In the novel Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto, Yoshimoto illustrates how the main characters deal with death and grief. Throughout the story, she shows us how each character has some type of hobby or takes on a new duty to escape their feelings of sadness. For example in Kitchen, the main character Mikage had a special relationship with her cuisine, no matter what type it was, she loved it. “The place I love most in the world is the kitchen” (Yoshimoto 3). Throughout this story, Yoshimoto uses four characters as examples of four different types of people facing death and how each deals with it individually and together. To begin with, Yoshimoto shows us how to deal with death, because death is a great thing that people can do. I can't think, sleep, act honestly, or even be in public without feeling nostalgic. Yoshimoto uses Mikage as a perfect example throughout the story. Because once she lost her grandmother, she knew she had lost her whole family and she would just stay in bed and listen to the hum of the refrigerator to keep her from thinking about her grandmother . “The hum of the refrigerator kept me from thinking about my loneliness (Yoshimoto 5). The author helps us understand that when someone dies, people lie in bed, think about what happened, and remember all the good times they had with that special person. Mikage refers to his cooking most of the time in this story. The author states that one of the things that kept her from living her life was the kitchen which she loved to cook and be in it as much as she could. When Mikage moved in with Yuichi and his flamboyant mother Eriko she didn't feel comfortable, she felt strange but she fell in love with their couch, but throughout her stay she cooked for them to show a sign of respect...... middle of paper......and tell her she's not coming back. “The girl's uniform Hiiragi wore was Yumico's” (Yoshimoto 119). Yoshimoto uses this to show that some people's love is unbreakable and they will go to any extent to show their love for that special someone. Just like Mikage and Yuichi, Satuski took up a hobby and that was jogging. “So you go jogging?” Said Hiiragi” (Yoshimoto 119). In conclusion, Yoshimoto is not just the author of a book with a strange name, but rather a person who writes with a meaning worth thinking about. She wrote this book to show people more than death. For example, she used 4 different character types with different ages, passions and lifestyles. This shows that everything is for a reason but not everything is bad, death can have positive aspects. Works Cited Yoshimoto, Banana. Kitchen. New York: Grove, 1993. Print