The Setting Sun Critical Analysis

Throughout time, the role that Women had in the early twentieth century to the present has changed drastically and it has changed for the better. Japanese American Women residing in the United States, has experienced the evolution of their culture, tradition, values and their role in society. However though it seems as if there is no time in this ever so rapid society, they still continue to pass down culture and tradition through each generation. Some key terms that are crucial in order to understand the essay are, Issei, or the first generation, Nisei, the second generation ,and Sansei, known as the third generation.Over time the Women slowly moved away form being the average Homemaker and transforming into a respected and valued member of society.

In the story “Stop the Sun” there are two themes. One is to never give upon trying to understand someone or something. The second one is sometimes war can affect people forever. Terry feared to go out in public with his father because the war made his father act strange. Terry wanted to understand what was happening with his father so he could him. Terry learned the horrible things that his father had faced in the war. He also learned that his father was the only soldier out of 54 men to survive. Terry had to change to understand what his father went through. In conclusion Terry played one of the main parts in the story. Such as he created the theme of the story and he also learned to better understand his father.

For many years, women have been oppressed and treated as property. The opinion of a woman did not matter, being obedient to her husband was all that is required. Even if they were obedient to their husbands, women were property and only for the pleaser and likening to the husband. Mariam did all the her husband required of her, however there was one thing should could not. Which was give her husband, Rasheed, a son or any child. In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, Hosseini reveals the social issue of physical abuse and mental abuse by his use of imagery, diction, and dialogue.

Killing the Rising Sun by Bill O’Reilly and Martin Dugard is a descriptive, well written book wrapping up the end of World War II. Reading this book makes you feel like you are living in the midst of the vividly depictive and picturesque scenes that O’Reilly and Dugard bring the reader back to imagine in this book. I really enjoyed this book and I think it really helped me to capture what happened during World War II and the hardships and trials that the United States went through to defeat Japan in one of the most decisive naval battles of World War II. I hope that in this essay I can achieve half of what the authors achieved in writing this book.

In her novel When the Emperor Was Divine, author Julie Otsuka presents the long-lasting effects that isolation and alienation have on a person’s self- image and identity. During WWII, Japanese-Americans living in the United States were forced to move to isolated and horrific internment camps. The US government ensured they were separated from the rest of the country. This even included their own families. When the Japanese-Americans were allowed to return home after the war, the result of the isolation they experienced created irreversible damage. They continued to experience alienation, often making it impossible for them to recover emotionally, mentally and financially. Otsuka uses characterization to bring to life the traumas of the war and the effects it had on her characters, the girl, her mother and her father.

She selfishly praised quilts as "priceless" (91) whereas she thought the same piece was old fashioned and out of style when offered to her for college. By carrying the quilts she claims to carry the heritage, however, she shuns the lifestyle of her family, which is of course a part of her heritage.

The Sun of the Revolution by Liang Heng, is intriguing and vivid, and gives us a complex and compelling perspective on Chines culture during a confusing time period. We get the opportunity to learn the story of a young man with a promising future, but an unpleasant childhood. Liang Heng was exposed to every aspect of the Cultural Revolution in China, and shares his experiences with us, since the book is written from Liang perspective, we do not have a biased opinion from an elite member in the Chinese society nor the poor we get an honest opinion from the People’s Republic of China. Liang only had the fortunate opportunity of expressing these events due his relationship with his wife, An American woman whom helps him write the book. When

In The Sun Also Rises, during the transition of society from World War I to post-war, values transformed from the “old-fashioned” system of what was morally acceptable to a system that held the basic belief that anything of value, whether tangible or intangible, could be exchanged for something of equal value. This novel specifically pinpoints the transformation of the values of money, alcohol, sex and passion (aficion), friendships and relationships, and even one’s pain.

More directly, Tsurumi states “for the majority of peasant families survival was impossible without women and their work” (Tsurumi, 16). This makes the importance of Japanese women to their households during the period of history prior to the Meiji Era indisputable. Nevertheless, even as familial roles changed during Japan’s shift to a money economy, the support women provided to their families remained steadfast, as the earnings they made at factories were often sent back to their homes to support their families. As the need for women to find jobs that could pay them in cash grew, the potential for women to help support their families, or the ability to reel “for the sake of the nation” attracted women and girls to the first silk reeling mill in Tomioka. Tsurumi affirms this by saying “service to the nation, family economic interest, or a combination of the two brought young women to Tomioka to become part of a proud elite striving both for national goals and for regional prosperity” (Tsurumi, 30). By portraying the act of working for a textile mill as a service to both their families and to their country, Tsurumi furthers the idea that the women of the time were heroes of their era. However, as

“That Evening Sun” by William Faulkner is a good example of a great emotional turmoil transferred directly to the readers through the words of a narrator who does not seem to grasp the severity of the turmoil. It is a story of an African American laundress who lives in the fear of her common-law husband Jesus who suspects her of carrying a white man's child in her womb and seems hell bent on killing her.

One of the major themes of Osamu Dazai’s The Setting Sun is the socioeconomic fall of aristocracy in Japan following World War II. The title itself reflects these core themes: when the Japanese write down the name of their home country in Kanji (one of its three alphabets), it  roughly means “land of the rising sun”. The Setting Sun is an allegory that the glory days of Japan have come to an end, specifically their ancient aristocracy and their old families, as well as Japanese culture. The comfortable bourgeoisie becomes the hard-working proletariat and the historical situation changes as the material circumstances changes. This social and economic change is both subtly and unsubtly shown through the main characters’ flashbacks and stories; Kazuko and her family come from a long line of aristocrats but now face the reality of living without power or status. Following three major events -- the death of Kazuko’s father, Kazuko’s divorce to her wealthy husband, and the nation-wide economic crisis caused by the war -- the family finds themselves out of money and out of luck, challenging the way they formerly viewed the world, themselves, and their class. Through their mother’s incompetence, Kazuko’s difficulty in working, and Naoji’s existential crises, Dazai deconstructs the classist ideals that claim the wealthy gained their status and capital because of hard work, strength, intelligence, and personal superiority while remaining sympathetic toward the upper classes.

     In Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises, Jake Barnes is a lost man who wastes his life on drinking. Towards the beginning of the book Robert Cohn asks Jake, “Don’t you ever get the feeling that all your life is going by and you’re not taking advantage of it? Do you realize that you’ve lived nearly half the time you have to live already?” Jake weakly answers, “Yes, every once in a while.” The book focuses on the dissolution of the post-war generation and how they cannot find their place in life. Jake is an example of a person who had the freedom to choose his place but chose poorly.

In the novel A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini, main character Mariam is forced into exile after a horrific set of experiences. After her mother’s suicide, she is removed from her home and is later arranged to marry a random man she never met before. Before her departure, Mariam lived in a “kolba,” a small hut on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan. With no other place to go, she disapprovingly lives with her father for a short period of time before being shipped off to her new husband. Her encounter with exile is almost unbearable, yet she endures and grows into a hardworking and respectable woman. For Mariam, exile is both alienating and enriching; it illuminates how withstanding life’s challenges and learning to overcome them with love will ultimately be beneficial in the end, no matter what happens.

It is no secret that for centuries, the Japanese woman has been, to most observers, a model of elegance and graceful beauty. A picture of a kimono-clad, modest, and often silent woman has been plastered everywhere, allowing for the upmost passive subjection. If we look deeper into this image of woman, can we tell if this picture is complete? How do these women painted in representative images far in the modern world? The ideal woman in Japan is expected to be both a good wife, and a wise mother. Though these seem like reasonable expectations, there is a much deeper meaning to them that has shown signs of being outdated. During the 1800’s and 1900’s, women were subjected to society’s vision of them, and could not break free for fear of the

     The sun is the largest object in the solar system. It is a middle-sized star and there are many other stars out in the universe just like it. Even though it is only a middle-sized star it is large enough to hold over 1 million Earth’s inside if it were hollow. The temperature on the sun is far too much for any living thing to bear. On the surface it is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit and the core is a stunning 27,000,000 degrees Fahrenheit. But don’t worry we are over 90,000 million miles away, the sun could never reach us, at least not yet. The sun is a still a middle aged star and later in its life it will become a Red Giant. In this stage it will get bigger, and closer to us causing a temperature increase and most likely the