A. People don’t always appreciate what they have until
it’s gone.
The short story, “The Grasshopper and the Bell Cricket,” by Yasunari
Kawabata is about a moment in time when a boy gives a girl bell cricket that he
assumes is a grasshopper. During the
exchange from the boy’s hand to the girl’s hand, the boy’s name is projected
onto the girl by the boy’s lantern because his name was on it, and the girl’s
name was projected onto the boy because her name was on her lantern. It seems that the boy gives away the bug
because he thought it was a grasshopper and not a bell cricket, which is a quite
rare bug. Additionally, neither the girl
nor boy appreciates the chance instant when their names are projected on the
other. As such, there is a theme that
people don’t appreciate what they have until it is gone, mainly because they do
not recognize what it is they actually have or what is actually happening at
that instant.