The Samurais Garden essays

The Samurai's Garden essays "Japan, is like a young woman who thinks too much of herself. She's bound to get herself in trouble"(17). Undying love, devotion and passion are some of the themes you can discover in Gail Tsukiyama's novel, The Samurai's Garden. The coming together of two distinctively different cultures and how the differences caused a great deal of turmoil. This novel contains all sorts of themes but a very common one would definitely be loneliness. All the characters share some type of loneliness in their Throughout the novel Stephen, a young man who is sent away from his family in China due to his disease, Tuberculosis, to live with his grandparents in Japan and be cared for by the servant of the house, Matsu. Stephen says, "I hated to leave my family and friends, even though I hadn't been allowed to see them. I felt lonelier than ever"(4). A few sentences later, he states, "In some ways I can't help thinking my time in Tarumi will be a quiet resembling death." In both quotes, he is showing that he is dreading the journey because he knows that he will be lonely. In the previous quote, Tsukiyama's reference to the word "quiet" is extremely powerful because she relates it to loneliness and death, which is not the first thing most people think of when they hear the word. When Stephen first arrives on of the first things he notices is the loneliness in the village: "This early autumn there didn't seem to be anyone else here, just me, Matsu, and a complete, white silence"(9). At first when Stephen is presented in Matsu's life, Matsu is a little put off and by only speaking to him when it was necessary which also shows that he's also the 'distant type'. As the story moves forward Matsu seems to slowly warm up to Stephen. Seemingly from Stephen's own loneliness and sufferings, that Matsu can relate to which then shows us his compassion, as well as his excitement and determination he brought to ev...