The Bee Character Analysis

Introduction
A review based on the play “The Bee” written by Hideki Noda and Colin Teevan from the short story Mushiriai (Plucking At Each Other) by novelist Yasutaka Tsutsui (Gardner, L. 2012). The play was set in 1974 Tokyo where a salaryman, Ido whose family have been taken hostage by an escaped convict, Ogoro. It revolves how an ordinary person has the possibility in turning into a monster when the environment requires it to survive (AHMADI, Z. 2018). The play contains strong violence, sexual and language content. From the perspective of a teacher, The Bee is not an appropriate selection of literature for Form 3 CEFR B1 students but the play is a good methodology in teaching literature. According to the play, The Bee, it does provide some

Metaphor could be considered as one of the most difficult literature device to teach students. This is because, it is a stable expression that used systematically by people (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980). Metaphor contains of personal reconstructed elements with the internalization of cultural, that will be affected by one’s schema (De Guerrero, M. C., & Villamil, O. S. ,2002). The title of the play, the bee is a metaphor of Ido’s performance. A bee can self-protect with its sting, however the price of doing so is heavy that it will leads to death just like Ido in the play, that in the end, he sacrifice others and his life in turn to save his family. Furthermore, Noda also use the bee to represent Ido’s mental status (Zoubek, W. 2013). The bee appears in the play after Ido injured the detective and threatening Ogoro’s wife. When the bee was trap in a cup, Ido was able to control his emotion but after it escaped he lost control and went crazy. At first, the students may not be able to relate the bee to Ido, but teacher could tell the students the link between the bee and Ido before hand so that they can have the “a-ha” moment when watching the

Some ideas presented in the play are way too abstract for Form 3, 15 years old students. First, the idea of love and responsible a father has toward the family, as students they do not know what is it like to be a father and a husband. Thus, students do not have the resonance with the character and would not understand Ido’s behaviour and why would Ogoro escaped from the prison after he heard the rumour that his wife is getting divorce with him. Next, the sense of hopeless when Ido could not do anything to save his family. Students would never experience a hostage situation in their life and so it is difficult for them to fully empathise with Ido. Last, the feeling of watching the beloved hurt by someone but could not do anything except sacrifice yourself. As watching the play, when Ogoro’s wife sacrifices herself to calm Ido down, and soon the three of them settle into an endless domestic routine of mutilation and rape (Rank, R. 2018). Students would feel this scene bloody and sexual because they are not able to understand the feeling that every character has. To overcome these cultural difficulties, teacher could had a pre-teaching session where the teacher replace the characters with something that the students are familiar with so that they can make connection to the inner feeling of the characters. For example, teacher could ask the students “If your pet dog is being hostage by