Societal dictum and etiquette are fluid, changing, and different concepts largely depending on location, culture, time period, and other factors. In reference to transporting a cart of Peaches across rural Japan in the middle of a cold winter night, the narrator of Abe Akira's Peaches discerns: “Nowadays, perhaps. But at the time? Unthinkable” (Akira 11). This suggests that one or more aspects of Akira's narrative may have been taboo in his youth, slowly beginning to normalize or at least escape large-scale humiliation or punishment as he progressed into adulthood. adult. In Abe Akira's short story Peaches, the narrator creates a central theme of disorder through his family's disregard for societal norms in the form of infidelity resulting in an illegitimate child and abortion. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get an original essayThe violation of etiquette is first posed through suggested infidelity on the part of the narrator's mother. With a father at war, the narrator remembers “the face and voice of a man… inseparably associated with peach trees (Akira 14). Stopping regularly to tend to the family's peach trees, the reader witnesses a handyman of sorts frequently having tea and chatting with the narrator's mother. Likewise, it is suggested to the reader that there is always work to be done in the household, which is suitable for the man. Akira writes: “The time would come when she would also ask him to dig a bomb shelter. He could be asked to rake the earth, to do any work,” painting a picture of their family life in which man's work and efforts are enduring and omnipresent. Although no sexual matters between the two are clearly stated, the child narrator is absent from many of the interactions between his mother and the Peach Tree Man as he is still at school, and any interaction between the two during this period would be completely private. With a husband at war, the expectation was likely for the wife to take care of the house and children, and this was certainly not adultery, far from it. The aforementioned infidelity gracefully brings us to the next point of disorder in the form of implied infidelity. illegitimate child. As they sit and chat together, the peach tree man's reputation for promiscuity is brought up and he seems to take it with humor and lightness, "while on the other hand, there was [the] mother, of more and more serious to the point of surprising her. breath” (Akira 15). If the mother and the peach tree man had hypothetically been having an affair for some time, why would she suddenly be serious, perhaps to the point of worry, unless something had changed? quite radical way? After hearing about the end of the war on the radio, Akira suggests, in reference to the "choking" smell of rotting fruit, that "my father must have realized it long before he reached the gate" ( Akira 15). The author is not referring to the stench of the fruit evoking a stifling conscience in the father, but to the mother's infidelity and what resulted from it, suggesting that it gave off a strong aura. Additionally, our narrator senses an irregularity in his mother's tone with the peach tree man, but sees no physical manifestation of it. He understands that something must be happening outside of his perception, noting "As far as I know, his life has not undergone any changes, and it is precisely because of this that I remembered the scene as if I witnessed a dangerous tightrope walk” (Akira 15). Perhaps knowing a little more would have eased young Abe Akira's mind at least a little. Finally, and..