preview

The Effects Physical and Emotional Loss on Communication Essay

Decent Essays
Open Document

An experience of loss can last over periods of time and can lead its recipients to endure post-traumatic symptoms. A major part of physical and emotional damages is communicating and expressing the emotions one has concerning the loss. In Huang Chunming’s “The Fish,” Ah Cang experiences a loss that he cannot properly explain to his grandfather. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s A Pale View of Hills, Etsuko faces a loss that she cannot quite cope with. In both cases, the characters involved are not able to address their problems, debilitating their relationships. Ah Cang and Etsuko feel guilt and regret towards the things they have lost which causes their inability to come to terms with what they have done, crippling how they communicate.
In “The …show more content…

Ah Cang feels regretful about losing the bonito fish, and his ashamed feeling prevent him from thinking clearly and conveying his disappointment in himself. In A Pale View of Hills, Kazuo Ishiguro writes about a Japanese widow who is trying to overcome the suicide of her first daughter, Keiko. Etsuko narrates the story and explains various series of events. The story begins with the introduction of Niki, Etsuko’s second daughter. From the very start of the story, Ishiguro continually shows that the family does not communicate frequently nor in an in-depth manner. When Niki talks about her deceased half-sister, Keiko, she only remembers her as “someone who used to make [her] miserable” (Ishiguro, 1990: 2). Even though Keiko’s death has such a huge impact on their lives, that is where their discussion about Keiko ends because they “never dwelt long on the subject of Keiko’s death,...[it just] hovered over us whenever we talked” (Ishiguro, 2). They acknowledged that Keiko died, but they did not discuss her death and avoided direct conversations about their emotions. Etsuko cannot cope with Keiko’s death to the extent that she tells Keiko’s story through a third person till the end of the story. Rather than telling it as her story, Etsuko uses Sachiko as her alias. She tries to convince herself through Sachiko that she was acting with good intentions and in her

Get Access
Related
Get Access