Makioka Sisters

             With life comes death, with destruction comes rebirth, and with fear often comes understanding and growth. Constant change within our environment surrounds and invades our existence--which too is ever changing, growing, digressing and evolving. Often a sad tone resounds within this acceptance of uncontrolled fluctuation. It is the sad or destructive experiences that one wishes could be controlled; and often those become more apparent then the joy and happiness that accompanies change. Throughout Tanizaki's The Makioka Sisters the essence of the novel is captured using subtlety to describe the timeless cyclical changes in nature, thus revealing and enhancing the acceptance of the unavoidable impermanence that is woven into the sister's lives and experiences. Transformations within their natural world saturate and undeniably affect the lives of the characters in this novel.
             Throughout the novel the sisters are constantly exposed to the beauties and destruction that the cycles of nature produce, changing and affecting their lives for brief and lengthy durations. Change in nature perpetually occurs and learning to adapt to its inconsistency is often demanded of the sisters. Tanizaki poetically uses the fluctuation of nature to delicately suggest fluctuation or transformations that occur within the characters.
             For example, as massive flooding consumes the Kobe-Osaka district with destruction, the Makioka's lives are consumed with upheaval; and yet, this inevitable chaos encourages realizations for Sachiko and transformations within Taeko. The most disastrous flood in the district's history, its transforming effects on the river are vividly described as, "less a river than a black, boiling sea, with the mid-summer surf at its most violent" (Tanizaki 176). Its burdens afflict the land, and all of its inhabitants, from scuttling crabs and dogs to the Makiokas, Stoltzes, and countless other families. Physic...

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Makioka Sisters. (1969, December 31). In MegaEssays.com. Retrieved 12:47, March 28, 2024, from https://www.megaessays.com/viewpaper/53154.html