Sound Track
(Kaleasha) The song “My heart is broken” by Evanescence shows how difficult it is to have to go along with what everyone else wants. Exactly like how Sayuri has no say on her life when she is a geisha. She could never choose the man she wants to be with and she would always feel great pain when she thought of having no control over her life. Like in these lyrics of the song I will wander til the end of time/ pulled away from you/ I pulled away to face the pain/I close my eyes and drift away/Over the fear that I will never find/A way to heal my soul/. This represents what’s going on with Sayuri inside her mind and heart when Nobu decides he wants to be her danna, which will not allow her to be with the chairman. Even mother has control over who shall be Sayuri’s while Sayuri must live with the choice. “Mother will be angry if you’ve done something to spoil Nobu-san’s affection for you.”(389) It is Sayuri’s job to make sure that Nobu likes her and she must make him happy whether she actually likes him or not. All mother cares about is the money that Nobu would bring to the Okiya once he becomes Sayuri’s danna. I can’t go on living this way/But I can’t go back to where I came/. These lyrics represent how Sayuri is stuck with her life and she wants to make change so she will have to bring it upon herself to find a way to actually be with who she wants. “I saw myself cutting the bond of fate that held me to Nobu and watching him fall all the long way into the ocean below… Of course I wasn’t going to throw Nobu into the ocean, but I had an understanding, just as clearly as if a window had been thrown open in my mind, of the one thing I could do to end my relationship with him.” (395) Here Sayuri does come up with a plan to take action on her own to be with the one she wants and to take care of her own fate, not letting anyone else tell her what to do anymore. Sweet sleep my dark angel/Deliver us from sorrow's hold/or from my hard heart/. This represents after Sayuri goes through with her plan. She feels bad for hurting Nobu, but it was the only way she could be happy, so she said goodbye to him and has moved on. “I didn’t want to lose his friendship; but in my efforts to reach the chairman,Nobu was an obstacle I’d found no way around.”(395)
Song - “Carmen” by Lana Del Rey (Laura)
For Sayuri/Chiyo once she became a geisha her life seemed to finally improve. However throughout the book the life that other geisha in the city had didn’t always seem to be desirable. Even popular geisha like Hatsumomo and Mameha had their own struggles in the book and the song, “Carmen” by Lana Del Rey captures some of the reality behind the geisha lifestyle. The song is about a girl who everyone admires and is the center of attention, but in reality she is just masking the reality to the world around her and to herself as well. This difference in appearance and reality is clear from the beginning of the song, “Darling, darling, doesn’t have a problem / Lying to herself ‘cause her liquor’s top shelf / It’s alarming honestly how charming she can be / Fooling everyone, telling them she’s having fun.” This quote relates to the book in the sense that once the geisha were able to start making money in the book they were able to agree to things they didn’t want before had. An example of this would be when Chiyo was told it was time to sell her virginity. Chiyo, who didn’t even know what this meant, probably would never have choose Dr.Crabb to have sex with but because he paid the okiya house money for Chiyo he was able to have sex with her. For Chiyo this is just one example of something she was willing to go through because she needed money for her lifestyle.
Similarly, the song also looks at appearances when it looks at how charming the girl, Carmen, in the song is, “ The boys, the girls, they all like Carmen / She gives them butterflies, bats her cartoon eyes/ She laughs like God, her mind’s like a diamond.” This quote relates to the book in two ways, with the first being the sense that Carmen has everyone's attention similar to the geisha in Gion who even walking down the street to get groceries would turn heads and get the attention of other passing women. This quote also relates the the book in a slightly different way; in the song Carmen bats her cartoon eyes which implies that her eyes are fake but at the same time capturing and entertaining, in the book the importance of eyes was taught to Chiyo early on in her geisha training when after an explanation was told to get a delivery boy to drop his packages just by looking at him, “ A girl with a stunning profile will never accidentally give a man the wrong message with it (eyes). But men are going to notice your eyes and imagine you’re giving them messages with them even when you aren’t” (159). In both the song and the book the girls use the charm of their beauty and eyes to get the attention of other people because really what they are doing is entertaining and putting out an image for attention. Throughout the book this was a constant reminder from Chiyo, “ You must remember that a geisha, above all, is an entertainer and a performer.” (143), but by acting as entertainers their whole life the geisha often faced difficulties in their personal life. Hatsumomo throughout the book was always noted to be drunk and when she wasn’t happy with her geisha relationships she had a secret boyfriend that ended badly because she was a geisha. In Mameha life she had to deal with always pleasing her dana which involved aborting children she conceived from him, “A jizo, you see , honors the soul of a departed child; in Mameha’s case, they were for the three children she’d aborted at the Baron’s request.” (326). Yet through the pain and struggles the geisha continued to take orders from the women or men above them and also continued to entertain because as Mameha explained there was really nothing else for them to do and nothing like work to get over struggles. In the song there is a quote similar to Mameha’s explanation, “ Tying cherry knots, smiling, doing party favors/ Put your red dress on, put your lipstick on / Sing your song, song, now the camera’s on / And you’re alive again.” and again what this quote is saying is that while their personal lives in reality were horrible, in front of a camera or for the geisha in front of the men they would come alive again.
In the end however, I think Chiyo is the one who summarizes the life of geisha and the meaning of the song best by saying, “ And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped about my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. And that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.” (187).
Song - “Carmen” by Lana Del Rey (Laura)
For Sayuri/Chiyo once she became a geisha her life seemed to finally improve. However throughout the book the life that other geisha in the city had didn’t always seem to be desirable. Even popular geisha like Hatsumomo and Mameha had their own struggles in the book and the song, “Carmen” by Lana Del Rey captures some of the reality behind the geisha lifestyle. The song is about a girl who everyone admires and is the center of attention, but in reality she is just masking the reality to the world around her and to herself as well. This difference in appearance and reality is clear from the beginning of the song, “Darling, darling, doesn’t have a problem / Lying to herself ‘cause her liquor’s top shelf / It’s alarming honestly how charming she can be / Fooling everyone, telling them she’s having fun.” This quote relates to the book in the sense that once the geisha were able to start making money in the book they were able to agree to things they didn’t want before had. An example of this would be when Chiyo was told it was time to sell her virginity. Chiyo, who didn’t even know what this meant, probably would never have choose Dr.Crabb to have sex with but because he paid the okiya house money for Chiyo he was able to have sex with her. For Chiyo this is just one example of something she was willing to go through because she needed money for her lifestyle.
Similarly, the song also looks at appearances when it looks at how charming the girl, Carmen, in the song is, “ The boys, the girls, they all like Carmen / She gives them butterflies, bats her cartoon eyes/ She laughs like God, her mind’s like a diamond.” This quote relates to the book in two ways, with the first being the sense that Carmen has everyone's attention similar to the geisha in Gion who even walking down the street to get groceries would turn heads and get the attention of other passing women. This quote also relates the the book in a slightly different way; in the song Carmen bats her cartoon eyes which implies that her eyes are fake but at the same time capturing and entertaining, in the book the importance of eyes was taught to Chiyo early on in her geisha training when after an explanation was told to get a delivery boy to drop his packages just by looking at him, “ A girl with a stunning profile will never accidentally give a man the wrong message with it (eyes). But men are going to notice your eyes and imagine you’re giving them messages with them even when you aren’t” (159). In both the song and the book the girls use the charm of their beauty and eyes to get the attention of other people because really what they are doing is entertaining and putting out an image for attention. Throughout the book this was a constant reminder from Chiyo, “ You must remember that a geisha, above all, is an entertainer and a performer.” (143), but by acting as entertainers their whole life the geisha often faced difficulties in their personal life. Hatsumomo throughout the book was always noted to be drunk and when she wasn’t happy with her geisha relationships she had a secret boyfriend that ended badly because she was a geisha. In Mameha life she had to deal with always pleasing her dana which involved aborting children she conceived from him, “A jizo, you see , honors the soul of a departed child; in Mameha’s case, they were for the three children she’d aborted at the Baron’s request.” (326). Yet through the pain and struggles the geisha continued to take orders from the women or men above them and also continued to entertain because as Mameha explained there was really nothing else for them to do and nothing like work to get over struggles. In the song there is a quote similar to Mameha’s explanation, “ Tying cherry knots, smiling, doing party favors/ Put your red dress on, put your lipstick on / Sing your song, song, now the camera’s on / And you’re alive again.” and again what this quote is saying is that while their personal lives in reality were horrible, in front of a camera or for the geisha in front of the men they would come alive again.
In the end however, I think Chiyo is the one who summarizes the life of geisha and the meaning of the song best by saying, “ And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped about my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. And that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.” (187).