SOURCE: "The Device of Repetition: In Quest of Dialogic Narrative," in The Marginal World of Ōe Kenzaburo: A Study in Themes and Techniques, M. E. Sharpe, Inc., 1986, pp. 61-82.

In the excerpt below, Wilson studies the narrative structure—especially the function of repetition—in "Father, Where Are You Going?," "Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, " and "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away. "

"Father, Where Are You Going?" ("Chichi yo, anata wa doko e ikuno ka?," 1968, hereafter "Father"), "Teach Us To Outgrow Our Madness" ("Warera no kyōki o ikinobiru michi o oshieyo," 1969, hereafter "Teach Us"), and "The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away" ("Mizu kara waga namida o nuguitamō hi," 1971, hereafter "My Tears") show an obsessive repetition of characters, events, images, and dialogues, sometimes repeated word for word, paragraph for paragraph. It is as though Ōe had rewritten the same draft again and...