Literary+Elements

=__//Plot/Summary//__=

After Muna's (Muna translates to "No Name,") mother dies, he sets out to find his samurai father (or so he thinks). On his long journey, he makes many friends and encounters many enemies, strangers, and endless heartbreaks and joys that he had never even known existed before when he lived on the small island of Awa. He is cared for by a sandal maker and his daughter (Kawaki and Akiko) and a sword maker (Fukuji). He also encounters a luckless ronin (Takanobu) who he believes is his friend until he is asked by the ronin to betray his friend behind his back, it breaks Muna's heart and he doesn't even get anything out of it, unless...

//__Main Characters__//
Here you can watch an Animoto on the main characters.

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More details:

Muna: Muna is from the small island of Awa. When his mother dies, he stows away on a traveling cargo ship because he is told he has a father in another land. He has heard rumors that he will know his father because of a small tattoo of a chrysanthemum on his father's left shoulder.

Takanobu: Takanobu discovers Muna on the cargo ship and decides to use him for himself. He considers himself to be a pirate without luck, though he knows he is just a luckless ronin. He also almost dies in a fire at a pub when he is drunk, but his luck turns and he makes it out alive.

Kawaki: Kawaki is a kind man who is also an ancient sandalmaker who is growing old. When he finds the young boy, Muna, poor and on the streets, he takes him in and feeds him and cares for him throughout the next couple nights. Kawaki is a strange, kind, and gentle man who is seen by Muna as a life-saver.

Akiko: Akiko is Kawaki's daughter and also his caretaker. She is also the caretaker of the shop and the store. Muna visits Akiko often, but one day she is not there. She has become a woman after the New Year's celebration and has been forced to marry by her uncle, who is also her caretaker.

Fukuji: Fukuji is a kind man and a skilled swordmaker who finds Muna unconscious in the street after the fire at the pub. He couldn't get a doctor so he takes him back to his shop and and cares for him himself and before long, he treats Muna as his own son, until Muna betrayed him...

=__//Conflict//__=

In __//The Sign of the Chrysanthemum//__//,// the main conflict is that Muna doesn't know his father or what he is like and he desperately wants to find him. At first, in his daydreams, he believes that finding him will be easy and magical, but he soon realizes that even //if// his father has a tattoo of a chrysanthemum on his left shoulder, millions of people might. Also, his father might be dead or lost or he might have moved somewhere else. He then realizes that finding his father might be more difficult than he had initially thought, and he began to lose hope.

=__//Setting//__=

Here you can watch a GoogleDoc PowerPoint Presentation on the setting.

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=__//Themes//__=

To watch a super short Zoho on the themes in //__The Sign of the Chrysanthemum__// click [|here]