Symbolism is a style in the literature that enables an author to enrich the content of his or her work. They do this by bringing into the literary creation an issue that the readers can easily identify with and at the same time must look deeply to unravel the hidden meaning. These meanings are embodied in common features within one’s society. In the book “Comfort woman”, the author Keller has incorporated several symbols and motifs that symbolize various meanings and symbols.
In this essay, the importance or significance of the River or water has been discussed as a symbolic feature. Water or the river can be used for some reasons. First, it can be perceived as a cleaning agent; for washing the dirtiest of linens, as a source of livelihood, a sign of peace and tranquility. The physical side can also be taken to provide peace and security for people especially soldiers in war as was the case in Korea. The course of a river and its characteristics in various stages of development can also find symbolic meaning from the novel. During the useful stage of the formation of a river, it flows violently sweeping everything in its wake. It also creates new routes where there are barriers. In the middle stage, it deposits much of what it had collected while in the old stage it loses its speed and strength and gains depth as it enters a lake, a new life.
This book is set in the post-war period in Asia. It is the story of the life of Akiko, a former comfort girl for the Korean Soldiers, and her teenage daughter Beccah. It highlights the traumas the mother Akiko goes through as a mother teenage and her teenage girl. The hardships that Beccah too goes through are also explored in-depth and her feelings are near an “abnormal” mother. It is her journey to understand her where she also creates herself and finds more about her mother’s lifestyle and job. Ironically in a painfully realistic way she finds that she has so much from her mother than she would have ever thought possible.
The symbol of the river and/or water can be applied to these issues. The physical setting does not come out in great detail, but it crosses one as authentic. We can therefore safely assume that it has wonderful sceneries with rivers and other physical features. These are relevant in the sense that during the war the landscape and its rivers aided the soldiers in the fighting. They could use it to hide from enemies and to diminish their trials.
The lives of the Mother and daughter can be interpreted in terms of a river that has fully developed from the formation to the old stage. From the trappings of being a sex slave to the soldiers to the birth of her daughter, Akiko’s life has gone full circle. The book is interposed with her life in Korea, how she left Korea, married the daughter’s father, and her subsequent life in the US. She discovers the high cost of human degradation, rape, and the brutal loss of self. Beccah comes to learn so much about the mother and like a river that has met a barrier, she develops a sense of self-awareness and direction. She tries and even works as an obituary writer.
The mother’s spirit is dead after uncountable rapes by the Japanese soldiers’ attempts to protect her half-American half Korean daughter from harm. She also fights hard the truths from her Korean Background. The daughter is confused since the mother does not reveal what makes her despair. The father though not prominent in the pages his character is also savagely drawn. We can say that she tries to wash off her evil and brutal past from her daughter. Readers learn of the pain that Akiko underwent as a comfort girl for the soldiers.
Her daughter, Beccah, feels somewhat overwhelmed and overburdened by the hierarchies in society and her mother’s spiritual attachment to the spirit world. Coupled with a mystical and schizophrenic mother who uses broken English, Beccah is embarrassed. The plot moves through the widely held memories, historical occurrences, and the relationship between an outsider’s and an insider’s view of the mainstream culture. On a more personal note, it examines the lives of a mother and daughter drugged into the extensive world of prostitution and sex.
Water has been used for many days to clean dirt. It has also been used to dissolve dangerous chemicals and as a place for disposing of wastes. The course of a river as it flows is a journey wrought with many experiences; it picks stuff as it leaves some along the way. In her quest for a better life, Akiko has met with exploitative soldiers and unfaithful men, like the father to Beccah. These people have left her with a soiled spirit and scare he soul. The memories are so bitter she does not even disclose them to the daughter easily. They have been left in a world seemingly in the depth of poverty vice and despair. They are segregated by society and abandoned by the people they thought would help them.
In the end, Beccah can make peace with her mother and her ethnic heritage as she gains in-depth self-awareness. She grows to trust the relationship with her mother and also follows her heart. It follows through a life of survival over unimaginable brutality. The water as a cleaning agent has cleaned them and brought newness to them. When clean and enriched with oxygen it becomes medicine for the future. The oxygen in this case is the new lifestyle mother and daughters try to forge in America. Like a river that has found a new course, we expect their lives to change.
Works Cited
Keller, Nora Okja. Comfort woman, New York: Viking, (1997).