Toshio Mori’s short fiction “the chessmen”
Write an essay of three double-spaced pages, in which you explicate Toshio Mori’s short fiction “The Chessmen,” by using the following quotation from Ronald Takaki as a general context for launching your discussions:
Representing a rapidly growing group within the Japanese community, the Nisei constituted 27 percent of the mainland Japanese population in 1920 and a majority, or 52 percent, ten years later. By 1940, on the eve of World War II, 63 percent of the community was Nisei.
As a result of the abrupt 1908 cessation of immigration of Japanese men, the age gap between the two generations was wider than usual. In 1930, the average age of the Nisei was ten, compared to forty-two for Issei men and thirty-five for Issei women. (Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore, 214).
The word explicate means: to unfold the meaning of or to further develop what is described or implied in the story.
To do so, you need to read the primary text carefully (and repeatedly, if necessary) and then to raise questions based on your close reading of it.
The quotation from Takaki is meant to give you a general sense of the demographic transformation that occurred in the Japanese immigrant communities by the end of the 1930s, as well as its impact on the Japanese American workplace in generational terms, the larger background of Toshio Mori’s “The Chessmen.”
Your paper should cover at least three aspects of the story:
1) its major theme or what it is really about;
2) its main character or characters and the role(s) they_play;
3) how the central conflict of the story is resolved and what the ending of the story means both textually and in social or historical terms: the central conflict is a symbolic struggle between either two parties or within a single character that undergoes an inner conflict.
The way the central conflict is resolved has a lot to do with the role(s) played or the decision(s) made by the main character(s).
Your paper will be judged by whether it:
1) presents its argument in a clear and organized fashion;
2) establishes adequate connections between literary
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