Isolation

Isolation is an important theme in the short story collection “Revenge: Eleven Dark Tales” by Yoko Ogawa. Isolation, thematically, is both being alone, and/or feeling alone or lonely. Isolation in the novel is sometimes a choice, sometimes imposed, and always influential to the plot of the story.

In “Afternoon at the Bakery”, the narrator seeks a strawberry shortcake to commemorate her son’s tragic death. Heartbroken over the death, and after a suicide attempt, the narrator was divorced and left alone by her husband. She combats loneliness by buying cakes, and has grown insensitive to the pain of others, including the lonely young woman who runs the bakery. In “Fruit Juice”, the narrator reflects on his loneliness as a student who hoped for a date with the girl who brought him to soften the blow of meeting her father for the first time instead. The...