a child’s wellbeing in their attempt to take down the perceived threat. This portrayal of a loss of morality and sensibility marks the dehumanization of characters in the text and reflects the primal side of humans that war brings out. Frog, having seen for himself the ugliness of mankind in times of war, comments that ‘the adults…transformed into entirely inhuman monsters’
The treatment of the black soldier by the villagers most obviously shows the inhumane side of war – his position as a prisoner of war in itself, along with the brutality of his eventual death, highlights the human fear of those who are ‘different’ and the tendency to use violence in an attempt to remove the perceived threat. The trauma that the war caused for Frog was both a psychological and physical one, for ‘the war ... was never in the world supposed to have reached [the] village. But it had come, to mash [his] fingers and hand to a pulp’ (390). Not only did he witness his ‘father swinging a hatchet, his body drunk on the blood of war’ (389), embodying the ugliness of mankind in their propensity for violence during the war, he also suffered from said violence by sustaining an irreparable damage to his body in the form of a crippled hand. With war being the context in which the text is set in, the story’s environment is one in which children grow up with violence and deaths being a norm. The trauma caused by the war is clear with how the story ends with Frog suddenly realizing that he ‘was no longer a child’ – highlighting explicitly his coming-of-age with the literal death of his …show more content…
The story ultimately challenges ideas of morality using morally-ambiguous decisions and situations such as the black soldier using a child as a hostage and shield out of a desire for self-preservation and the brutality of the adults who sacrifice a child’s wellbeing in their attempt to take down the perceived threat. This portrayal of a loss of morality and sensibility marks the dehumanization of characters in the text and reflects the primal side of humans that war brings out. Frog, having seen for himself the ugliness of mankind in times of war, comments that ‘the adults…transformed into entirely inhuman monsters’