Yukio Mishima's Novel, Thirst for Love
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Yukio Mishima, in his novel Thirst for Love, tells the story of a young woman, Etsuko, and her longing for a young gardener, Saburo. In fact, it is not a true "thirst for love" which drives Etsuko, for when she is finally on the apparent verge of winning the young man's affections, she reacts with violent rejection rather than acceptance. Mishima's novel, then, is about Etsuko's inability to love, to accept love, or even to begin to understand the difference between love and violent lust. The novel focuses on the brutality of physical longing, and there is no sign in the book that Etsuko---or any other character, for that matter---has any notion of what real love is or how to get it. The violent response of Etsuko to her object of desire shows that from the author's point of view, love is either unattainable or blatantly appalling. Etsuko is driven to love, to seek love, but love in its actuality is repulsive. Donald Keene, in his Introduction to the book, argues correctly that this sense of repulsion in the presence of love, or even the possibility of love, is the force that drives Etsuko as it does other characters in other books by the author: Etsuko's compulsion to love, her need to inflict pain in love, and her revulsion when suddenly she feels she is loved, suggest figures set in entirely different contexts in other works by Mishima (vii). Etsuko's powerfully contradictory feelings about love reflect the paradoxes which overwhelm her general emotional philosophy, i
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nstant turmoil, struggle without respite. Saburo seems to offer a solution to her torment: "The changes of expression that then rapidly passed over Saburo's face gave Etsuko a cool and distinct sense of joy, of the kind that comes to one who encounters a simple and neatly soluble equation" (29). Here there seems to be a solution to her turmoil, her emotional and existential contradictions, but it is as if only the sense of having a solution gives her that joy---when she has the opportunity to fulfill her longing for the young gardener, she is repelled.
Her reflections on her feelings for her old father-in-law reveal more of her sense of helplessness. She accepts his advances without protest, seeing herself as a drowning person who will swallow the water of the sea as if obeying some primal instinct, and yet at the same time she tells herself she has some power against him, a power which she simply refuses to exercise. In any case, despite these contradictions, she does see herself as a woman who is drowning---although it is a secret drowning unknown to the world: "Until the moment of her death, it seemed, no one would know she was drowning." Mishima also suggests that she is responsible for her own lost and helpless state: "She d
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Saburo's Etsuko, Keene Introduction, Thirst Love, thirst love, York Perigee, etsuko finally, Yukio Mishima, drives etsuko, yield longing, ideal love, etsuko, love violent, longing gardener, losing control,
Approximate Word count = 1601
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)
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