I personally found “Hateful Things” by Sei Shonagon very easy to read. I was immediately drawn into the text and found it was not difficult to relate to in many ways. Why? Because…What is every American teenager today? Annoyed! We all have our little pet peeves about personalities that we don’t like, cultural traditions, or simply unavoidable occurrences that strike us as bothersome! While some of the points made in “Hateful Things” were cultural specifically to tenth-century Japan, many of them were relevant to us today. In general, stories are easy to read when you strongly agree with them or strongly disagree. After reading just a couple of paragraphs, such a passion was stirred up in me that I was ready to write my own rendition of “Hateful Things”!
One aspect of this piece that makes it very well written is the excellent imagery given from paragraph to paragraph. The reader’s mind is constantly engaged imagining themselves in each of the “hateful” situations described. Another technique the author used is mentioning how each of the described situations is hateful in different ways. For example, “I find it most distasteful,” “Disgusting behaviour,” “Hateful is an understatement,” and “one finds it hateful in the extreme.” The author creatively came up with a new way of saying the same thing every paragraph.
