Little Neighbor

Familiar tunes of Baby Einstein

rise through my apartment floorboards

and Mozart plays in the background

of my otherwise normal Sunday—

that is, until “Rondo Alla Turca” is

interrupted

by gleeful young giggles and screams.

Enter the muffled intonations of a mother

Stop yelling, dear. The neighbors will hear you…

The wearing patience audible in her voice

I’m going to count to three…

as she gently chides her human-in-training.

One…two…three.

Suddenly my little neighbor

belts out a song of utter babble and nonsense at the top of her lungs,

proclaiming her presence to the world from below me.

Raw power rumbles through her vocal cords

and explodes out into the quiet

as she joins Mozart in a grand symphony.

The percussion of her little feet

stomping against the floorboards,

her music echoes, echoes, echoes,

until silence fills the empty space

that applause normally would.

Enter the muffled intonations of a mother

Honey…

Gently chiding her human-in-training,

Inside voices, remember?

signaling time for a curtain call.

Why don’t we go get you ready for your nap?

And I hear all of this as nothing more

than an invisible audience member

up in the rafters, unseen, unheard,

and hoping for an encore.

Reading the Magistrate in Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s "In a Bamboo Grove"

Ryūnosuke Akutagawa’s short story, “In a Bamboo Grove,” tells contradictory versions of the same story surrounding the rape of a woman named Masago and the murder of her husband, Takehiro. Akutagawa tells this story through the testimonies and confessions of several different characters, including a woodcutter, a traveling priest, a policeman, Masago’s mother, a bandit named Tajōmaru, Masago, and the late Takehiro’s spirit as interpreted by a medium. The characters reveal unique voices through their different perceptions of the crimes they recount to the magistrate, whose duty it is to discern fact from fiction and ultimately bring about justice. However, the magistrate inhabits a sort of liminal space between presence and absence in the story; unlike the other characters, he has no dialogue of his own, so he joins the reader as a passive but seemingly omniscient recipient of the statements. Lacking a conventional voice in the story, he must therefore manifest as a character in other ways. Akutagawa artfully characterizes the magistrate using second-person point of view to create an interactive space for characters to reveal small details about his attitudes and beliefs; in other words, Akutagawa’s use of “you” allows the characters to uncover the magistrate’s otherwise hidden character (Edwards) by placing them in direct conversation with him. Ultimately, the subtle characterization of the magistrate emphasizes the ways in which both he and the reader are vulnerable to biases in spite of their apparent omniscience and authority in the story.

The interactive, second-person point of view in this story places the readers in the magistrate’s unique position of power and influence. It becomes our duty to question the testifiers alongside him and decide what we believe to be true. That being said, we remain passive in this investigative work, so we must rely on the syntax of the characters’ testimonies to reveal the magistrate’s questions and thought processes. For instance, Masago’s mother says, “Yes, Your Honor, my daughter was married to the dead man,” and “No, Sir, he was a very kind man” (Akutagawa 12). From these statements, we can infer that the magistrate asked the old woman about her relation to Masago and Takehiro and whether Takehiro had any enemies. They demonstrate the ways in which the magistrate works to compile facts from the different testimonies. The woodcutter and policeman even repeat the magistrate’s questions back to him, asking “Did I see a sword or anything?” (Akutagawa 10), or “The time, Sir? (Akutagawa 11). This rhetorical question-and-answer format allows the magistrate and the reader to interact with the testifiers while maintaining what appears to be objective distance from the crimes, themselves. This liminal space between presence and absence that the magistrate and readers come to occupy grants them the role of all-knowing judge in the story.

The respect with which many of the characters treat the magistrate further distinguishes him as god-like in terms of power and morality. The woodcutter, the traveling priest, the policeman, and Masago’s mother repeatedly address him as “Your Honor” and “Sir,” reaffirming his status as the authority in this scenario. Responding to a question from the magistrate regarding the size of the horse at the crime scene, the priest humbly confesses, “I’m a priest after all. I don’t know much about horses” (Akutagawa 11). This meek admittance of a lack of knowledge emphasizes the discrepancy of class and power that exists between him and the receiver of his testimony, reinforcing the magistrate’s supposedly omniscient capabilities. Similarly, when the policeman testifies, he gently suggests that the magistrate “question [Tajōmaru] about [the pair of worshippers murdered at Toribe Temple]” (Akutagawa 12); this proposal brings to the reader’s attention that the magistrate’s power extends beyond simply the crimes involving Masago, Takehiro, and Tajōmaru. Rather, he is an all-knowing, all-powerful, god-like character capable of identifying the truth in all crimes that occur within the universe of the story.

In contrast with the characters who treat the magistrate with great reverence, Tajōmaru addresses him informally and calls his motives into question, characterizing him as immoral and power-hungry. The bandit’s confession begins almost immediately with a tone of self-defense as he says, “Now, wait just a minute—you can torture me all you want, but I can’t tell you what I don’t know” (Akutagawa 13). This line implies that the magistrate has condemned Tajōmaru before he even has a chance to confess to his crimes. One could argue that the bandit deserves such treatment given his poor reputation, but “relying on someone’s reputation—positive or negative…does not equate to an objective understanding of the truth” (Hu). Thus, this apparent threat on the magistrate’s part calls his reliability as an objective judge into question.

Tajōmaru never refers to the magistrate by any title such as “Your Honor” or “Sir” like the other characters, as if to dissolve the power imbalance that exists between them. Instead, he condemns him as a “gentleman” (Akutagawa 13, 15), arguing that men like him “kill with [their] power, with [their] money, and sometimes just with [their] words: [they] tell people [they’re] doing them a favor. True, no blood flows, the man is still alive, but [they’ve] killed him all the same” (Akutagawa 13). In Tajōmaru’s mind, the magistrate carries a sense of false moral superiority that he uses to take advantage of the less powerful. This scathing evaluation lowers the magistrate from the godly moral center of the story to a simple mortal “bound by the subjectivity of [his] mind” (Hu), just like the other characters in the story. Additionally, it forces the readers to grapple with our own vulnerability to manipulation, as we, too, likely used the previous testimonies to form negative opinions about Tajōmaru prematurely (Hu). Ultimately, Tajōmaru’s discussion of power paradoxically furthers and disrupts our conflation with the magistrate; while it forces us to recognize the impossibility of perceiving an objective truth, it also invites us to separate ourselves from the ways in which the magistrate may be biased.

Akutagawa further reveals the magistrate’s potential biases in the parenthetical commentary that appears throughout Tajōmaru’s confession. These parentheticals mirror the liminal space that the magistrate occupies in the story by revealing his attitudes towards certain characters without explicitly placing him in direct conversation with them. For instance, the magistrate makes note of “(A sarcastic smile)” (Akutagawa 13) from Tajōmaru following his biting criticism of gentlemen. However, given the judging figure’s preexisting aversion towards the bandit, the reader cannot be sure whether Tajōmaru truly smiled in this manner, or whether the magistrate simply perceived this behavior following the verbal attack on his moral character. He also notes Tajōmaru’s “(Sullen excitement)” and “(Cheerful grin)” (Akutagawa 15) in the way he speaks about killing Takehiro, which seems to incriminate the bandit even more by emphasizing his wild, bloodthirsty nature. The unnecessary insertion of these descriptors seems to discourage the possibility of alternative interpretations from the reader because it defines the tone of Tajōmaru’s message for us, demonstrating the inevitability of the magistrate’s bias regardless of his attempts at objectivity.

The magistrate’s parentheticals function similarly in Masago’s penitent confession and the testimony from her mother. For instance, the following note punctuates the old woman’s emotional testimony: “(Here, the old woman broke down and was unable to go on speaking)” (Akutagawa 12). That the magistrate describes her as “breaking down” rather than simply “crying” indicates that he feels a certain level of sympathy for her; his language carries an emotional charge that undermines his impartiality as a judging figure and reveals his human limitations. Similarly, in Masago’s confession, he makes note of her “(Forlorn smile)” and “(Sudden violent sobbing)” that follow the mention of her failed suicide attempts, as if to underscore the penitent nature of her confession and flag physical signs of sincerity. The voluntary inclusion of these observations reveals the weight the magistrate places in physical manifestations of grief or remorse; he seems more likely to judge in favor of those he views as earnest in their expression of emotions.

Additionally, the magistrate repeatedly makes note of the medium’s “(Long silence[s])” and “(explosion[s] of derisive laughter)” (Akutagawa 18) that interrupt Takehiro’s testimony. These observations do not necessarily reveal much about the magistrate’s feelings toward the dead man or his mouthpiece, but they do emphasize the ways in which human perception is inherently flawed. Although Takehiro’s testimony “should be the most reliable of them all…[it] is arguably the least concrete because it is the only account of them all to pass through two brains before delivery” (Hu). Whether the silence and laughter come directly from his spirit or are part of the medium’s interpretive process remains unclear, which points to the larger question of to what extent it is “reliable to trust second-hand information, if it is reliable at all?” (Hu).

Although these parentheticals are entirely unnecessary to the forward movement of the story, Akutagawa actively chooses to include them. Why? That these observations appear only in the statements from Masago, her mother, Takehiro, and Tajōmaru emphasize these characters’ closeness to the crime and the weight of their words in comparison to those of the priest or woodcutter, who are simply passersby. Additionally, very form of this commentary interrupts the testimonies, directing the readers’ attention away from the present speaker and immersing us more fully in the mind of the magistrate. However, it does so in a way that impedes our already limited ability to discern fact from fiction; while it is often our job as readers to infer a speaker’s tone, the magistrate’s parenthetical commentary interprets tone for us, forcing us to think about certain testimonies in certain ways. Thus, not only must we consume the testimonies with a critical eye, but we must also consider the ways in which the magistrate’s own biases work to produce these supplementary observations; in short, these parentheticals represent a way for the magistrate to kill “just with [his] words” (Akutagawa 13).

Ultimately, “In a Bamboo Grove” questions the very nature of reality, perception, and power. Akutagawa uses the initial testimonies in the story to establish both the magistrate and the reader as all-knowing, all-powerful judges; although we receive contradictory information from a variety of unreliable witnesses, our authority grants us the power to discern the truth. Akutagawa begins to deconstruct that power, however, with Tajōmaru’s confession. The bandit’s refusal to blindly abide by the magistrate’s rules forces the readers to step back and question not only the credibility of the testifiers, but also that of the magistrate; we learn that we cannot trust him, nor can we trust ourselves, because our human limitations keep us from perceiving an objective truth. This gradual unraveling of the magistrate’s reliability continues more subtly in the parenthetical commentary that appears in the testimonies of the characters most central to the story, revealing the ways in which he fails to live up to the omniscience required of his powerful position; at the end of the day, he is human just like Akutagawa, his readers, and the other characters in the story, meaning he is inherently vulnerable to persuasion and tethered to subjectivity. Even if an objective reality exists, the human mind is incapable of perceiving it.

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Works Cited

Akutagawa, Ryūnosuke. “In a Bamboo Grove.” Rashōmon And Seventeen Other Stories, by Jay Rubin et al., Penguin, 2006, pp. 10–19.

Edwards, Kim. “Icebergs, Glaciers, and Arctic Dreams: Developing Characters.” Creating Fiction: Instruction and Insights from Teachers of the Associated Writing Programs, by Julie Checkoway, Story Press, 2001, pp. 44–55.

Hu, Eric. “In a Bamboo Grove: An Analysis on the Nature of Truth and Human Perception.” 故郷へ, 29 Jan. 2013, furusatoe.tumblr.com/post/41761060829/in-a-bamboo-grove-an-analysis-on-the-nature-of.

Parodying the Parodied: The Extremes of the Revenge Tragedy Genre

The revenge tragedy genre is characterized by themes of violence, madness, disguise, chastity, ghosts, and mortality. Its characters perpetuate the cycle of revenge, treat human lives as part of an economy of exchange, and often equate love with violence. The repetition of these themes in well-known plays like Hamlet and Titus Andronicus makes revenge tragedy conventions widely accessible to the general public and allows them to be spoofed in works like The Princess Bride and Revenger’s Tragedy. More specifically, the similarities and differences between revenge plots and their parodied counterparts emphasize the excess of the genre. Ultimately, these stories illuminate the absurdities of revenge, caricaturize human flaw, and reveal the blurred line between heroes and villains.

Revenge tragedy conventions synonymize love and revenge in defining vengeance as necessary to proving the existence of familial connections; furthermore, to decline the opportunity to avenge one’s family member is to dishonor one’s family. In Titus Andronicus, Tamora tells her sons that in avenging their brother whom Titus sacrificed, “The worse to [Lavinia], the better loved of me” (II.3.67). This idea seems to indicate that because it is natural to love one’s family, it is natural to avenge one’s family. However, Chiron and Demetrius’ rape and dismemberment of Lavinia is anything but natural; rather, it demonstrates the twisted, paradoxical idea of love characteristic of revenge tragedies. In telling the story of his murder, the ghost of Hamlet’s father says, “Hamlet, if ever didst thy dear father love…Revenge his foul and most unnatural murder” (5.21.18-20). Like Tamora’s, the ghost’s request perverts love from something pure and beautiful into something violent and deadly, highlighting the twisted nature of the revenge genre. In this moment, Hamlet takes the image of the ideal son to the extreme: “From the tables of my memory, I’ll wipe away/All saws of books, all trivial fond conceits/And thy remembrance all alone shall sit” (5.74-77). Adopting a totalizing role, Hamlet erases the person he used to be and pledges his complete devotion to avenging his father. He illustrates the idealized, unrealistic nature of revenge and its dominant role in the lives of revenge tragedy characters.

Inigo Montoya’s plotline in The Princess Bride parodies the excess this genre requires for characters to execute revenge properly. Like Hamlet, Inigo erases all aspects of his identity in order to avenge his father, slain by Count Rugen. However, Inigo’s sole identity as the avenger stems from his father being murdered when he was just 11 years old. His age places him at a severe disadvantage to Rugen in any attempt at vengeance, forcing him to accept the certainty of his own death and annihilating the opportunity for him to be anyone but the avenger. While Rugen leaves young Inigo physically alive after their duel, he also burdens him with a slash on each cheek and the crushing weight of knowing he failed to avenge his father, thus killing any aspects of his identity that do not revolve around revenge. He even says, “I loved my father, so naturally, I challenged his murderer to a duel” (The Princess Bride), speaking of revenge as the logical next step when in reality, challenging a grown man to a duel as a child is anything but. Inigo’s clear disadvantage in this situation emphasizes the absurdity of the expectation for sons to prove love and loyalty to their families through violence. Inigo further parodies the excessive nature of vengeance in his motto, “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die” (The Princess Bride). He literally identifies himself as the avenger in stating his name and purpose for living. From the moment he lost his duel with Count Rugen, Inigo “dedicated [his] life to the study of fencing. So the next time [they] meet, [he] will not fail.” (The Princess Bride). He also dedicates his life to punishing himself for failing his father: “Father, I have failed you for 20 years. Now, our misery can end” (The Princess Bride).

The treatment of human lives as part of an economy of exchange perpetuates the violence and vengeance characteristic of revenge tragedies. The genre's characters practice the “eye for an eye” mentality with such devotion that it extends beyond a law of society into a law of nature. Human lives are not just expendable—they must be expended in order to maintain balance in society. Through its characters’ dialogue, The Princess Bride appears to critique this idea of revenge as a business. Towards the beginning of the movie, Inigo explains that he works for Vizzini to make a living, as “There’s not a lot of money in revenge” (The Princess Bride). Beyond its surface level, this quote suggests that there is not much reward in revenge and perhaps, that it fails to restore justice as it is meant to; rather, it perpetuates the cycle of revenge, encouraging extreme rage and violence. Obsessed with avenging his father, Inigo resorts to villainous means in order to survive because the pressure he feels to be the ideal son forces him into a state of depression and alcoholism. At the end of the movie, Inigo says, “You know, it’s very strange. I have been in the revenge business so long, now that it’s over, I don’t know what to do with the rest of my life” (The Princess Bride). As a solution, Westley, who had inherited the Dread Pirate Robert’s ship, Revenge, as his own, offers the ship to Inigo as a gift. This moment humorously highlights Inigo’s totalizing dedication to avenging his father.

Many of the characters in The Revenger’s Tragedy act as personified caricatures of human flaws typical within the genre. For example, Vindice translates to “the revenger of wrongs,” and his sole purpose in the play is to avenge Gloriana, whom the Duke murdered. Spurio translates to “the bastard,” and his character devises an entire revenge plot against his father based on this defining characteristic. Similarly, Count Rugen, or the six-fingered man in The Princess Bride, is the personification of “unnatural murder,” or the caricature of the revenge tragedy villain. The Oxford English Dictionary defines unnatural as “Not in accordance or conformity with the normal physical nature of humans or animals.” In the literal sense of the word, having six fingers is very unnatural, and this physical abnormality isolates Rugen from the rest of society, making him an outsider and, perhaps, contributing to his villainous motivations. It becomes his defining characteristic and further emphasizes the way revenge tragedies use extremes to send messages.

Ultimately, revenge plots and their parodies emphasize the excessive nature of the genre and illustrate the ambiguity between heroes and villains. Count Rugen perfectly captures these conventions in telling Inigo, “You’ve got an overdeveloped sense of vengeance. It’s going to get you in trouble someday” (Princess Bride). This “overdeveloped sense of vengeance” is at the core of the revenge tragedy genre. The characters each have unique flaws that propel the plot forward in all of their absurdity. By magnifying these flaws to extreme levels and revealing how they interact, revenge tragedies seem to explore the human experience—perhaps serving not only to entertain, but also to warn humanity against the dangers of violence, vengeance, and extremes.

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Works Cited

Middleton, Thomas. “The Revenger’s Tragedy.” English Renaissance Drama. Ed.

Princess Bride. Dir. Rob Reiner. 20th Century Fox, 1987. Film.

Shakespeare, William. “Hamlet.” Hamlet: The Texts of 1603 and 1623, Bloomsbury Arden

Shakespeare, 2015.

Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Ed. Russ McDonald. New York: PENGUIN, 2000.

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