Re: Themes (spoilers to end of book)
Okay, Rose, I've finished the book, so I'm ready to reply to your earlier comments. I hope you haven't had to wait too long.
First off, I'll say that I was actually really impressed with the way Abe handled the last two or three chapters. I didn't think I was going to like them, but I ended up feeling that they were very apt without being too somber.
irishrosem:
Isolation and the significance of human relationships is a major theme that plays into almost every idea in the novel, most specifically the sexuality addressed in the book.Sexuality seemed to have been, more than anything else, a way of cementing relationships. That all comes to a head in the next to last chapter, when the villagers grant Jumpei's request for limited freedom on the condition that he and the woman publically demonstrate their conjugal relationship. In an oblique way, it reminds me of the conclusion to Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut".
This quasi economy system the protagonist adopts based on what is earned or deserving in contrast with what is undeserving.There seems to be a commonality between money and sand -- you could almost say that money was modelled on sand. It's fungible and reducible. I don't know where that analogy leads; it's something I hadn't thought about until you brought up the economics of the novel.
What strikes me as most pertinent is the way in which money absolves the character from any sort of permanent relationship to others -- similar to the way he cognizes sand as a kind of itinerant element, repelling any attempt to put down roots. If I recall correctly (I don't have my copy with me), he even tries to rationalize his sexual relationships as a kind of monetary exchange.
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