NOTE: you can skip the brief story, "Green Onions," since it's not as important for our discussion as the other two stories (and it gives you less to read!). So read those two are here are some questions...we're almost done with these stories, so be sure to catch up if you fell behind.
Answer two of the following:
Q1: How does Japanese society respond to HanzaburÅ’s
disappearance and his strange diaries? Consider, especially, the newspaper
articles written about his “insanity” and his brief reappearance at his wife’s
home.
Q2: What do you think Major Kimura means in “The story of a Head That Fell Off,” when he says, “It is important—even necessary—for us to become acutely aware of the fact that we can’t trust ourselves” (119)? Is this the true moral of the story? Or yet another unreliable narrator imposing his view on the reader?
Q3: Despite the level of satire, “Horse Legs” is also a kind of modern-day fable or fairy-tale. What might be the metaphorical significance of a normal man, in a normal job, who suddenly dies and returns to life with horse legs? How might this represent something ‘real’ in our own world—or a condition someone might actually have or feel?
Q4: When the Chinese soldier, Xiao-er, looks back on his life on the moment of death, “he recognized all too well the ugliness that had filled it” (116). What ugliness do you think he (and Akutagawa) is referring to, and how might this connect with previous stories we’ve discussed?
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