Unlike the narrators in the previous short stories, "The Man Who Was Almost a Man" and "Blue Winds Dancing", the narrator of "Seventeen Syllables", Rosie is not the main character. Instead, she serves as an onlooker of patriarchal oppressive behavior as her mother and father's relationship falls apart.
Born to immigrant parents from Japan, Rosie struggles to communicate with her mother, who speaks little English. Rosie finds English easier to speak, while "Japanese had to be searched for and examined", requiring an effort that Rosie struggles to put forth (98). Due to Rosie's poor Japanese, she and her mother fail to understand each other. Perhaps in an effort to express herself more effectively, Rosie's mother begins writing poetry. Rosie's mother employs two identities: one as Ume Hanazono, an up-and-coming haiku writer and "extravagant contributor" to a newspaper called the Mainichi Shimbun, and one as Tome Hayashi, a traditional housewife who "kept house, cooked, washed, and... did her ample share of picking tomatoes out in the sweltering fields" (98). Before long, however, Ume Hanazono begins to spill into the daily routine of the Hayashi family, her interest in haiku growing into an infatuation. After washing the dishes each night, Rosie's mother blossoms into a poet, a "muttering stranger who often neglected speaking when spoken to and stayed busy... scribbling with pencil on scratch paper" (98). Rosie's father appears disinterested in his wife's poetry. He sits on the opposite end of the couch from her as she discusses haiku with her friends, reading a separate paper. When Rosie's Aunt Taka and Uncle Gimpachi come to visit and talk haiku with Tome, "her father was nowhere in sight" (101). As Rosie's father's attitude towards her mother's new found passion unfolds, she "felt a rush of hatred for both - for her mother for begging, for her father for denying her mother" (99). |
Rosie's father's anger eventually reaches a point at which it can no longer be suppressed into mere apathy. When Tome is presented with first prize for a haiku writing contest by the editor of the Mainichi Shimbun - a framed painting by Ando Hiroshige - she is, naturally, elated. As soon as the editor leaves, however, Rosie's father smashes "the picture, glass and all", then "reached over for the kerosene... and poured it over the wreckage" (102).
The destruction of the prize is equally the destruction of Ume Hanazono. Tome's spirit is broken into pieces along with the glass of the framed painting. Instead of responding with anger or sadness, Tome reveals to Rosie that her marriage to her father was an alternative to suicide. She never loved Rosie's father - their marriage was arranged, an escape from a shameful past in which Tome birthed a stillborn child conceived out of wedlock. Haiku was Tome's attempt to challenge the traditional roles of marriage instilled by the patriarchy. Her husband disapproves of his wife's search for independence and self-expression - he does not want her to stray too far from the values that he deems acceptable. In the end of the story, Tome begs Rosie to never marry as she kneels to the floor. Rosie promises and turns away, crying, but "the embrace and consoling hand" of her mother "came much later than she expected" (103). The dark ending of "Seventeen Syllables" hints that Tome's warning has come too late to save Rosie from the same life her mother has endured. The patriarchy's oppression is too powerful to overcome, and Rosie is already headed down the same path. |