33
Attached you will find a Japanese short story,
In A Grove. The author, Ryunosuke Akutagawa (1892-1927) is seen in many circles as the first modern Japanese writer to gain a broad appreciation in the Western world. Of his writing, we are told, “Psychology fascinated him, and often in his stories, a detached, impersonal narrator illuminates the human mind and soul. With penetrating vision, he saw the dark side of even virtuous and heroic behavior, and he conveyed psychological reality in a variety of literary styles that ranged from realism in his early stories to surrealism in his last great works.”
Originally published in 1922, the story presents us with several versions of an event.
Your task: read the story and decide whose “truth” do you most identify with (the wife, the husband, or the thief)? Write a document of
2-3 paragraphs (double-spaced) wherein you explain which elements of that person’s “truth” you feel are most relateable and why you feel the versions of the other two are not. Refer to the testimony of the others as needed.
