Вы находитесь на странице: 1из 4

Carl Tan

Ms. Luisa Gomez


Literature 13
22 August 2014
More Than A Story: A Literary Analysis on Swaddling Clothes
An omnipresent narrator tells the story of Toshiko and her husband. At a night club, Toshiko's husband
was recounting the tale of their nurse and her bastard child. Having just arrived from the employment agency,
Toshiko and her husband were shocked at the size of the nurse's stomach, but dismissed it upon the nurse telling
them of her gastric dilation which turned out to be a ruse to cover up her pregnancy. The veil of deceit was
soon lifted as the nurse one day went into labor in their baby's nursery. The husband, instead of rushing to aid
the nurse in labor, went to save their rug and instead put out a blanket for the nurse to lie on. The baby was
already born when the doctor arrived, who then told his assistant to wrap the baby in newspaper. Toshiko,
disgusted by this act, took a piece of flannel and wrapped it around the baby and put him on an armchair. After
leaving the night club, Toshiko's husband arranged for a cab to take her home, inside the car, she meditated on
the possible fate and future of the child she witnessed wrapped in newspaper and how he would grow up in
relation to her own child. In the heat of the moment, Toshiko decides to walk in a forest of cherry trees. As she
walked with increasing guilt in her thoughts about the child, she notices a man sleeping on a bench, which eerily
looked like the future she had imagined for the baby wrapped in newspaper. She approaches with increasing
curiosity, but the man wakes up and the result of their encounter is unknown.
While Toshiko's journey makes up a good portion of the story, Toshiko's husband also plays somewhat of
a significant role in the story. Her husband symbolized how Western culture and modernization has influenced
and changed people, even people as traditional as the Japanese. Toshiko remarked at how her husband, dressed
in an American suit, puffing a cigar, seemed like almost a stranger to her. Her husband even preferred going to
appointments rather than staying home and spending time with his wife. His telling of the event that transpired
in the nursery as if it were merely a pleasant story showed how he looked down and did not think much of both
the nurse and her child. His discrimination is also evident at when he moved to save his rug rather than help
with the nurse's childbirth. The nurse, her childbirth, and her baby were used a tools to show the difference in
Toshiko's and her husband's personalities. While the husband chose to save his rug during the childbirth,
Toshiko instead took a piece flannel to replace the newspaper the child was initially wrapped in, while her
husband happily retold the story to their friends, Toshiko was in shock at the fact that her husband saw the tale as
a trivial matter that could be passed of as mere chit-chat. Toshiko's husband's self-centered personality is a
contrast to Toshiko's warm and kind disposition. The contrast of Toshiko and her husband is a symbolism of
how people have changed over the years, in today's society, people are often cold, uncaring, do not think much

of others and often prioritize themselves, much like Toshiko's husband. Toshiko is a contrast to this,
representing the caring, loving side of people, which is most usually prominent among mothers.
Meanwhile, the nurse, although a minor character in the story, would play a pivotal role in catalyzing the
events to come through her employment and soon after, her childbirth. The nurse (and by extension the child)
would execute the role of the foil through her childbirth, showing the difference in the character and
personalities of Toshiko and her husband. While the husband would not think much of the incident, this event
would continue to haunt Toshiko throughout the rest of the story, showing how, even as a married couple, they
had drastically different views on things like the childbirth. The childbirth was also instrumental is
demonstrating the how Toshiko had a unique view apart from the rest of the world (represented by the doctor) as
she rescued the child from the newspaper the doctor initially wrapped him in. This could represent the rare set
of people whose views on society are drastically different from what we have to come to call normal.
Toshiko's warm treatment towards the child represented the few, truly kind people in our otherwise cruel world,
but Toshiko was aware of the world's cruel reality, as shown in the future that she had created for the child.
The story utilizes an omnipresent third-person perspective to give the reader a broad view on the events
of the story. If the story were told from the perspective of Toshiko, the story would've easily been seen to have a
man vs society type of conflict, but by giving the reader an omnipresent perspective, it widens the range of the
reader's perspective. The story actually has a wide variety of conflicts, and the story successfully uses an
omnipresent narrator to reveal them. From the third-person narrative, we can see that Toshiko presents the man
vs himself portion of the conflict, struggling with the information that she possessed, and torturing herself by
pushing the burden entirely upon her own shoulders. The doctor is used as a tool to showcase the man vs
society part of the conflict where Toshiko took mercy on the child while the doctor (representing society)
simply cast him away to a life of rags and newspapers. The story ends in ambiguity, as if fading to black in a
movie, and thus, the conflict is not truly resolved, in the sense that as Toshiko's fate is unknown.
Toshiko, the obvious protagonist of the story, demonstrates the character of a compassionate, caring
mother. At the disgust of seeing the baby wrapped in newspaper, she moved to replace the newspaper with a
new piece of flannel and lays the baby on the armchair, showing the motherly instinct that Toshiko possessed, as
she cared for the child that was not even her own. She also seemed to possess a mother's foresight, as when she
imagines vivid outcomes of the futures of both the nurse's baby and her own child. The contrast between the two
children's tomorrows could represent the current system of today's society, where people born in newspaper die
in newspaper, and people born in the high class are destined to a life of comfort and luxury. Toshiko's overly
analytical mind plays gives room for the story's theme to take shape, as she ponders on the possible futures of the
two children and what would happen were they to encounter one another someday. The symbolism of the two
children's futures centers around the class-system of our society where people it is incredibly difficult for people

in the lower class to move up in the world, and where wealthy people in the higher class only seem to get richer.
Toshiko, carrying the burden of being the only witness to the nurse's child's true origin, feared the enormous
pressure that had been put upon her: she held the key to an entire life's existence. Her fears may have stemmed
from the fact that this burden had been placed entirely upon her, when child grows up and wonders why his life
is that of a lower class citizen, Toshiko alone will hold the answer. It is also perhaps through this that the author
wanted to convey the importance of one's origin, whether you are rich or poor, your origin tells the story of how
you came to be, how you were brought into this world. Society can see people differently based on where they
came from, such an example would be how people have different thoughts and opinions on a person who was
born rich but died poor, compared to a person who was born rich and died rich, the same goes for a person who
born poor but died rich, compared to a person who was born poor and died poor. Whether we like it or not, our
origin has some bearing on who we are, who we become, and how people view us.
As the round character in the story, Toshiko experiences emotional turmoil as she burdens herself with
the images of the event that she had witnessed. This allows Toshiko to stand out from other characters within the
story as she is the only one dwelling on event while others had already dismissed it, moved on, or did not mind it
at all. Apart from her, another round and dynamic character would be baby, while the baby did not really talk, he
was still an integral part of the story. His personality however extends beyond the initial innocence of a child
and towards the future that Toshiko had created for him. At the end of the story, the initial innocent baby was
now represented by a man in rags, with not a penny to his name, that had just awoken to the sight of Toshiko.
While the baby itself is not round and dynamic, the representational forms that the baby would take throughout
the story would be of dynamic and round quality. The baby's changing form and character would shape the
story to its eventual climax.

The story would reach its climax when Toshiko sees a strange man lying on a bench in the park. When
she saw the strange man, for Toshiko, it was as if all her fears and nightmares had manifested in concrete form
within the man before her. Instead of taking the easy way out and walking away, however, Toshiko chose to
face her fears by approaching the man on the bench. As she mentioned before in the story, Toshiko would
take her son's place if the nurse's baby were to one day look for answers about his past, for Toshiko, this would
have been that moment, the moment where she would be released from her burden, the moment where she would
tell the boy of all that had transpired that fateful evening, the moment that she would accept her fate. As Toshiko
approached the man, he woke up and what happens afterward is unknown. The ambiguous result of their
encounter ends the story in a cliffhanger. Was Toshiko killed? Was she raped? Or did she simply talk to man?
The ending represents the future. The fate of Toshiko lies in the hands of the man, who was the manifestation of
the baby. This represents how our future lies entirely on the youth and what the youth chooses to do with what
we leave them. While we have some form of influence on the next generation (like how Toshiko could tell the

him about his birth), in the end, it is entirely up to the next generation to decide what to do, how to do it, and
when to do it, the future is in their hands.

Despite the story's vague ending, it still fulfills its purpose in conveying the author's thoughts and
opinions through the text. As Japan is an extremely traditional country, the story did not have a positive view on
Western culture and influence, as Toshiko viewed her husband's attitude as that of a stranger, who's vanity and,
to some extent, superiority complex were viewed in a negative light. Japan has always had a negative view on
foreign influence, and this story is just one of the many ways that Japan shows its hermit qualities and
traditional mentality. The story also performs well in exposing the fact the no two people will ever completely
agree on something, and that our society will always be at war as shown by how Toshiko's views conflicted
with that of the doctor, and her husband.
All in all, Swaddling Clothes is a story that depicts the qualities of Japan, the different views of our
society, the importance of our past, and the impact we have on the future. This story, however, covers wide
range of issues and topics, and this paper is simply one of the many interpretations that could be extracted and
analyzed.

Вам также может понравиться