Kitchen Essay Final Draft Name: Ethan Brooks Date: 10/23/22 Final Draft: In Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, grief is depicted through the use of darkness and light. The darkness motif represents how grief can cause feelings of despair and loneliness, and the light motif explores Yoshimoto’s theme about how we can find meaning and hope through the pursuit of connections with others. In the book Kitchen, the author, Banana Yoshimoto, uses the darkness motif to convey Mikage’s grief and loneliness and the light to show all things that make her happy. For example, when Mikage goes back to her apartment, she feels as if she were “coming back to a stranger’s house, cold and dark”. This shows Mikage being depressed because going home should not be cold and dark, but instead the opposite like everything light is supposed to represent. Another similar instance was when Mikage saw “that the world was so large, the cosmos so black. The unbounded fascination of it, the unbounded loneliness.” From this, it can be assumed that she is sad because she feels lonely in a large and dark world. Being lonely results in sadness because you usually want to be alone when you’re sad or depressed. People like being around happy people so being sad and alone makes sense. Mikage feels light when Yuichi visits her house, filling “the entire apartment with light, like a sunroom.” In a way, this suggests she has found company or light and is no longer sad from loneliness. This must be because whenever she is happy she is with friends which makes them the light of her life. Also every time she is not alone or happy in the book it feels like the atmosphere is a lot more joyful and brighter. In conclusion, Mikage’s sadness is shown with the darkness motif while her happy moments are expressed through the light motif. At the beginning of the book, it is shown that Mikage suffers from extreme grief as shown from the constant and recurring darkness in her life, but as you progress through the book she slowly rids herself of this grief by befriending new people and finding her light. For example, before she moved in with Yuichi and Eriko Mikage “felt so alone” and “from the bottom of [her] heart [she] wanted to give up on living”. This shows her overwhelming amount of grief from the death of her family members and the reason why this is affecting her a lot is because she is going through this alone, without support from others. When she does move in with Eriko and Yuichi, she feels that “little by little, light and air came [back] into [her] heart”. This means that she is starting to recover from grieving her grandmother alone by filling her world with people who care about her. In the end, Mikage realizes from “the beacon of the faraway lighthouse” that there is always light in the darkness, and that is all we need to guide us through grief and dark times. There is always light in the darkness because somebody will always be there to support you as shown from Mikage’s case and those people that support you will guide you through the darkness. In conclusion, grief is shown through the use of darkness and light. Darkness causes grief and light guides recovery. I really liked this book because for some reason it was easier to read and understand. The whole story was really amazing and I wouldn’t mind rereading this someday.
