Through the Arc of the Rain Forest

by Karen Tei Yamashita

Book Overview

Through the Arc of the Rain Forest is a burlesque of comic-strip adventures and apocalyptic portents that stretches familiar truths to their logical extreme in a future world that is just recognizable enough to be frightening. In the Author's Note," Karen Tei Yamashita writes that her book is like a Brazilian soap opera called a novela: "the novela's story is completely changeable according to the whims of the public psyche and approval, although...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 091827382X
• ISBN13: 9780918273826
• Release Date: July 1990
• Publisher: Coffee House Press
• Length: 192 Pages
• Weight: 0.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.4" x 8.5"
• Age Range: 16 years and up
• Grade Range: Grade 11 and higher

Customer Reviews

Taste The Rainbow

I have heard Brazilian children say that whatever passes through the arc of the rainbow becomes its opposite. But what is the opposite of a bird? Or for that matter, a human being? And what then, in the great rainforest, where, in its season, the rain never ceases and the rainbows are myriad? This epigraph precedes Karen Yamashita's novel, "Through the Arc of the Rain Forest." Yamashita's novel focuses on the journey of Kasumasa Ishimaru as narrated by a ball revolving several inches from Kasumasa's head. The examinination of this piece, however, will revolve (literally and figuratively) on the motif of a rainbow through different parts of the novel, including the epigraph. Yamashita uses rainbows and arcs as symbols relating to consistent negative and positive patterns, imagery, and meanings within the novel. The first introduction of the rainbow as a symbol occurs when Kasumasa encounters American J.B. Tweep, who is employed within a company Kasumasa holds controlling stock. J.B. chides Kasumasa into searching for more Matacao, which is the material that will create economic profit for Kasumasa's conglomerate. Within their search, J.B. Tweep hides protagonist Kasumaza Ishimaru from his competition. Tweep's undercover agents had been described as hiding themselves "at the arc of every rainbow" (149). The rainbow in this sense takes the meaning of a vast, unending space. The percieved sense of unrest, searching, and mystery contrasts the allusion of a peaceful rainbow. The arc represents an unexplainable plain which can be pilifered for special interest. In this instance, the rainbow does not take the shape of a beautious vision, but rather a vision of greed and deception. The journey from new to old and back again to new is another presentation of the rainbow as an arc, a curving storyline with a significant purpose. Yamashita explains, "The old forest has returned once again...pursuing the lost perfection of an organism in which digestion and excretion ! were once one and the same." (212) The forest in this setting has been destroyed by extrordinary events. However, the forest continues to grow, to recycle. The theme of recycling and a cyclical pattern echo from this passage. Where a circle is said to have "no start and no end," an allusion is made towards a pattern of infinite possibilities and of rebirth and regeneration. To give a greater context in the presentation of the rainbow as a symbol, one need not look further than the table of contents. The contents are broken up in six parts: The Beginning, The Developing World, More Development, Loss of Innocence, More Loss, and Return. Through careful examination, the pattern of an arc is presented through the first three parts relating to the setting and inciting incident and the last three parts regarding climax and conclusion. The first parts correlate to the rise of an arc, and the last parts correlate to the fall of the arc. In essence, the plot of the novel is like an arc, a rainbow-