Unfortunately, this week I will have to miss class and am therefore including my discussion points about the story for which I was supposed to lead the conversation. If you have not yet read Lafcadio Hern's "Yuki-Onna," you may not want to finish reading this post until you do.
I looked a little into Hern's life and discovered that he was primarily a journalist (although he always did have a darker side to his writing) and that his writings generally covered the area in which he happened to be. Therefore, "Yuki-Onna" was published just before his death while he was in Japan, the setting fits. However, I was not struck with a sense of journalistic style from the story as I have been with other writers such as Hemingway. Did anyone think this story had some aspects of journalistic writing that I didn't pick up on?
Furthermore, did anyone else see the big "twist" coming from the moment he came across O-Yuki, a name that means Snow according to a footnote? I actually enjoyed the story, as it brings up questions regarding the nature of death and love, but I thought that there was little to no effort to disguise the true identity of O-Yuki.
Did she love him? Or was she simply waiting to catch him telling the story she had forbidden him from telling? If she did not love him, why would she have had his children and consequently prevented herself from carrying out the revenge she had promised him? And if she did love him, why did she leave forever?
Finally, there was a film made from this (and three other stories from a book of short stories that Hern wrote in this genre). The "Snow Woman" part is on youtube and begins in the link in the title.
2 comments:
I saw that turn coming the minute he met her on the road. I knew who she was and knew he would eventually tell her. I thought she was going to kill him, though. I think that Yuki definitely had to love him. What else was holding her back from killing him? But then again, if she truly loved him why would she leave their life together, including children, so easily?
My only idea would be that she has some sort of self-hatred for what she is. She wants to be normal, have a normal life, but doesn't want anyone to know her true nature. I guess she figures if they know who she is they won't love her, they'll just see her as a monster/killer. Her last words to her husband are another threat, which makes me feel like she's putting a guard up. She wants him to fear her, so he won't seek her out and he'll do right by their children. She can't help what she is, but she won't let herself be happy due to all the broody self-hatred.
I thought this was a really interesting story, especially with my own personal fascination with Japanese culture. Of course I saw the "twist" coming--I figured it would be that sort of thing, because there's a lot of that "tricking" in what I've established is the way Japanese tales tend to go. And even thought Yuki acted like she loved him when she married him and all that, I don't know if she ever did love him for real. I guess there are two possibilities for me:
1. She never loved him and it was all part of a test. She, for whatever reason, is just a being that lives that way. She can go into calmer periods, but ultimately she's just this demon-woman who goes around ruining people's lives.
2. She DID love him, but in her "contract" (so to speak) she's still required to flee when he tells the story about her. As in, she didn't WANT to return to being evil/vengeful/whatever, but it is something like the curse of her nature that requires her to. Which is why she's so angry when he mentions her--he wakes up the necessity of her nature and she HAS TO behave that way, and she's angry because she WANTED to love him and be happy.
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