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Part 2, Chapter 3
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 school starts on January 11th, with a half-day ending at noon. After he gets out, he goes to Yamashita Pier with the gang, whom he hasn’t seen all winter break. The pier is empty, since it’s under construction and the weather is freezing cold. The boys can see smokestacks and lighthouses across the harbor, and they notice two ships docked nearby. They start playing around in the abandoned plywood boxes scattered across the pier. The chief picks a crate to meet in, and the gang assembles inside. A sailor has scribbled graffiti about his hopes and dreams across the crate’s walls, but the chief angrily says that it’s full of lies. He pounds on the wall with his tiny fist.
Just like Ryuji and Fusako relived their first date in the park, Noboru relives his summer meeting with his friends. The tone of their meetings becomes more pessimistic, though, in parallel with the seasonal shift from summer to winter. The abandoned docks are a significant setting, because they reflect Ryuji’s decision to give up sailing. Similarly, the chief’s reaction to the unknown sailor’s graffiti foreshadows the coming conversation about Ryuji and demonstrates that he’s skeptical about the very idea of sailing as a path to achieving greatness. Of course, this has been his attitude toward Ryuji since the very beginning.
Themes
Next, the chief asks Noboru about his “hero” (Ryuji). Noboru explains that Ryuji has returned and heroically survived a hurricane in the Caribbean. The chief jokingly asks if Ryuji got wet during the hurricane, like he did that summer day in the park. The boys laugh at Noboru, who proudly continues his story. He explains that Ryuji stayed behind when the Rakuyo left. Now, Ryuji smells like “the putrid odors landsmen reek of, the stench of death.” Fusako has been giving him books and teaching him to help out at the store.
Noboru’s faith in Ryuji has clearly fallen apart: he can no longer sustain his former fantasy of Ryuji as a great hero and role model because Ryuji has given up on that aspiration for himself. Of course, Noboru giving up on Ryuji is also significant because it implies that Noboru must give up on viewing himself as a potential hero in the future. His references to death suggest that, far from dying a glorious death at sea, Ryuji will now die an utterly conventional death on land. After all, he has traded an exciting and unpredictable professions for shopkeeping, which is arguably more mundane.
Themes
Noboru’s story frightens the boys; they feel like their dreams are collapsing into “a bleak, dreary future.” The chief asks Noboru if he wants “to make that sailor a hero again.” Noboru points out that Ryuji still keeps his uniform in the closet, but the chief says that truly making Ryuji into a hero will require something different—although he won’t say what.
Noboru’s story seems “bleak” and “dreary” to the other boys because it suggests that their two contradictory beliefs cannot coexist. Namely, it suggests that the meaninglessness of ordinary life ultimately wins out over people’s fantasies of greatness and heroism. Given the chief’s beliefs, his foreboding message strongly suggests that he’s hatching a sinister plot for revenge against Ryuji.
Themes
The chief describes his own winter vacation and mentions how much he hates his father. All fathers are evil, he argues, because they either neglect their sons or burden them with their own dreams, problems, and weaknesses. When the chief asked about his father’s purpose in life, his father said that people have to choose their own purpose. The chief thinks this is stupid and unimaginative. He also admits that his father beats him. Noboru suggests that he should retaliate, but the chief says that “there are worse things than being beaten.”
The chief’s troubled relationship with his father clearly motivates his ideas about the evil inherent in fatherhood, but these ideas also have their own coherent logic. Namely, the chief assumes that young men need autonomy in order to flourish—although his idea of flourishing is really learning to impose one’s will on the world. Fathers get in the way of this because they impose their will on their sons (like by beating them and pressuring them to make certain decisions). But fathers can also do “worse things,” such as teaching their children the wrong values in the first place—like weakness rather than strength. Needless to say, the characters are focused entirely on how men should live in this passage; they have absolutely no interest in women’s needs.
Themes
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The chief says that Noboru is lucky because his father died. But he also argues that people can become powerful by learning about the evil that their fathers embody. Number four complains that his father drinks, beats his mother, and has three mistresses. Number five, whose father constantly prays and worries about the family’s moral purity, says that he envies Noboru. And while Noboru feels lucky to not have a father, he worries that he won’t stay so lucky for long.
The chief and his gang worship power above all else, so they suggest that young men can learn to dominate others by imitating the fathers who dominate them. They therefore suggest that while Noboru’s lack of a father gives him more freedom than other boys, it also deprives him of a key role model. Of course, this all raises serious questions about Noboru’s relationship with Ryuji, who is quickly turning from a role model into a father figure—or, if the chief is right, an intolerable oppressor.
Themes
