Banana Yoshimoto, the author of “Kitchen” richly uses metaphors and connotations to exemplify her understanding of culture which she passes onto the reader. Yoshimoto translates her message of kindness within the Asian culture to her readers through integrated literary devices that enhance the reader’s understanding of the text. Jawaharlal Nehru once quoted culture as “ the widening of the mind and of the spirit.” Yoshimoto exemplifies this as she outlines her change in attitude and mindset in this excerpt.
Yoshimoto quickly sets the tone of the excerpt when speaking dark words to reflect their mood. The reader infers the character’s ominous mood, when they describe the world and their emotions. The author, who is speaking in first person limited, describes their “immense lone loneliness” and their “black gloom” to open the setting for the reader. She utilizes metaphors to add on to their emotions when mentioning “suddenly, to see that the world was so large, and the cosmos so black. The unbounded fascination of it, the unbounded loneliness… For the first time, these days I was touching it with these hands, these eyes.” Yoshimoto illustrates the…show more content… “My heart welled up to the point of tears… I was so stunned, I gaped. Though she didn’t seem young, she was truly beautiful.” The imagery used to describe the “women” assists in highlighting the change in mood to the author, who becomes dynamic. Yoshimoto continues to use connotation when detailing her stellar encounter as “overwhelming.” She once again uses metaphors to enhance the reader’s understanding of the shift in thinking, “ There was a warm light, like her afterimage, softly glowing in my heart.” He she goes as far as relating her encounter to Helen Keller, “Like Helen Keller when she understood “water” for the first time, the word burst into reality for me, its living example before my