Introducing
Your new presentation assistant.
Refine, enhance, and tailor your content, source relevant images, and edit visuals quicker than ever before.
Trending searches
The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket By Yasunari Kawabat
375
The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket
by Yasunari Kawabat
Courtney Edmundson & Amber Ickes
Setting
Yasunari Kawabata (1899-1972)
Japan in the early 20th century
- Paper lanterns
- Time in which the author lived
- "her white cotton kimono"
Characters
- Born June 11, in Osaka, Japan
- Graduated from Tokyo Imperial University in 1924
- Published his first short story Izu Dancer in 1927
- Regarded as one of the leading Japanese authors
- Won Nobel Prize
- Committed suicide in 1972
- Narrator - unknown who it is, but can be assumed to be Kawabata himself
- Fujio - the little boy who catches the cricket and gives it to Kiyoko
- Kiyoko - the little girl whom the cricket is given to
Questions?
Themes
Why do you think Kyoko's name is on Fujio's waist? Why is Fujio's on Kyoko's chest?
What does the author mean?
Symbolism
Plot Summary
Dedication
Young Love
Red - passion
Green - life
Cricket - luck; everything good
Kiyoko - purity, innocence
"Fujio! Even when you have become a young man, laugh with pleasure at a girl's delight when, told that it's a grasshopper, she is given a bell cricket; laugh with afection at a girl's chagrin when, told that it's a bell cricket, she is given a grasshopper.
Even if you have the wit to look by yourself in a bush away from the other children, there are not many bell crickets in the world. Probably you will find a girl like a grasshopper whom you think is a bell cricket.
And finally, to your clouded, wounded heart, even a true bell cricket will seem like a grasshopper."
The narrator is walking home from university, when he hears a bug. He follows the sound to find a group of children with their homemade lanterns. One of the boys finds a grasshopper, and asks repeatedly if anyone wants it. He stops asking when a certain little girl says she does. When the boy looks at, what the girl corrected the boy to be- the cricket, the name carved into the boys lantern "Fujio" is caste upon the girl's chest in green. Across the boy's waist, "Kiyoko" was shining in red. The narrator then relates how girls will be like the grasshopper/bellcricket to Fujio in the future.
Progression of Love