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Summary
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Sailor Who Fell from Grace with the Sea, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Glory, Heroism, and Death
Japanese Nationalism and Identity
Masculinity, Love, and Family
Reality, Perception, and Identity
Summary
Analysis
Noboru’s mother (Fusako) tells Noboru, “sleep well, dear,” then closes his bedroom door, locking him inside. She wonders how he would escape if the house burned down. But it’s Noboru’s own fault that he’s locked inside—he recently snuck out at night to meet someone he calls “the chief.” Noboru and his mother live in Yokohama, atop Yado Hill, and occupying forces took over their house after World War II. Now, 13-year-old Noboru is humiliated to be locked inside.
This opening scene introduces several key motifs that recur throughout the book. Noboru’s conflict with Fusako reflects his adamant rebellion against the adult world, while Fusako’s hypothetical worry about the house burning down is an early example of the novel’s preoccupation with death, destruction, and the nature of reality. Meanwhile, the house’s occupation by U.S. forces formed part of the Allied occupation of Japan after WWII, which transformed the nation’s political and economic system. Throughout the novel, characters struggle to choose between Western and traditional Japanese values as they cope with the occupation’s legacy.
Themes
One morning, alone at home, bored, and angry, Noboru starts tearing apart his room. He pulls all the drawers out of his dresser, then finds a peephole in the back of it. It leads into his mother’s room, which is lit by the hot summer sun bouncing off the sea. Looking through the peephole, Noboru sees the shiny American beds that his father bought before his death and a cloth embroidered with a “K” (for the family surname, Kuroda). He notices his mother’s dressing table, with its opulent mirror and her perfumes. Her embroidery frame is propped up on her couch, with the outline of a bird’s wings, and her window reflects the sky. The room seems like a stranger’s, but it exudes femininity.
The inexplicable, almost mystical peephole helps Noboru escape the boredom of being locked in his room. It provides him with a new, special perspective on his mother—one that makes the familiar appear strange. In this sense, the peephole represents Noboru’s search for truth—he finds new insight into reality by adopting new perspectives. It also shows his desire for exploration: the peephole gives him a temporary escape from the limits of his dull teenage life (and being locked in his room). Finally, everything Noboru sees in his mother’s room reflects her femininity and her marked Western tastes, which are a metaphor for Western cultural influences on Japan after WWII and U.S. occupation.
Themes
Noboru wonders where the peephole came from. He imagines “blond, hairy” occupying soldiers looking through it, and he starts to feel sick. He gets up and goes into his mother’s room. Now, it’s the “drab and familiar” place where he goes to whine, and where his mother rebukes him for acting like a little boy. He finds the other side of the peephole, which is hidden in the design carved into her walls. Then, he goes back to his room, puts his clothes away, and decides to keep the peephole a secret.
Noboru’s visceral feeling of disgust about the white American soldiers represents the way Japan—and particularly young Japanese people with traditional values, like Noboru—struggled to cope with and recover from the legacy of the U.S. occupation. By associating the occupation with the peephole, the novel clearly implies that the occupation was a profound violation of Japan’s sovereignty and privacy. Noboru’s mother’s room looks and feels completely different when he actually goes inside, instead of viewing it through the peephole. This shows how the perspective with which one observes something shapes how that thing looks. In particular, when Noboru walks into his mother’s room, he’s reminded of her power over him as a parent—whereas, when he views her room through the peephole, he has a special power over her instead.
Themes
Over the following months, whenever Noboru and his mother argue, he pulls the drawer out of his dresser at night and watches her get ready for bed through the peephole. She usually sits naked for several minutes, watching and sometimes touching herself at her dressing table. Noboru notes the shape of her body and wonders about the “zone of black” between her legs.
It’s significant that Noboru only spies on his mother after they argue: this shows that he looks through the peephole not because of curiosity, but because of his desire for revenge. Violating her privacy in her most intimate moments is really a way to take power over her. In fact, Noboru’s voyeurism doesn’t seem to be sexually motivated at all—instead, it’s practically intellectual. His fascination with his mother’s “zone of black” is really about his interest in the source and meaning of life.
Themes
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Like the other teenagers in his gang, Noboru thinks he’s a genius who knows the secret of life: to prepare for death. He believes that fathers and teachers—the people who propagate society—are evil sinners. He’s even proud of his own father’s death. When Noboru sees his mother’s naked body in the moonlight, “visions of emptiness” torture him. He feels like ugliness is consuming the world. But he never cries. He’s proud of his cold heart, which he compares to an old, rugged anchor.
Like many angsty teenagers, Noboru takes a nihilistic view of the world: he sees no good in it, only evil and emptiness. He focuses on death and destruction because, while they’re not necessarily meaningful in and of themselves, they’re also the only alternative to the meaninglessness of life and society. Meanwhile, he associates his mother’s body and sexuality with “visions of emptiness” because they’re the source of his own life, and also because he views women as little more than empty vessels through which men propagate life and society.
Themes
Late in the summer, a sailor named Tsukazaki gives Noboru a tour of his ship. As a thank-you, Noboru’s mother takes the sailor out to dinner. Then, she brings him home, and Noboru watches them through the peephole. While Noboru’s mother undresses slowly, the muscular, hairy sailor sheds his clothes in an instant. A ship blasts its horn, and Noboru compares the sound to the sea screaming, full of longing and grief. With the sound, Noboru sees the universe come together into a kind of miraculous whole: “Noboru and mother—mother and man—man and sea—sea and Noboru…” He feels that it’s his duty to protect this cycle of life.
Noboru’s disdain for fatherhood and procreation baldly contradicts his admiration for the sailor Tsukazaki and the cycle of life that he represents. The difference is that Noboru admires the sailor because he can imagine himself in the sailor place—unlike fathers and teachers, the sailor doesn’t have power over Noboru. Instead, the sailor represents the kind of masculine power that Noboru wants to have. In particular, the sailor’s connection to the sea represents Noboru’s attraction to exploration and discovery. It’s also a metaphor for Japan’s former global power, which was based around its navy. Thus, although Noboru cannot quite explain why, the sexual unity of his mother, the sailor Tsukazaki, and the ship’s horn appears to represent an alternative to the meaninglessness of Noboru’s life and the society in which he lives.
Themes
