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Memoirs Of A Geisha Analytical Essay

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Memoirs of a Geisha, by Arthur Golden, and foreign film Water, by Deepa Mehta, include themes on social influences which can determine a person’s final destiny. The female protagonists Sayuri, aged nine, and Chuyia, aged eight, are both sold into slavery for financial reasons and their lives are greatly influenced by acts of betrayal through family, friends and individuals of high status. Both the book and the film depict the terrible damages that can be done to the human soul when religious rules and texts are treated as sacrosanct. The inhumane treatments of widows in India by Hindu fundamentalists are similar to the subjugation of women by Japanese fundamentalists. Arthur Golden and Deepa Mehta have done all women an immense service by shedding light on the liberation …show more content…

Both works of art place an emphasis on finding beauty in the soul of its’ characters and their misfortunes do not make them unattractive. If anything, it makes them even more endearing. In their time periods, it is not startling for the characters to be poor but to see it come from its’ 2,000 year old customs is another matter. Since Memoirs of a Geisha is set before, during and after World War II, the civilians are no strangers to poverty; everyone in Japan, both the poor and rich alike, struggled to get by. It was common for many geishas to ask their male friends for help but Sayuri did not in order to keep her independence –instead she worked as a farmer during the war and only returned to help her sister, Mameha. If anything, it is the life Sayuri would have preferred to have but as the book quotes, “We don’t become Geishas because we want our lives to be happy; we become Geishas because we have no choice” (Golden 310) The poverty line strikes at bay for widows as well; Chuyia refuses to beg on the streets for the ashram because she believes she can amount to being more than just a

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