Kawabata

Yasunari Kawabata, "The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket"



Setting “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” is set behind a university in an embankment. The embankment is a very colorful and magical place lit up by home-made lanterns. Themes A theme in “the Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” is Childhood Innocence. The children in the embankment are disinterested with the problems of the world. Their only worries are their lanterns and finding a grasshopper, or maybe even a bell cricket. Specifically, the main characters, Fujio and Kiyoko, are very innocent. They are unaware of their futures, and are focused only on the present and finding a grasshopper or a bell cricket. “//Fujio! Even when you have become a young man, laugh with pleasure at a girl’s delight when, told it’s a grasshopper, she is given a bell cricket; laugh with affection at the girls chagrin when, told it’s a bell cricket, she is given a grasshopper.// // Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girls like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket. // //And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper. Should that day come, when it seems to you that the world is only full of grasshoppers, I will think it a pity that you have no way to remember tonight’s play of light, when your name was written in green by your beautiful lantern on a girl’s breast.”//
 * PLOT**

Change the plot. “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket” is a short story about a young boy and a young girl who fall in love unexpectedly. It started off will a scene set with beautiful multicolored lanterns in Japan. Some children made their own lanterns out of cardboard and tissue paper. The young boy at first is advising his friends that he has a sacred grasshopper and that he is giving it away. As several children crowd around him, a young girl approaches and voices her desire for the grasshopper. But once Fujio hands her the grasshopper, Kiyoko realizes that it is not a grasshopper, but a cricket. Then they unknowingly fall in love.


 * //VOCAB://**

-**Aperture**- a small opening or hole -**Emanate**- to send forth -**Syllabary**- a list of syllables -**Proverbial**- resembling or expressed in a proverb, famous -**Discernable**- able to be seen or perceived

**Characters** __ Fujio __ - young innocent boy who finds what he believes is a grasshopper but is actually a bell cricket. __ Kiyoko __ - young innocent girl who corrects Fujio that the “grasshopper” is actually a bell cricket.

Point of View and Style

The point of view of this story is narrated in third person by an unknown omniscient by-stander. The style of the story is very descriptive. Yasunari Kawabata describes the lanterns in great detail to set the mood for the reader. The mood is past tense and unbiased. The style of having a by-stander narrate the story allows the reader to understand what is going on in an indirect way and lets the reader think and see what if going through the narrators thoughts.