Road Back (Resurrection, Return with the Elixir)

I will do my last post on Memoirs of a Geisha as well.

Here's my question for the last time:

How does this stage affect the main character positively and negatively? Why is it necessary for the character's journey to go anywhere?

Sayuri's road back to the ordinary world is driven by the fact that the chairman does become her danna. Sayuri's ordinary world was abolished years ago though, so really, Sayuri isn't returning to one, but creating one for herself. Sayuri's new ordinary world revolves around her spending as much of her time with the chairman as possible and being generally, very blissful.

However, Sayuri's resurrection abolishes her new ordinary world as well. As explained in a previous blog, Sayuri leaves Gion to go to New York because of tension with regards to the chairman's son becoming his successor. This stage verifies that Sayuri has changed from her experiences. This is because all her life, Sayuri has dreamed about being with the chairman, and when she eventually ends up with him, she gives him up without reluctance.

As for her return with the elixir, Sayuri's prizes to share with others are the experiences and wisdom she acquires from being a geisha. In the prologue of the novel, the narrator explains that Sayuri has kindly allowed him to interview her for a book he plans to write. Since her stories would become published in this book, Sayuri's experiences would become known nationally at least, if not globally. In this way, Sayuri shares her wisdom with several.

This stage affects Sayuri positively because she gets a chance to have an ordinary world she dreamed about but never had. Even when this new world doesn't seem fitting for her, Sayuri is given the chance to start completely fresh, which she takes when she decides to move to New York. The negative affects this stage has on Sayuri are that she may never feel stable, when so many considerable alterations have been made on her life through out it. At the end of the novel, Sayuri seems decently satisfied with the way her life ends up. However, as a reader, I was left with the feeling that her life could be better, and was more or less only adequate the way it was.

This stage was necessary for Sayuri's journey to go anywhere because it basically wrapped up her journey. By the end of the novel, Sayuri is an old woman, living out her days quietly after an overall hectic life. But to acquire this quiet life, Sayuri had to make many life-changing decisions to reach her goal, take the road back, and deal with the final conflicts in her resurrection. As for Sayuri's return with the elixir, that was her shared reward for overcoming adversity: learning from her experiences and letting others learn by them.

The purpose of Sayuri' journey was for her to learn from her mistakes and hardships like any ordinary human being, and to share those experiences with others so that they would not make the same mistakes. Inevitably those "others" would and will make mistakes too, but at least they avoided making some mistakes.

In conclusion, our existence itself is built on tries and failure, but it's all of those failures which eventually result in our society succeeding; and evolving in several aspects of life.