Order in Peaches Meg Kiernan College

Societal dictum and etiquette are fluid concepts, changing and differing dependent largely on location, culture, time period, and other factors. With reference to carting a carriage of Peaches through rural Japan in the middle of a cold winter night, the narrator of Abe Akira’s Peaches discerns “Nowadays, perhaps. But back then? Unthinkable” (Akira 11). This serves to suggest that one or more aspects of Akira’s narrative may have been taboo in his younger years, slowly beginning to normalize or at least escape large-scale humiliation or punishment as he made his way through adulthood. In Abe Akira’s short story, Peaches, the narrator creates a central theme of disorder through his family’s defiance of societal norms in the form of infidelity resulting in an illegitimate child, and abortion.

The breach in etiquette is first posed by way of suggested infidelity on the part of the narrator’s mother. With a father away at war, the narrator recalls “the face and voice of a man…inseparably associated with the peach trees (Akira 14). Regularly stopping by to attend to the family’s peach trees, the reader witnesses a handyman of sorts having frequent tea and chats with the narrator’s mother. It is suggested to the reader, likewise,...