Memoirs of a Geisha Essay example

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Memoirs of a Geisha Memoirs of a Geisha is written by Arthur Golden. He took him 10 years to write this novel he rewrote the entire novel three times, changing the point of view before finally settling on the first person viewpoint of Sayuri. Sayuri is the main character of this book who has a very adventurous life until she finally gets her true love. It starts out with her parents selling her to an okiya. An okiya is the house where a geisha and a couple apprentice geisha may live. In the okiya that Sayuri moved in to, there was an evil geisha already living there and her name was Hatsumomo. Here, the mother of the house pays for Sayuri to go to school and takes classes to become a geisha and soon is asked by Hatsumomo’s rival geisha Mameha to be her little sister. This is the most important role in becoming a geisha. She keeps learning and finally becomes an apprentice geisha, then loses her virginity to become an official geisha. Sayuri gets a danna (a man who pays for all debts and buys kimonos) until the war began. She is sent to a farm until a good friend of Sayuri’s asks her to be a geisha once again. She goes back to Gion and entertains once again and is asked by the chairman if he could be her danna. She moves to New York with him and lives there happily for the rest of her life. At a young age Sayuri meets the chairman, she sees him many more times in her life which is how she falls in love with him. One day Sayuri was running an errand when she was very sad. She runs into a man who she finds out is a chairman and cheers her up. He brings her a shaved-ice and gives her his handkerchief with the extra money from the purchase. Sayuri uses this money for prayer that she would see him again, because from this point she falls in love with the chairman. “I felt as a simple smelt must feel when a silver salmon glides by.” This is how she describes how she feels, which was in awe of how someone could be so caring when they really did not have to be. This is the first time she sees him, but only the first of many. Once Sayuri becomes an apprentice geisha her dreams come true and she sees the chairman again at a Sumo tournament. Sadly they don’t really speak because she was forced to speak with another man who she wasn’t
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