Analysis Of The Wise Old Woman By Yoshiko Uchida

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Gustave Flaubert once said, “What an elder sees sitting; the young can’t see standing.” This is true for the story “The Wise Old Woman” by Yoshiko Uchida. In this folktale, a young lord makes a decree that anyone over seventy-one must be banished from the village and left in the mountains to die. There lived in the village a farmer and his mother who was at the dreaded age of seventy-one. The farmer could not bear to leave his mother to die and decided to hide her instead. There was a threat to the village that lord Higa from another village was going to conquer them unless they could solve the riddles that he gave them. Only the wise old woman was able to figure the riddles out because of her experience. The young lord realized his mistake …show more content…

The conflict reflects the theme, as well. For example, when lord Higa assigned the villagers the riddles, the old woman was the only one who could solve them. “Then one day there was a terrible commotion among the villagers, for Lord Higa of the town beyond the hills threatened to conquer their village and make it his own.” (Uchida 3) Lord Higa assigned the villagers riddles to solve, and if they didn’t, he would conquer their village. The young lord did not know how to solve the riddles so the young lord quickly gathered together all his wise men of the village to see if they could figure the riddles out. They did not how to solve the riddles and they asked the villagers for help. The farmer asked his mother what to do. The old woman was very wise and knew exactly how to solve all three of the riddles. The farmer told the young lord what his mother had told him to do and the young lord praised him and rewarded him money. Lord Higa stopped sending his impossible demands and no longer threatened to conquer them, for he was impressed with how the village figured the riddles out. The young lord asked how