The premise
goes:
The Sailor Who Fell
from Grace with the Sea tells of a band of savage thirteen-year-old
boys who reject the adult world as illusory, hypocritical, and sentimental, and
train themselves in a brutal callousness they call “objectivity”. When the mother of one of them begins an
affair with a ship’s officer, he and his friends idealise the man at first; but
it is not long before they conclude that he is in fact soft and romantic. The regard their disappointment in him as an
act of betrayal on his part, and react violently.
This book reminded
me so strongly of another favorite, William Golding’s The Lord of the Flies because of the particular feature involving
youths exhibiting unrestrained cruelty. In
this book, the scene where they brutally slaughter the cat is one of the most
horrific that I have ever encountered.
As I read it my heart pounded madly and goosebumps rose on the skin of
my arms – it was rendered in such gruesome detail and the narration felt like
it would never end. I asked myself how anyone
could have justified what felt like such an unnecessarily violent scene, but as
I read the book to the end I realized of course that it was important and was
actually a stroke of genius on the author’s part. Mishima was indeed a great literary master.
The main
characters are Noboru, a thirteen-year-old boy with a fascination for ships and
the sea. He belonged to a gang of smart,
yet disillusioned boys of the same age, led by “The Chief”. Noboru’s widowed mother, Fusako, runs a shop
that specializes in western luxury fashion items. She enters into an affair with Ryuji, a
Second Mate, when she and her son tour the ship that he works in.
The novel is
very much character-driven. You feel
that the story moves because of the very nature of the lives that people
it. And although it is quite a
depressing, emotionally taxing tale, I couldn’t help but admire how gracefully
it was delivered. The language was just
so poetic; and I’m sure that even more beauty had been lost in
translation. You get to know the
characters, how they thought, the motives behind their actions, their
loneliness, their anger and frustration, and the way they cope with the world
they are faced with. You feel for them
and come to understand them somehow, even those lost boys who feel that they
have no hope and no other choices left but to do what their lives have led them
to believe must be done. Some people say
that this novel is largely allegorical, that this is how Mishima saw Japan
during his time, and it is how he expressed his disappointment with his country. Perhaps they are right, because if you look
closely enough there certainly are many parallels. Ideas such as fascination with western
luxuries, the abandonment of Japanese traditions, trading off one’s ideals and
dreams of glory, the feeling of helplessness and being compelled to move along
and face the “realities” – these are all represented in the book. If this was indeed Mishima’s way of venting
his anger at Japan, then he did it through such a thought-provoking and
unforgettable masterpiece. I recommend
the book for the provocative insights it gives, and the emotional turmoil that
it allows you to experience. For what
else is a good book for, if not to disturb your soul?
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