Theme Of Immortality By Kawabata Yasunari

It is human nature that sometimes people forgot their friends with the passage of time, but a few remember friends for their whole life. This indicates true love and this made them alive forever. In the story “Immortality” by Kawabata Yasunari. Shintaro and Masako love each other and they cannot live without each other. When Shintaro went to Tokyo to earn money she drowned herself and died. Shintaro thinks he is responsible for her death. He thinks about his past and feels that she is still with him all the time. He talks with her and spent his time. But it is only the true love of the old man that makes the girl still alive in his thoughts. In the end, even though the girl has died, still she is alive for him. In the end of the story, the …show more content…
“He was wearing clothes like those a girl would wear to pull weeds from a rice field, except that he wore no leggings. His tight sleeves and trousers gathered at the ankles looked like a women’s .He is very slim and his clothes hung loose at his waist” (323). His name is Shintaro. “I used to have to pick up the balls from behind a net day after day .For seventeen long years” (324). He is very hard working and it is very difficult to pick the balls from behind the net. Moreover the sound of the balls when struck the wire net made him deaf, but he still did this job. “Those are the trees my ancestors have looked after hundreds of years, so I had the buyer promise not to cut the trees when I sold the land to him”(325).Shintaro made a deal with the buyer about the trees as his ancestor had grown the trees and they have their memory with them. Shintaro had respect for his ancestors and shows his etiquette. The author wants to reveal that the humans are also immortal if they are alive in other man thoughts and if they have true love between …show more content…
For example the trees and the breeze. First when “They did not stop, but walked right through the net as a spring breeze might blow through it” (324). The breeze symbolizes that something bad is going to happen. When the author talked of breeze, it changes the whole story and readers also get a sense of foreshadowing .This makes the story interesting and exciting. The breeze represents the negative side as when the author reveals that they pass through the wire net. This showed that they are not human. The wind is everywhere and it cannot be finished. It is here forever in this world. The author wants to say that Masako is with Shintaro forever and she never died in the old man thoughts. Second “There are trees my ancestors have looked after hundreds of years” (325).This shows the life span of trees is long and they never die .The writer wants to show that the true love of person makes humans immortal and they never died in thoughts and mind of true lover. He says the thinking of the person makes a person alive