27 pages • 54 minutes read
Hisaye YamamotoSeventeen Syllables
Fiction | Short Story | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Point of View
“Seventeen Syllables” is told in a third-person limited point of view. It is limited because the reader is privy to the interiority of Rosie and no other characters. While Yamamoto does not stray from this structure, she complicates an assumption many readers have regarding limited points of view: that the character whose point of view the story is told through is necessarily the story’s central protagonist. Rosie is one protagonist in Yamamoto’s story, but Tome is a protagonist, too, despite the reader never learning her thoughts. Arguably, Tome is the story’s more central protagonist, and the narrative arc of her haiku career is the more primary plot. Rosie’s experiences with Jesus serve as more of a lens through which Tome’s story is understood, emphasizing the disconnect between mother and daughter. At the end of the story, when Rosie’s romance becomes thematically linked to Tome’s own teenage romance, there is a brief but ultimately unsuccessful moment when their points of view might merge.
Parallelism
Parallelism refers to the intentional repetition of structural elements in a story to draw connections between separate words, sentences, moments, or events. There are two clear instances of parallelism in “Seventeen Syllables.” The opening and concluding scenes both feature a conversation between mother and daughter, with the daughter responding to her mother using the phrase “yes, yes.” This parallel structure forces the reader to consider how understanding haiku and promising never to marry are similar or different in the context of the story. Another parallelism occurs at the level of plot: Rosie’s sexual awakening happens at the same time as her mother’s creative awakening; in both cases, the story culminates with an emotional high, and then the promise of that success is broken by a family member. This narrative rhyme emphasizes how trauma can be passed down through generations.
Epiphany
An epiphany is a realization of truth that changes a character’s worldview in a single moment. “Seventeen Syllables” plays with the notion of epiphany by giving its two central characters, Rosie and Tome, competing revelations. Rosie, upon kissing Jesus, suddenly views her relationship to boys with a new perspective: “a brand-new power” (13). This is challenged when she sees her father destroy the print but becomes renewed in the final paragraph, when the memory of Jesus’s hand gives her resolve against her mother’s demands. Tome, after her husband destroys the print, finally comes to terms with the fact that she is trapped by her marriage, thus viewing the prospect of marriage for her daughter to be only a trap. She shares that story with Rosie, but to no avail. At the end, both characters look at the world with new perspectives, but Rosie does not share her epiphany with her mother, and Tome fails to impress hers upon her daughter.
Haiku
A haiku is form of Japanese poetry that originated in the 17th century. It consists of three lines and seventeen syllables (five syllables, seven syllables, and five syllables respectively), and traditionally includes mention of one of the seasons (fall, winter, spring, summer). Haiku are meant to distill large ideas into brief moments of revelation. The story “Seventeen Syllables” resembles a haiku in structure and theme. And within the story, the rules of haiku are treated as sacrosanct by Tome. That is why she would likely never appreciate the English haiku that Rosie enjoys because “It is morning, and lo! / I lie awake, comme il faut, / sighing for some dough” (8) includes one extra syllable on the first line and does not deal with seasons or revelations.
