Tragedy and Toxicity in Kitchen and The Perks of Being a Wallflower Samantha Hirsch College

When one reads through Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wallflower there are not any striking similarities. The ages of the characters, the trials they go through, and the culture they are respectively surrounded by do not imitate each other in any way. However, there is a common trait to each of these novels; while Kitchen deals with death and The Perks of Being a Wallflower focuses on teen discovery, both novels find their protagonists stuck in difficult relationships with each other. Furthermore, these relationships are pushed past the bounds of normal friendship, creating difficult relationship dynamics that require the main characters to lean on each other while simultaneously pushing each other away. It is the push and pull seen in said relationships that raises the question of toxicity; though, we must question who is capable of judging said toxicity. These novels are not outright related, but by examining the relationships their main characters develop throughout the plot, the similarities are made clear.

In the novella Kitchen, the two main protagonists, Mikage and Yuichi, are thrust together after the loss of Mikage’s grandmother, her last living relative. Mikage, an aspiring chef...