The Sailor Who Fell From Grace With The Sea Analysis

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Mishima uses the motif of death to help convey the lack of emotion in the youth male characters in his work, “The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea”. Mishima explains how the young boys of Japanese society highly value the bushido code, and they idealize the male figure as dominant, strong, and authoritative. To begin, the boys decide to express their lack of emotion by killing a helpless kitten. When the boys gruesomely slaughter the kitten, the “…chief pierced the skin at the chest with the point of the blade and scissored a long smooth cut to the throat. Then he pushed the skin to the sides with both hands: the glossy layer of fat beneath was like a peeled spring onion. The skinned neck, draped gracefully on the floor, seemed to be …show more content…
Furthermore, the emotionless and inhumane character of the boys is seen when they say, “’We must have human blood! Human blood! If we don’t get it this empty world will go pale and shrivel up. We must drain that sailor’s fresh lifeblood and transfuse it the dying universe, the dying sky, the dying forests, and the drawn, dying land” (167). With the use of blood and death imagery, Mishima provides an insight of the boys’ beliefs. Mishima explains how the boys believe that committing a murder will help fill in the emptiness of the world, and through this sacrifice it will allow them to be the ideal overpowering male character in the society. As well, the blood and death imagery used to justify their plan creates a sense of a dying setting which is in need of immediate help; and can be completed with the murder. Their extremity shows how they do not have a limit and are so influenced by the samurai figure that they will go on to commit a crime as killing a human; who in their viewpoint is not virile. Overall, using dark imagery to develop the motif of death Mishima depicts the extreme actions of the young boys to display their lack of emotion and sense of
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