Peer review

Hang Yuan

1st rough draft

October 7, 2018

Prompt 1

In this novel, the author writes many different stories, although these stories do not reflect many links between, but the author uses these stories to reflect the globalization. Globalization is a matter of universal concern. Everyone lives on the earth. Many seemingly unrelated things have some impact on other people or countries. The author has written a lot of profound analysis on this aspect. Although I read many chapters later, I still remember the first three chapters most deeply. Especially the first and second stories about the two cases of ball and the pigeon.

The beginning of the first chapter doesn't say who the narrator is, it just mentions memory, and then the author introduces a little Japanese boy named Kazumasa Ishimaru one day, when he was playing at the beach, some accident happened. Later, Kazumasa's mother noticed that there was always a small ball in front of her son's face. Kazumasa still lives as normal as he used to. Instead of feeling inferior, he is proud of the ball. Especially when he found that the ball was a big help to his job, the railroad. So, Kazumasa has been working on railways in Japan. The author finally mentioned that he was the ball before Kazumasa's forehead. This allows the author's narrative to be described from a third party, because the ball and Kazumasa are separated from each other and they see things from different angles. Though not very obvious, I think this is part of the author's embodiment of diversity.

The pigeon mentioned in Chapter 2 seems very common, but this pigeon appears in two families without children, and the relationship between husband and wife is not good. The emergence of dove has eased some of their relations. In addition, Yamashita incorporated religious issues into the novel's themes through the magical feather event discovered by Mane da Costa Pena. At first, only Mane's wife believed in the magical healing feather, which no one else believed or even laughed at. However, he proved to others that the feather could actually be used as a treatment by taking action to alleviate the pain on the journalist's shoulders. Finally, people began to accept this fact and began to use feathers to cure their diseases.

The feathers and pigeon mentioned in the second and third chapters reflect globalization more. The author makes a profound analysis of the whole theme of the novel through different characters and their stories and lives. According to the first chapter, we know that Kazumasa grew up in Japan, but then he moved to Brazil, where poverty, different jobs, people's ways of getting along, and even changes in the weather all immediately showed cultural differences. In fact, the different themes written by the author are all related to each other and reflect globalization. The author also links between different cultures from politics and religion. In different countries on earth, people have different religious beliefs, cultures and ways of getting along. After reading these articles, I have a deeper understanding of globalization. Through the description of the author, I find that globalization can bring people from all over the world together, especially when you encounter difficulties, you can solve the problems together.

The first three chapters fully reflect the diversity of different countries in the world. These chapters describe people in different countries and environments: there are different modes of communication between Japanese and brazilians, for example, and rural brazilians in the amazon rainforest in later chapters. The novel describes Kazumasa's cultural conflicts and inadaptation from Japan to Brazil. Although these contradictions were resolved later, people began to understand each other. When the author writes that Brazil is an international country with a lot of immigrants, it can be more typical of the connections between various countries and the cultural diversity of globalization. The rainforest itself, for example, appeals to a wide range of people, from tourists who want to develop natural resources to visitors who want to preserve them for filming. The novel embodies one theme, that of globalization. Globalization is a very broad term, which contains many different aspects. Many aspects of the article can reflect globalization. For example, tropical rainforest in the third chapter. Tropical rain forests are a common natural resource. Maybe they belong to one of the countries in the world. But tropical rain forests are natural resources, which should be shared by all on the earth. If we destroy natural resources, it will have an indelible impact on our future generations. On the other hand, there are still many countries on the earth facing the problems of drought, lack of water resources, and waste in one place is also a bad influence on other countries that lack resources.

After reading this novel by Yamashita, she brought me about the different, globalized aspects of the world. She also mentioned many practical problems facing today's society. As I mentioned before, globalization brings everyone, even people from different countries, together. Although it brings many problems in the process, after everyone understands the concept of globalization, everyone is tolerant to each other and everything is improving. At the same time, Yamashita also pointed to problems in the world, such as environmental resources. He also touched on political and religious aspects. Yamashita presents and analyzes these issues to readers through different characters and examples. Globalization brings everyone on the planet together so that people can gain more benefits. This book is a good way to explain and analyze globalization, so that readers can have a deeper understanding of it, and more people can feel and touch it.