Snow Country Thus Far            

What strikes me as most odd about Snow Country by Kawabata, is how much we know about the main characters without really knowing much about them at all. The story itself begins entirely out of context, on a train in the winter. The setting isn't even entirely disclosed in that we never know for sure what time the story takes place in. We know very little of Shimamura's past, occupation, or family. Komako is quite the mystery as well. I have only read up to the end of book one, but we still do not know why she is a geisha or where her real family is. Kawabata hints at the fact that Yoko went into the city to have an abortion, but she too is somewhat left up to the imagination. Finally, there is Yukio who is dying and being taken care of by Yoko. The reader is offered only a small window into the lives of these four characters without much explanation of the past.

I find it funny that Komako only writes the characters names and their relationship to one another in her diary. It is this simplistic skeleton of a story that is offered in the first book of Snow Country. I personally really like that we only know exactly what is presented by the author. It leaves a lot of room for implications and reading between the lines. It also gives the story a mysterious flare that suits the culture presented. I find it very intriguing and look forward to Book Two!

I have to say, that I both loved and hated the tale of Pedro Paramo. One of my favorite techniques in writers, is unraveling the story piece by piece. This forces the reader to trust the writer, continue reading, and even to reread in order to fully grasp what is going on in the story. Juan Rulfo definitely did a lot of this in Pedro Paramo. He goes back and forth in time and has sudden transitions from narrator to narrator. This can sometimes be frustrating as the reader. However, without these odd perspectives, I don't think Pedro Paramo would have had nearly the impact that it does. The catch is that all of the characters are dead. In order to tell their stories, the reader must understand their past that can only be told through their own perspectives. Therefore telling this story from  only one perspective would be both boring and nearly impossible.

I thought that the most interesting perspective was that of Susana San Juan. In class, Dr. Reed said that Juan Rulfo saw Susana as the main character of the entire story. Although her perspective is not the most prominent, I would have to agree. She seems to by the center of the plot. First of all, she embodies Pedro's commodification of women. Pedro loved Susana, but he also killed her father and her lover to get to her. There was also a sense of him using her insanity in order to take advantage of her. Additionally, Susana is the reason that Comala is a desert town. When Pedro loses her, he deliberately stops all work in the town. He instead sits on his porch all day looking down the road that they took her body. Because Pedro had essentially monopolized the entire town, the whole economy fell through. Susana's death is the catalyst of the demise of Comala. 

Overall, I admire this work because it is unique and thought provoking. The characters were all quite complex, which added to their level of mystery. The transition of voices, though sometimes confusing was done very well. By the end of the story, I could tell which voice belonged to whom without even reading their name. 

Things Fall Apart 

I find it interesting that Achebe prefaces Things Fall Apart with an excerpt from Yeat's "The Second Coming":

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot ear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world...

By beginning with this excerpt, I think Achebe is purposefully setting a tone that the story will end in tragedy. Then as he goes on to describe Okonkwo, the main character, the reader automatically sympathizes with him, despite his non-sympathetic qualities. As a supporter of the Negritude Movement, Achebe directed a tale of African culture to a primarily Western audience. Because many of the traditions of these villages would seem savage to the Western reader, Achebe needed a way to make Okonkwo fully sympathetic as the tragic hero, while staying true to his African reality.

Achebe accomplishes this in small ways. By incorporating the story of how Okonkwo rose above the reputation of his intellectual musician of a father, Achebe relates Okonkwo to the American entrepreneurial spirit. Also, Okonkwo's love for his first wife and her daughter shows his softer side. This gives a more human quality to his fierce front. It is not an easy task to take a complex, hard ass character, and make him sympathetic and tragic. I thought Achebe's execution of creating such a complex character was very well done. I both hated and loved Okonkwo while reading this story. The whole way through the story I found myself thinking how savage Okonkwo was, yet when the Western people came in, I found myself hating them for not understanding Okonkwo's ways. I think this is exactly the reaction that Achebe was hoping for in Western readers; to reach the end of the story and side with the culture that is actually foreign.