Kenzaburo Oe, the author of the book “Teach us to outgrow our madness,” has displayed several ways to uphold our passion and original vision for things. A fascinating account of the 1964 Christmas Eve party at Yukio Mishima’s house, where Nathan first met Oe and fellow novelist Kobo Abe, serves as the text’s introduction to the four short stories (Oe, 1994). The longest novel in this collection, “The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away,” clarifies the friction between the aforementioned three authors. The subject matter is very similar to Mishima’s, reflecting on the closing days of World War II and the pain of hearing the Emperor’s all-too-human voice announce defeat, written in an indirect, surrealist style evocative of Abe (Oe, 1994). The book depicts the passion and dedication displayed by the father to his mentally defective son to eliminate the sorrowful moments of his son’s sickness. The book teaches us how to uphold our passion and vision for our problems until they are solved.
The intensity of our life’s problems should not deviate from our vision. This can be seen in the instances particular to Oe’s experience in the book; this anthology explores the difficulties of the father-son connection (Oe, 1994). Making sense of the beliefs and behaviors of the wartime generation, especially his father, as seen through the eyes of children, is a recurring theme in Oe’s novels. The author ruminates on how Oe, who had a kid born severely crippled, dealt with the immense anguish that came with it (Oe, 1994). In one tale, the father believes himself to be the child’s means of expression to the outside world; in another, the father has killed his deformed child and is haunted by its enormous ghost. He has already written about the lasting national traumas of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, in this work, he finds an acute literary voice for the lifelong obsession and severe sense of shame produced by his ancestral background.
Reference
Oe, K. (1994). Teach us to outgrow our madness. (J. Nathan, Trans.). Grove Press.