Shusaku Endo Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Tom Kemme

Critical Essay by Tom Kemme

Six months before atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a vivisection was performed on an American prisoner at Fukuoka University Medical School. The Sea and Poison is a fictionalized account of this operation and its effect upon two young interns…. (p. 269)

The sea is a powerful, expanding metaphor which subtly permeates the novel and suggests a power that is beyond man's control, and, simultaneously, a power that must be resisted if man hopes to have peace within himself and to live in harmony with his fellow men. Without being shrill or didactic, Endo's carefully crafted novel is poetic, profound, and prophetic; it is a realistic, probing classic for men of all nations. (p. 270)

Tom Kemme, "Fiction: 'The Sea and Poison'," in Best Sellers (copyright © 1980 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation), Vol. 40, No. 8, November, 1980, p. 269-70.