father with the emperor is only one of several archetypes which Wilson finds in the relationship between the father and the narrator: as well as emperor-subject, there are references to God-Christ and Don Quixote-Sancho Panza. Beyond the obvious satirical intent, she argues that these overlapping references are part of Oe's strategy of defamiliarisation, through which the reader is forced to look at events through fresh eyes. Another element of this strategy is the use of counter-intuitive contrasting pairs within the family: the small boy looks after his obese father; the mother tries to save her stepson, while the father tries to kill him; the son hates his mother, and (in the narrator's view) vice versa. Napier argues that the satirical aspect of the work is not completely effective. She notes the difficulty of having one narrator recount both his own romantic delusion and the sordid reality which undermines it, and comments that, "by having one narrative voice encapsulating both, [Oe] creates an ambivalent final impression". References 1972 novels 20th-century Japanese novels Novels by Kenzaburō Ōe Japanese novellas Fiction set in 1970