Response to “Japanese Love Poems”

“Japanese Love Poems” is an allegory that talks about a waitress, an old German, a Japanese poems book, and a Krakow sausage; which symbolizes, at first, the main parties involved in World War II. Since this short story has a narrator and a dialogue—between the old German and the waitress—there are three voices. The order of appearance is: the narrator, the old German, and the waitress. My first interpretation was mentioned as this paragraph began; however, could research and a deeper contact with the text change my perception?

World War II was and is an important episode in everybody’s life and it is because the decision Adolf Hitler took had severe consequences for every country in the world. Besides, the need and desire of success made the countries remain unified in two groups called The Axis—Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, and Japan—and The Allies—The United States of America, Britain, France, USSR, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Greece, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, South Africa, Yugoslavia.

My first interpretation of the story was that one of the characters, the old German, represented one of the most important countries of the war; he is aged, which could mean that he has strong beliefs in his culture and traditions. Therefore, I inferred that the waitress is American and admires Japanese poems, just as America did before World War II with Japan and its empire; her attitude changes towards the old German man and the book of poems, which symbolizes how the US punished both countries after the war. However, a deeper contact with the text and the context that it describes, made me realize that the waitress deducted that there was a connection between the nationality of the man and the sausage, and thought that it had something to do with the Holocaust.

On the other hand, the use of metonymy is expressed as “a small book of Japanese love poems” that is a real text, places the reader in a different context. “It felt changed in her hand” is a metaphor that means the waitress has already started to make wrong conclusions out of the situation. Even though there are no similes throughout the story, irony does exist: the waitress “suddenly felt disgust for the old man” for no reason but the relation she found between Germany and Krakow.

Finally, it was a challenge for me to make an interpretation and I had to do some research to understand it better. I infer that the author wants to show how everyone can make wrong and right assumptions out of a situation. In this case, the waitress made a mistake by making conclusions out of a German’s craves for Krakow sausages. In the end, the length of a story does not make it more or less important, but the message that is being transmitted.

Sources

Robinson, B. (March 30, 2011). World War Two: Summary outline of key events. Retrieved from the Web on October 25, 2011 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/worldwars/wwtwo/