Abstract
Kenzaburo Oe is a Japanese novelist who was awarded The Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994. The novel, Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age is a series of linked, meditative stories that describe Oe’s changing relationship with his adolescent brain-damaged son through the poems and paintings of William Blake. This study examines how Blake’s poems and symbols work in the novel, focusing the first story, “The Songs of Innocence, the Songs of Experience,” and the last one “Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age.” In the stories, Oe seeks the possibility of healing and salvation through much difficulties and symbiosis with his son. It includes the process of his son’s becoming an artist as a priest. The stories also include Oe’s own spiritual journey guided by Blake. Oe’s allusion to Blake serves as a device which establishes an entirely new form of novel. By doing so, the personal experiences of father and son rises to the height of universality.
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