Summary Of Tatsuhiro's Short Story 'The Cocktail Party'

Having the opportunity to read another short story written by Ishiro Tatsuhiro, I was quite amazed by his wide-range writing style. In The Cocktail Party, Tatsuhiro explicitly demonstrated that hypocrisy and selfishness embodied in all human beings. In Turtleback Tombs, Tatsuhiro implicitly rendered a precarious and alarming battlefield ambiance, and successfully blended such alerting atmosphere with humorous dialogues and logics. Through the dialogues between Zontoku and his family numbers, I perceived some interesting Okinawan religious practices and rituals, which served Tatsuhiro’s goal of promoting the Okinawan culture to the mainland Japan and the world.
Knowing that the Battle of Okinawa was one ferocious and bloody war during the end of the World War II, I presumed the context would be quite gloomy and some typical war scenes would be explicitly depicted. On the contrary and much to my surprise, humors were occupied through the first half of the story. Until the end, there was no direct war scene displayed. Even the characters were quite naive and humorous when they quarreled over family affairs and traditional rituals, Tatsuhiro never …show more content…
The story is appealing to me because both characters were neglected by the society. Kiyo, after leaving her drunken husband and being estranged from her sons, chose an indecent job, as a prostitute, to support herself. On the other hand, Sammy, at an age when most of his friends were pursuing educations and playing sports, was dragged into a foreign and isolated Island where he was confused about his mission and purpose. His nostalgia was overlooked by the Americans. His innocence was ignored by the Americans. By ending up with a tragic suicide, Yoshida Sueko raised attention of those minorities who were usually rejected and ignored by their