Who is the Bell Cricket

"The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket", by Yasunari Kawabata is a short story I quickly fell in love with. The story seems to be so innocent, but has an extremely deep and reflective meaning if closely looked into, or at least in the way I looked into it. The story began with a man allegedly walking through the woods to come across a group of young boys and girls searching for bugs. I used the word allegedly because I viewed the man "walking through the woods" and watching the children as the young boy in the story, and he is looking back at him, reminiscing the first time he met the girl he loved. I found it so innocent that when the little boy, Fujio, first found what he thought was a grasshopper, he offered it up to all of the kids bug hunting with him, but gave it to the girl, Kiyoko,  who did not come running and begging for it. He then fell in love with her intelligence, when as a young girl she knew the difference between a grasshopper and a bell cricket, and told the boy it was a bell cricket. At the end of the story it seemed as though the perspective flipped, and instead of the man watching the two kids in the woods, it turned into him wishing to explain to the little boy to never let Kiyoko go, as she is a bell cricket; rare and different, while the others are grasshoppers.


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