How does Mishima hint through moving between visions of perfection and movements of doubt and despair, that the outcome of the novel will not be a happy one?
In this essay I will try to explain how Mishima is hinting through moving between visions of perfection and movements of doubt and despair, that the outcome of the novel will not be happy one. All three main characters of the novel have ideas of their ideal world which as the novel continues are progressively destroyed. In the novel Mishima describes the life of Noboru a teenager who’s not happy with the society he is living in, and how his ideal world soon is destroyed as the man who his mother Fusako met, is no longer the man he appears to be.
Noboru is a young teenager who thinks life consists of a view signals and decisions and that once your born you only live to die “…that death took root at the moment of birth and man’s only recourse thereafter was to water and tend it”. That’s why when he was only 8 years old and his father died he found it to be a happy incident and something to be proud of. As Noboru is fascinated by the sea, he immediately sees Ryuji being a sailor as his new hero and from then he looks up to the man having a lot of respect for him. Ryuji being his new hero has not realised that he has become part of Noboru’s ideal world and that if he ever betrays him and will have failed being his hero he will therefore have broken the circle…”had revealed an ineluctable circle of life-the cards had paired: Noboru and mother-mother and man- man and sea-sea and Noboru…” Having broken the circle Ryuji could be in danger as Noboru would be capable to do anything as long as his ideal world is not destroyed “If this is ever destroyed, it’ll mean the end of the world…I guess I’d do anything to stop that, no matter how awful!”
