Edogawa Rampo's Short Stories Article Review

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Human Chair

This short story has many provocative and erotic themes -- but is it really a story about sexual decadence or is it more about alienation?

Indeed it is almost as though he is getting sexual pleasure by hiding in that chair. But the real message is alienation; because the writer is so ugly, painfully ugly, he has to find a way to be excited without anyone seeing his face. He writes that as soon as he "buried himself" in the chair, he had the sense that he had "buried myself in a lonely grave… I realized that it was indeed a grave…I was swallowed up by complete darkness" and he "no longer existed" to the rest of the world, including the women that he desired to meet and interact with. Someone who is fond of absolute darkness while waiting for an unsuspecting person to sit on him, literally, is a person who is weird, bizarre, and alienated from the rest of the world. The author readily admits that his story is the "confession of a madman," and he might well have added that this chair idea was his only break from total alienation.

Question TWO: As strange as the story is, could happiness also be a theme?

Yes happiness is one of the themes because it brought great joy when the author was able to move his knees and "embrace her more warmly…to rock her into a deeper sleep." He said the "fire of my love and passion" rose into a "leaping flame that could never be extinguished." Readers know that he could never have achieved this feeling of passionate joy just building chairs for a living -- because it was a boring job and he was isolated due to his hideously ugly face. He admitted he was "a loathsome creature" and the truth in this story is that you can be a freak, a twisted and demented person but still find happiness.

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He could visualize himself "hugging…kissing [the] snowy white neck" of the woman sitting in his chair…an "enjoyable experience" that made him give up the idea of stealing.

"Maybe I was destined to enjoy this type of existence," he pondered. Life inside a chair brought the protagonist great pleasure, and nut case though he was, he knew pleasure.

The Hell of Mirrors

Question ONE: How is Rampo's "The Hell of Mirrors" similar to "The Human Chair"?

In both of these twisted tales by Rampo the protagonists are weird and obsessive. The young man in "Hell of Mirrors" creates a bizarre ball with illuminated mirrors inside (and he goes inside, becoming a lunatic); and in "The Human Chair" the protagonist also creates an item (chair) that he can go into, and it could be argued that his obsession with hiding in there is a kind of lunacy as well. Also, both of the characters in these short stories have sexual fantasies; while the chair person can't see but can only feel the women sitting in his chair, the boy in the mirror story actually spies on his neighbors while they are having sex. Both characters can be considered voyeurs. The "Chair' story as actually a story within a story, as a manuscript about an odd and obsessed character who makes chairs and longs for female company is sent to a writer who is reading it (as the reader of….....

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