Response to The City of Tanfy

The story The City of Tanfy is telling that the narrator enters the poor and strange city Tanfy as an outsider. There has a special custom in the city Tanfy that people eat cold food. Contradictorily, the narrator realizes that there have many lavish women in the poor city. Then the narrator joins in a dancing party. In this party, he meets a butcher who gave hot meat to him. He eats the hot meat without considering. And at the end, he appears on the stage of the party and suggests people that they shouldn’t eat cold food but enjoy their life and get happiness.

I agree with the point that Alice proposed in our class. She said this story is similar to the Japanese film Spirited Away. The custom of eating cold food symbolizes cannibalism. Maybe the sense of Spirited Away is what the author really wants to convey, but we don’t realize this implied meaning as readers. This should give us more clues to show the implied meaning. The ending part of the story is worse than the earlier part.

Moreover, I appreciate the author’s method of describing. I enjoy reading the earlier part of this story because I think the wording is cautious, proper, and beautiful. The author gives us suspense clues to make us interest in the story. And he/she is good at making connection.