Analysis of A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Oe - Book Report/Review Example

Bird: The Alter Ego of Kenzaburo Ōe According to Freud, whenever a situation threatens our morals, and our reality, and could cause us to behave inappropriately, we will become anxious; one way to handle this anxiety is with some sort of defense mechanism (81). When the doctors told Kenzaburo Ōe that his son faced a life with permanent and devastating disabilities, Ōe could not handle this without an elaborate defense mechanism. Possibly, Ōe received this news too soon after the loss of his father and grandmother; possibly, it was too soon after Japan’s surrender in World War II. Possibly, Ōe had other private losses. For whatever reasons, Ōe resorted to inventing an alter ego whereby he could secretly act out a fantasy life and thereby handle the first year of his son’s life. De Bellis defined alter ego as “a psychological term that refers to an artist’s creation of a character similar to himself” (11). Bird, the protagonist from A Private Matter, was Ōe’s alter ego simply doing all the sinful and mischievous things that Ōe so longed to do as he went about dutifully behaving as a proper husband and father. BACKGROUND INFORMATION Born in Japan in 1935, Kenzaburo Ōe spent his youth on the Japanese island of Shikoku (Ōe x). His childhood bliss was shattered in 1945, according to Neufeld, Y’Blood, and Jefferson, when the United States called for a surrender of Japan by strategically aiming bombs at 67 Japanese cities (124). When Japan refused to capitulate, Neufeld et al. continued, the United Kingdom and the Republic of China joined the United States and called for Japan’s surrender through the Potsdam Declaration. Japan ignored this as well. On two separate days in 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs on two cities in Japan, with deaths reaching 90,000 to 166,000 people in Hiroshima and 60,000 to 80,000 in Nagasaki within the following two to four months. At least half of the deaths occurred on the specific day of the bombing (124-125). Whether the bombs of World War II physically touched Ōe or his family is unknown, but the war must have affected him tremendously. Later in his life, he wrote a book, Hiroshima Notes, in memory of what happened at Hiroshima. Ōe also wrote of his childhood pain when he learned the Japanese Emperor had surrender in the war, and when Ōe realized the Emperor had a “human voice, no different from any other adult’s” (xi). "The values that had regulated life in the world he knew as a child, however fatally, were blown to smithereens after the war” (xi). According to the Columbia Encyclopedia, at the age of 18, Ōe left the island of Shikoku to study at the Tokyo University where he soon started writing. In 1958, he won the first of many awards, the Akutagawa Prize, and he published his first novel, Nip the Buds, Shoot the Kid. In 1963, his wife Yukari delivered his first child, Hikari, who suffered from a brain hernia and permanent mental disabilities (35629). The doctors gave Ōe and Yukari two choices: allow the baby to die or perform an operation to remove the herniation. However, the operation would leave them with a child dependent upon them for the rest of his life. They chose the latter and their son was permanently mentally impaired, non-communicate, and apparently, a doomed child until he was six, and they discovered he had the ability to play the piano. The First Year. Veigle wrote that after Hikari’s birth, Ōe stayed committed to his wife and child, which was most uncharacteristic of Japanese men. To illustrate the rare commitment Ōe had to his child, Veigle quoted Cameron, “At this time scarred survivors of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bathing in rivers because they were forbidden by law to enter public baths" (7). Cameron continued that even the neighbors of Ōe mocked him when he took his child in public and criticized him for not hiding his son away as was usually done with children with deformities. Veigle continued that Ōe took care of cooking and cleaning so his wife could attend to the physical needs of his son (7). In contrast, 27-year-old Bird left his naked wife naked on a rubber mat to have his child while he shopped for maps of Africa, his dreamland getaway. He fantasized of an encounter with a transvestite, “Maybe I should have found the courage to go with him myself” (4). He played games in a teenage dive, and he fought a Japanese gang—and won. It took Bird 15 pages to learn of the birth of his child, but it took his mother-in-law to think to ask what gender the child was. Bird just wanted to know if the doctors could just keep the child at the first hospital; meaning, could they just let the child die. In the first year of Hikari’s life Ōe wrote at least one book, A Personal Matter, and possibly two, Hiroshima Notes. Perhaps he wrote the latter earlier, but he published both books on the same day—one year after Hikari was born. He did this while cooking, cleaning, and staying committed to Yukari and Hikari. His alter ego, however, was indulging in decadence of all different types. Bird does follow the command of the doctors and does go with them to the university hospital; however, he believes he is leaving his son to die. Bird does not mourn his child, nor does he show sympathy or concern for his wife. No, but he does look up an old girlfriend. He also begins a heavy drinking and wild sexual relationship almost immediately. To make Bird seem more of a loathsome fellow, the reader learns that he raped his “girlfriend” on their only previous tryst. Yet, he did not realize this, and she was a virgin. Bird then shows up for his mediocre instructor position hung-over and throws up, whereas a nerdy young student promptly runs up, sniffs the vomitus, smells the Jack Daniels, ands tattles on Bird. This is a clear indication that Ōe’s subconscious was warning him to have fun, but not too much fun, because the wages of sin are many. The gods (Ōe) sufficiently punishes Bird and made certain his superiors fire him from his menial position. Bird is Lesser Than. With a writer’s liberty, I condensed some of the words Ōe used to describe Bird: Small, thin, with a small paunch at his belly, he slouched forward when he walked and bunched his shoulders around his neck… emaciated like an old man, his shoulders were like folded wings, his features in general were birdlike. His tan, sleek nose thrust out of his face like a beak and hooked sharply toward the ground. His eyes gleamed with a hard, dull light the color of glue and almost never displayed emotion, except occasionally to shutter open as though in mild surprise. His thin hard lips…and hair licking at the sky like ruddy tongues of flame (2-3). Ōe made approximately 150 references to animals, mostly small animals, in A Personal Matter, which confounded me greatly until I stumbled upon a critique from The Reading Life. Mel u inferred that Ōe wanted the reader to see Bird just as brain damaged as his son, Hiakri. Bird spent the greater part of his time thinking of alcohol, homosexuality, suicide, forbidden sexual encounters, and tiny animal creatures. Ōe wanted the reader to hate Bird: The meagerness of her fingers recalled chameleon legs…the toad like rubber man rolling the tire down the road....Bird stared for an instant in the numerous ant holes in the ebonite receiver...the glass chatter at the bottle like an angry rat...like a titmouse pecking at millet seeds….like an orangutan sampling a flavor…Bird and Himiko exchanged magnanimous smiles and drank their whiskey purposefully, like beetles sucking sap…whiskey-heated eyes dart a weasel glance…(taken from the Mel u, The Reading Life). My Son is Greater Than. When Ōe studied French Literature at the Tokyo University undoubtedly, one of his favorite poets was Guillaume Apollinaire. This is apparent because several times, Ōe compared the child in A Personal Matter to the wounded and bandaged-headed Apollinaire. According to Liukkonen, besides writing poetry, Apollinaire wrote “semi-pornographical books; he was an innovator in the theatre of the absurd, and made known Cubism as a school of painting with his study PEINTRES CUBISTES (1913)” (para 1). Apollinaire volunteered for service in World War I where he was injured, thus the bandaged-head imagery. This injury did not kill him, however. He died in the influenza epidemic of 1918. For some reason, it was important to Ōe that the readers correlate the baby in the novel, and thereby his son Hikari with the bandaged war-hero Apollinaire. My son has a bandage on his head and so did Apollinaire when he was wounded on the field of battle. On a dark and lonely battlefield I have never seen, my son was wounded like Apollinaire and now he is screaming soundlessly (32). FORGIVENESS TO THOSE WHO REPENT After committing unspeakable sins, such as taking the baby to an abortionist to be murdered, Ōe expects the reader to absolve Bird from all sin with only a few pages left in the book. Just because Bird finally decides not to kill his child, the reader is to believe that his father-in-law gives him his job back, his friend forgives him, his girlfriend conveniently leaves for Zanzibar (so his wife never discovers his escapades), his wife takes him back, and his baby’s severe brain hernia is merely a nodule. The baby is perfectly fine. Bird’s father-in-law even relieves him of his childhood nickname. He is at last a man. Conclusion A Personal Matter deservedly won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1994. It is hard to know how you would react to the news that your firstborn child suffers from a severe and permanent disability. Ōe handled the news in the only way he knew how: He created an alter ego who could drink to puking, screw old girlfriends, stay out all night, mess up his job, and generally thumb his nose at society. All the while, Ōe went about his life as the perfect husband and father because he had this secret. His alter ego kept him sane. Who knows what defense mechanisms another person employs? Who can judge another? Ōe apparently was able to shed Bird at the end of one year. Obviously, he did better than most. Work Cited De Bellis, Jack. The John Updike Encyclopedia. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. 2000.Web. 9 September 2011. Freud, Sigmund. The Ego and the Id. San Francisco, CA: Pacific-Publishing Studios. 2010. Print. Liukkonen, Petri.  Guillaume Apollinaire. 2008. Web. 10 September 2011. Mel u. A Personal Matter by Kenzaburo Ōe. The Reading Life. 2010. Web. 10 September 2011. Neufeld, Jacob, Y’Blood, William, T., and Jefferson, Mary Lee (Eds.). Pearl to V-J Day: World War II in the Pacific. Bethesda, MA: Air Force Historical Foundation. 2000. Print. Ōe, Kenzaburo. A Personal Matter. Trans. John Nathan. New York, NY: Grove Press. 1969. Print. The Columbia Encyclopedia. (6th Ed.). “Ōe, Kenzaburo.” New York, NY: Columbia University Press. 2009. Web. 9 September 201. Veigle, Ann. “The Story of a Truly Differently Abled Child.” The Washington Times. 23 August 1998. Web. 9 September 2011. Read More