THE SAILOR WHO FELL FROM GRACE WITH THE SEA

The Sailor who Fell from Grace with the Sea is about a young boy, Noboru, who is a part of a “gang” who does not believe in the same thing that society believes in. They seem to have their own views about life and what should happen. Noboru’s mother, Fusako, has found love with a sailor by the name of
Ryuji who she plans to marry. Ryuji was well respected by the gang until he decided to be involved with Fusako. The gang believed that father figures were powerless and that when a man dies he should be more respected as if it is a celebration of a powerful life.During the discussion the topic of westernization and traditional culture was brought up a lot. Fusako is more of a westernized background person and the gang represents more of the traditional aspects.
During the New Year Fusako’s house is decorated based off of western culture and and she dresses based off of the western culture. The boys are thought to represent traditional Japanese culture because they represent the author’s group by their radicalness. The gang does not believe in emotion and they have no feelings towards anything that happens. But, a thought that came up is how could the gang believe in no emotion when they showed emotion towards the end of the novel. The foundation of the gang was brought up and the conclusion was that the gang was made by the. He found young boys who he could easily manipulate but also take them away from their stressful lives and give them someone who cared about them. In reality the chief is frightening and knows how to easily control children by telling them what to do and having no worries about them doing it.The end of the discussion was the talk about Ryuji’s death.
The main question was, how could Ryuji not know that they were going to murder or even punish him. From the many opinions I’ve gathered that Ryuji’s instincts told him that something was going to happen because things weren’t going good, but he refused to follow them because your instincts aren’t