Aghwee The Sky Monster is a short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

/novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 published in 1964

1964 in literature

The year 1964 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:*Jean-Paul Sartre becomes head of the Organization to Defend Iranian Political Prisoners....

 by the Nobel Prize

Nobel Prize in Literature

Since 1901, the Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded annually to an author from any country who has, in the words from the will of Alfred Nobel, produced "in the field of literature the most outstanding work in an ideal direction"...

 winning Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe

Kenzaburo Oe

is a Japanese author and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, deal with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.Ōe was awarded...

. It has been translated into English by John Nathan and published in the volume Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, along with the title story, Prize Stock and The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away

The Day He Himself Shall Wipe My Tears Away

is a novella by the Japanese author Oe Kenzaburo, first published in Japanese in 1972. It has been translated into English by John Nathan and was published in 1977 together with Teach Us to Outgrow Our Madness, Prize Stock and Aghwee the Sky Monster...

.
Aghwee was one of the first in Ōe's series of stories inspired by the birth of his autistic son Hikari

Hikari Oe

is a Japanese composer who has autism. He is the son of Japanese author Kenzaburō Ōe.Hikari Ōe was born developmentally disabled. Doctors tried to convince his parents to let their son die, but they refused to do so. Even after an operation, Ōe remained visually impaired, developmentally delayed,...

.

Plot

Aghwee opens with the anonymous narrator, a 28-year-old man, talking about the near-blindness in one of his eyes, the result of an attack by a group of children that year. Because of his blurred vision he sees "two worlds superimposed". The attack had prompted him to remember the events of the story, which took place ten years earlier, and the memory freed him from hatred of his assailants.

The narrator had worked as a companion to a composer

Composer

A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...

, D, then aged 28, who had (apparently) gone mad after the death of his infant son. D says that when he goes outside, he is visited by the spirit of his son, who swoops down out of the sky: "a fat baby in a white cotton nightgown, big as a kangaroo". D talks to Aghwee but refuses to interact with the people around him, saying that he is no longer living in the present time. The narrator is told by D's estranged wife that D had killed their son, starving him because he was born with a brain hernia (which later turned out to be a benign tumour). 'Aghwee' was the only word the child had spoken. The wife accuses D of fleeing reality. She gives the narrator a key which turns out to unlock a box of D's compositions, which D burns and buries. D takes the narrator to various places where D had previously enjoyed himself, as well as sending him to inform D's former girlfriend that he will no longer see her.

Matters reach a crisis when a pack of dogs (of which Aghwee is said to be afraid) comes across D and the narrator while D is talking to Aghwee. However it is the narrator who panics until he feels a hand on his shoulder, "gentle as the essence of all gentleness" which he says he knows to be the D's but imagines to be Aghwee's. D then tells the narrator more about his experience of the world, saying that the sky contains all those whom a person has lost; he stopped living in the present to prevent the number of figures floating in his sky from increasing.

The story reaches an end with the death of D on Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve refers to the evening or entire day preceding Christmas Day, a widely celebrated festival commemorating the birth of Jesus of Nazareth that takes place on December 25...

. D begins talking to Aghwee while he and the narrator are out in the city. While waiting to cross a road, "D cried out and thrust both arms in front of him as if he were trying to rescue something". D is injured and is taken to hospital. As he lies dying, the narrator asks him if he had simply made up Aghwee as a cover for his suicide, and says that he himself was about to believe in the spirit. In answer D merely smiles; whether mocking or "friendly mischief" the narrator cannot tell.

In a coda, the narrator returns to the recent incident when he was attacked by a group of children, who unaccountably became frightened and started to throw stones at him. He sensed "a being I knew and missed" — Aghwee — leaving him and returning to the sky. He no longer hated the children, and started to think of the figures who had filled his own sky over the intervening decade, associating the "gratuitous sacrifice" of his eye with perception of those figures.

Characters

The Narrator: A curious and introspective man, The Narrator, is 28 years old at the time of storytelling but was 18 years old when most of the major events occurred. When he was eighteen he was five feet six, one hundred and ten pounds and a freshman at college. Taking care of D was The Narrator's first job for money and would have a huge impact on his life. The only description that The Narrator offers of himself when he is 28 is the usage of a “piratical” black eye patch that covers an eye injury sustained in the most recent spring.

The Banker: Father of D, and an executive at the Bank. Little is mentioned about The Banker either than The Narrator’s perceptions of the man in which he assumes “that he was at the bottom a nasty man.”

D: A young prodigy composer whose “avant-garde music” had won many prizes worldwide. His composition of famous works occurred before the story and halted at the death of his baby son. Upon the discovery of a lump on the back of the baby’s head, initially thought to be a hernia, D and the doctor proceeded, without the mother’s permission, to starve the baby with sugar water until it died. After finding out the lump was a treatable benign tumour D lost touch with reality and deteriorated to a self professed “lunatic”.

Aghwee: Described as “a fat baby in a white cotton nightgown, big as a kangaroo... afraid of dogs and policemen” Aghwee is the representation of D’s dead son. Only visible to D, Aghwee, also the only word said by the son while alive, Aghwee’s presence is known by D’s and those close to D’s description. Living 100 yards into the sky Aghwee’s presence is a manifestation of both guilt and the pursuit of D to introduce his son to new experiences.

The Former Wife: Mother of the baby represented by Aghwee recuperating from a caesarean section she was unable to have any say in the baby’s short life span. She believes that D’s actions are driven by his Egoism.

The Actress: A previous lover to D before his breakdown not much is known about the Actress’s previous life. In the story she is a source of confused contempt of The Narrator and has the prominent feature of a dent in her forehead.

Side notes

• Included in the four part compilation “Teach us to Outgrow our Madness”, “Aghwee the Sky Monster” deals with many reoccurring themes of Oe Kenzaburo most prominently the presence of a disabled child.
• Two characters can be connected to his autistic-savant son Hikari, the baby who wasn’t expected to live a good life and the mad yet beautiful composer D.
• "Aghwee the Sky Monster" was one of two works written around Hikari’s birth, the other “A Personal Matter
  A Personal Matter
  A Personal Matter is a novel by Japanese writer Kenzaburō Ōe . The novel is replete with imagery of death, decay and sex....
  
  ” was also written in 1964.
• This story has been lauded by comparative literary critics, being compared even to famous Japanese short story author Akutagawa Ryunosuke.