Cameron Hewes

May 22, 2008

Literary Essay Final Quiz, Draft One

Seita’s Adversaries in Grave of the Fireflies

Grave of the Fireflies, a Japanese animated war film, helps to reveal more about the victims’ sufferings, as opposed to the people fighting. After a firebombing, Seita loses his mother and must take care of his four-year-old sister, Setsuko, by himself. There are many adversaries that work against Seita in his struggle to survive. Seita must deal with his abusive aunt, battle hunger, and not get carried away with pride. However, the most difficult force for him to overcome is his own faith, which is severely weakened by the effects of the war.

When Seita’s mother dies from burn wounds after the firebombing, he has nowhere else to go but to his aunt’s. Unfortunately, his aunt is unhappy about them staying with her family. She gives them hardly enough food, and Setsuko is always hungry. Seita and his sister are regularly pelted with insults from their aunt. She complains that they do nothing to contribute to the household, and always is snapping at Seita about how he shouldn’t be lounging around at home, but instead helping the country. Seita’s aunt also goes as far as to sell her dead sister-in-law’s precious kimonos for rice. While this may seem reasonable, as times are hard, it is in reality cruel for two reasons. One is that Setsuko loved her mother and missed her very much, and to lose the only thing left of hers would be too much to bear. The Aunt’s selling of the clothing is also not right because she ends up keeping almost all of the rice received as payment for herself. It is only fair that Seita and Setsuko receive a sizeable portion of the payment, because it was their mother. Because Seita’s aunt disrespects and takes precious keepsakes from Seita and his sister, she is a negative force that they must overcome.

With war come embargoes and a big increase in supply usage. This leaves people like Seita and Setsuko with a serious lack of food, so they are always hungry. Because he and his sister need continuous nourishment for survival, Seita finds himself having to constantly work to find ways to obtain it. Hunger works against Seita because it forces him to steal food. He is attacked by a farmer after being discovered taking some of the man’s crops, and comes close to being put in jail. Seita risks injury or death from the firebombing every time he ventures into people’s homes while they are in the shelters. Here he takes the villagers’ food and any belongings they have on hand that can be sold for food. Having to stoop as low as thievery makes Seita feel guilty, and he is relieved when he can get food without resorting to crime. The fact that Seita must care for not only himself, but also his sister, makes things even more difficult. He must oversee her all the time, and also keep her alive and as healthy as possible with a shortage of sustenance. Having to worry about food and how to acquire it are antagonists working against Seita all the time.

Another force that has a negative affect on Seita is his own pride. After taking all of his aunt’s insults for some time, Seita finally decides that he has had enough and leaves with Setsuko. This was a serious mistake on Seita’s part, because he then went to live in an abandoned shelter where he would have to take care of his sister and himself on his own. Before this, Seita and Setsuko were at least was given some food and had a roof over their heads at their aunt’s house. Even if they had to endure some unfair treatment and cruel insults, it was still better to also have food then to have almost none at all. A farmer working in the fields even tells Seita that he should forget the past and return. If Seita had swallowed his pride and stayed at the aunt’s house, they most likely would have survived. However, his choice to leave and fend for himself and his sister determined their fate, that being death.

A weakened faith is Seita’s most difficult force to overcome. Right from the beginning, Seita’s mother dies from burns and a heart condition. This is devastating for both him and his sister, and they immediately become dejected. Now the children must take comfort in each other, because their father is also off at war. While they do have a few moments of joy with a new stove or visit to the beach, in reality, Seita and Setsuko are most often hungry, tired, and unhappy. Setsuko cries many times because she misses her mother, and Seita at one point breaks down seeing his sister so melancholy. Just when it seems as though things couldn’t get any worse, Seita discovers that all of the Japanese ships were sunk, including the one his father was on. He and Setsuko are now entirely parentless and homeless. He returns to the shelter with some food to find his sister hallucinating, and she eventually dies from starvation. At this point, Seita is overcome with grief. While it is possible that the pair could have survived physically, it is a different thing to survive spiritually. Seita’s hopes were dashed when he found out that Japan had lost the war, and that paired with his other losses proved to be overwhelming. Being able to persevere mentally through such difficult times was just too much to ask from a fourteen-year-old boy.

Seita has many different antagonists that he must confront during the war. His disrespectful aunt shows him and his sister no kindness after taking them into her home. Lack of food becomes a constant source of pain, especially because Seita has two mouths to feed. While Seita’s ego may have driven him to refuse his aunt’s insult-ridden hospitality, his most difficult obstacle to overcome was his weakened hope. Losing both parents and not knowing where any of his other relatives meant that Seita had nowhere to go in times of need. This turned out to be a turning point in his life, and movie-watchers would ask the same question: “Why must Seita, like the fireflies, die so soon?”