Skip to main content

A Letter to Oshima, from 'Kafka on the Shore'

Respected Oshima,

I remember you because you taught me a new word, 'Phallocentric'. I don't know why, but I specifically remember you for this word. It's funny that you, being a transgender person, taught me this word. I was caught off-guard when it was revealed that you were transgender. I have used the word 'phallocentric' several times in conversations, which always reminded me of you. other people have also appreciated the vocabulary I learned through the book. You are from my favourite book, Kafka on the Shore, and after reading it, I became an avid reader and I feel that reading became a passion for me. 

Even though you are not my favourite character from the novel, I have always felt a strong desire to have a talk with you because of your taste in music and impeccable fashion sense. 

I remember that night when you were driving Kafka to the mountains and the way you drove recklessly, because you use death as an inspiration and the concept of death amuses you. This was very fascinating for me, and made me drawn to you out of all the side characters in the novel.

In the beginning, you seemed really reserved, but gradually, you opened up to Kafka with your deep and dark thoughts about death, and more interesting things that you have going on in that beautiful mind of yours. 

The deep conversations that you had with Kafka in the beginning about soulmates, and the split between the mind and the body, were ones with concepts that I found really beautiful, and these opened my eyes to a new direction of a thought process. It also showed me more about your view of the world and how you felt that everyone is constantly looking for someone else to complete them and give them the sense of feeling whole again.

You have also shown your struggles with prejudice and discrimination, which you faced as a transgender gay man. The way you expressed how you found solace in classical music and the library, reading and listening to classical music while guiding Kafka in his journey, along with teaching him about literature, made me wish that I could meet someone like you in real life. 

I guess this is the closest I can get to talking to you, Oshima. Farewell, until I read Kafka on the Shore again.

Yours sincerely,

Sakshi Powar    

This letter was one of the top ten entries in the P.S. I Love Literature Letter Writing Competition of The Novel Room, our Book Discussion Club. Students wrote letters to characters, writers, poets, books as part of a creative review and response activity, and these were read out in the session on April 29, 2021.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Review of "The Tale of the Rose" by Emma Donaghue

 A Review of "The Tale of the Rose" by Emma Donaghue - Mayura Bhandari “The Tale of The Rose” is a retelling of the popular children’s fairy tale, “The Beauty and The Beast”. It is one of the short stories in the collection by Emma Donoghue, called Kissing The Witch . The story is narrated from the point of a young woman who describes herself as having an appetite for magic. She doesn’t desire suitors, finery or riches. When her father’s ships get lost at sea, her cushy life disappears. But without despair, she gets to work. She washes her father’s clothes, finding peace and satisfaction in it. When fortune smiles upon their family, her siblings ask for riches and finery, but she desires a red rose bud. Her father returns and hands her the rose, explaining that the price of that flower was that he had sold her to a Beast. Obediently, she heads over to the castle, nervous and excited for a new chapter in her life. She recalls the lore the villagers told her. About a young ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Psychological Analysis Of Waiting For Godot

Psychological criticism adopts the methods of "Reading" employed by Freud and later theorists to interpret texts. It argues that literary texts, like dreams, express the secret unconscious desires and anxieties of the author, that a literary work is a manifestation of the author's own neuroses. Here, we are going to apply the same form of criticism on Samuel Beckett’s play, ‘Waiting for Godot.’  Unanswered questions behind the characters behaviour are answered here. We would be looking further to the psychoanalytical approach, Sigmund Freud being the important proponent here. A major focus on the language and how dreams reflect our mental personality are given in his second essay, “Interpretation of Dreams.” The plot clearly states that Estragon has nightmares and Vladimir never addresses them and remains unhelpful towards it, being the one who is aware about their sufferings. The nightmares contain flashbacks and images of a gruesome and horrific event that has hap...
1 comment
Read more

Marxism in Waiting for Godot

Samuel Beckett, the most eminent Irish playwright wrote ‘’Waiting for Godot’’ in French in 1949 and then translated it into English in 1954. This play has been performed as a drama of the absurd with astonishing success in Europe, America and the rest of the world in the post second world war era. For this reason, Martin Esslin calls it, “One of the successes of the post-war theatre” (Esslin, Martin, 1980) In this play, the two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, wait expectantly to see a man simply known as Godot, a character who does not make an appearance in the play, despite being the titular character. The play begins with waiting for Godot and ends with waiting for Godot. Marxism refers to the political and economic theories of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, later developed by their followers to form the basis of communism. Marxism introduced ideas such as Dialectical Materialism, Alienation, and Economic Determination. Beckett’s ‘Waiting for Godot’ has a minimalist setting...
Post a Comment
Read more