Yesterday, the reading of the first half of Kawabata's
"Snow Country" was due for class.
The whole plot of the first half included a man who was staying at the
hot springs in the "snow country" of Japan and he had an encounter
with a geisha. When he was here the last
time, he interacted with the same geisha but he left the next morning and
thought he would never see her again.
This time, he met with her again and now that she was older he got to
know her a little better. The
relationship between the pair is very strange and the geisha is very fickle
with the man. The one day they're
friendly and getting along the next she tells him that she never wants to see
him again and that she's going home. They
go back and forth in this way for what seems like the entire first half of the
work. I do not know how Kawabata
expected the reader to react to the constant back and forth banter of the two
characters, but for me it just turned very boring very quickly. The geisha came
off as annoying with her constant mood swings and drunken tendencies. Upon completion of part one, the man and the
geisha have slept together (finally!) and then he leaves in the morning. The
geisha sees him off at the train station.
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