Mrs. Hayashis Creative Outlet Essay -- Seventeen Syllables Hisaye Yom

Mrs. Hayashi’s Creative Outlet Women who assume the traditional role of staying at home to care for their children and their household responsibilities often need a creative outlet to express themselves, their ideas, or just to get away from monotony they experience in the day after day domestic routine. Many women find various forms of art a fulfilling way to satisfy their need for personal expression. Similarly, in the short story â€Å"Seventeen Syllables† by Hisaye Yomamoto, the â€Å"stay-at-home-mom†, Tome Hayashi, discovers that she possesses a talent for writing haikus and finds it very fulfilling, as she is able to express herself well through the mere seventeen syllables contained in a haiku. Mrs. Hayashi’s passion for writing haikus appears to be present because she simply enjoys it; however, writing becomes the only way she is able to express herself. Unfortunately, numerous barriers placed in front of her eventually leads to the smothering of her creative ambition. One of the major barriers that Mrs. Hayashi encounters is the difficulty of communicating with her daughter. As she begins writing haikus more frequently, she wishes to have someone to share them with, but neither Rosie nor Mr. Hayashi seems interested. Rosie is unable to appreciate her mother’s haikus because her mother writes in her native Japanese language, and Rosie does not speak it fluently, nor does she wish to. In his review of â€Å"Seventeen Syllables† in the book Masterplots II, Yasuko Akiyama insightfully notes that â€Å"Mrs. Hayashi’s English is no better than Rosie’s Japanese†, thus creating a large communication barrier Rosie did not want her mother to know concerning the â€Å"quality and quantity of Japanese she had learned in all the years now that sh... ...self, [†¦] she [was] smothered† (Mistri 201). The barriers placed in the way of the pursuance of her dreams seemed too large for her to overcome because her husband could not let go of his simple-mindedness and her daughter could not bridge the communication gap present between them. She was forced back into her tragically traditional role as a submissive, passive, and unhappy wife and mother. This depiction of a divided family offers no solution of how to overcome similar struggles women may face even in today’s society. However, women must continue to explore ways to express their creativity uniquely and individually, as Tome Hayashi did, and not allow men to frown upon it and dictate what their role as women should be. Our world would be filled with much more creative artwork if more women like Tome Hayashi were given the opportunity to freely express themselves.