John Fallavollita Fallavollita 1
Kellie Cannon
English 112
January 27, 2015

Satisfaction by Needle
In The Tattooer, by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro, the author creates a character named Seikichi, who struggles with satisfaction. As the artist inflicts the pain of his needle into the men he seems to take on temporary satisfaction. He desires and searches for something more temporary and becomes drained as he finds what he is looking for. Although everyone seeks out for some sort of satisfaction,
At the beginning of The Tattooer, you will encounter the generalization, seemingly introducing the stories message that “his pleasure lay in the agony men felt as he drove his needles into them, torturing their swollen, blood-red flesh; and the louder …show more content…
She arrives at his place sent by a friend of his. She is a girl that’s training to become a Geisha. This was the girl that he wanted to tattoo. It seems to be that author wanted to show how enthused the character was when he finally found her. After showing the girl art that he made and asking her to be his personal canvas, she declines. It leads me to believe that he really needs to tattoo her to complete his ultimate goal. He wants it and will not stop until he gets what he really wants. Why is it so important that he must do this? Is it a way of him being happy? The author makes us think that it …show more content…
I contend, however, that not all the time you will get what you want to satisfied your needs. As Seikichi seems to go to the extreme due to him pulling out a vial of anesthetic to drug the girl in order for him to tattoo her since she will not let him. The artist needles a spider onto her and as she awakes is made to take a dip in hot water before she is allowed to see if. At the end of inflecting his pain, in which he doesn’t necessarily think this way as he did to the men, he is exhausted. Jun’ichiro leads us to think that he would have had more satisfaction out of this and maybe satisfaction of pain inflicted onto a woman.
This is not the case. As the girl comes out the artist requests to see the tattoo one more time and as she takes off the kimono a ray of light shines on the spider and creates the spider wreathed in flames. What was the author trying to say about the spider being wreathed in flames? You can only think that it was a metaphor to make the readers believe that it was to portray that it released her from the dangerous world and from being forced to become a