Roman Analyzes Asana Yano's Shadows of the Forest

The Forest is a place of sanctuary, a place some people go to feel safe, and one with nature. A place where, if you really think about it and enjoy it, you can wash away your current problems in the sounds, sights, and smells. Rena walks into the middle of the forest. In her backpack is a rope tied in the shape of a noose. She disregards all the wonders of the forest. The only thought? To end her life. A girl around her age named Cora stops her from making this massive mistake and teaches Rena how to enjoy the forest and, by extension, to change her life. The author, Asana Yano, uses the forest and the wonder of nature to alleviate the worldly problems of school and circumstance, and this shows that some calming times here and there can really help our problems.

One way Yano uses nature as a sanctuary is how she structures each part of the story. After all the drama of the day ends, our protagonists go to the forest to clear their minds. For example, Rena describes her normal day. Go to school, people make fun of her, suffer through classes, “It was like living in a simulation,” she said. But then at the end of the day, she happily walks back into the forest to meet her new friend there. Same goes for Cora, her bullies torment her even more viciously than Rena. But Cora always returns to the forest to enjoy the scenery. This form of story structuring really gets the reader in the same headspace as Rena and Cora due to the day's brutal nature, but to have it where the forest is the relief at the end of the day, the light at the end of the tunnel, is really effective at making reading sympathize with Rena, and only serves to make the brutal parts of the story more brutal…

Yano uses the Character Web and bullies in the story to emphasize the characters' feelings and emotions. On Rena’s side, her main bully is her mother, a failed parent and horrible alcoholic. Every day, after Rena comes home from the forest, her mother is waiting in a drunken stupor. The mother is prone to anger and seems to not want Rena to focus too much on school at all. On the other hand with Cora, her own bully is revealed to be her sister, who is embarrassed to be her sister for an undisclosed reason. The sister and her friends torment Cora, telling her to kill herself. The only relief Cora has is to go to the forest at the end of the day. This makes it so the forest in this story is the relief from these bullies.

Now, there is a lot more stuff I can talk about. The forest in this story can really represent more than just a simple sanctuary in this story, but I have chosen not to spoil this story because, WOW, I was absolutely flabbergasted at how amazing the ending is. I have omitted that from this article so YOU, THE READER, can go and read Asano Yano’s "Shadow of the Forest." I promise you you will NOT regret reading this story.

Find it on our HIS Writes Page.

Happy reading! Happy writing!