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Imagery
Explanation and Analysis—The Baron's Garden:
In a passage that employs both imagery and metaphor, Sayuri describes the elegant landscapes of the Baron's home when she is first invited there for a party:
The main house dated back to the time of his grandfather, but the gardens, which struck me as a giant brocade of textures, had been designed and built by his father. Apparently the house and gardens never quite fit together until the Baron’s older brother—the year before his assassination—had moved the location of the pond, and also created a moss garden with stepping-stones leading from the moon-viewing pavilion on one side of the house. Black swans glided across the pond with a bearing so proud they made me feel ashamed to be such an ungainly creature as a human being.
Sayuri is both excited and anxious to be invited to the Baron's party. She hopes to find the Chairman there, but knows that the Baron is an unpredictable man with a poor temper. Further, unlike previous occasions where she has entertained guests as a geisha, this time she cannot rely on Mameha for guidance and support. The Baron, Sayuri learns, lives in a beautiful, antique-filled house surrounded by carefully and expensively landscaped gardens. When Sayuri looks over the gardens, she thinks of them as a "giant brocade of textures." In this metaphor, drawn from the language of textiles, Sayuri describes the garden as resembling a piece of patterned brocade fabric, with an intricate geometric design.
Further, she uses lush imagery in her description of the estate, with its "moss garden with stepping-stones leading from the moon-viewing pavilion" and ponds where black swans glide gracefully. The novel depicts the Baron as a man with refined tastes but also a streak of cruelty. Ultimately, he dies by suicide during the war, as he is afraid of being deprived by the occupying Americans of his privileged life.
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