Tale of Genji: Lavendar Analysis

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Genji is led by his sexual desires in all of his exploits. He sees young Murasaki as a potential wife. He sees this child as a woman who can one day give him children and bring him all the pleasures of life that he seeks. He sees this in a child. He is in love with a child. This doesn’t help the side note of his attraction to the resemblance of his step mother. The agenda at play here is a game of waiting out the clock and playing pretend in the interim.

The lack of power that Murasaki’s caretakers reflect the views of the readers. Desperation is a theme of this chapter and our own views are printed into these pages by way of human obstacles that Genji kicks over again and again. Genji’s status holds such a prestigious nobility that their opinions are simply dribble. The anguish in the words of the opposition may as well fade off the page thanks to the ferocious thirst of Genji.

Once again, we see poetry play a pivotal role for the development of Genji. Frustration grips the reader here for the simple reason of contradiction. Poetry is the instrument of love and purity in our world, yet this horrid creature adopts it for means of entrancing this toddler.

The words spew into the child’s ears with a thin line of beauty, covering the girth of discomfort. “Not yet mine, these grasses of Musashi, so near to dew-drenched grasses I cannot have (104).” For he cannot have Murasaki in bed, patience is an apparatus that awards the practitioner. What should alarm the audience here is the dough eyes that reside of Murasaki’s face. The immaturity removes the possibility of her being able to understand what he is proposing here, not possibly being able to comprehend what he is telling her. Regardless of the amount of pages that await attention, this chapter tells the reader all we need to know about Genji.

Works Cited

Shikibu, M. (1992). Lavender. In E. Seidensticker (Trans.), The tale of Genji (Vintage Classics ed., p. 360). New York, N.Y.: Knopf.