Botchan

Botchan Book Report

The book Botchan is a book written by Natsume Soseki. It revolves around a young teacher whose nickname is Botchan. His real name is never mentioned in the story. He is a teacher from Tokyo who ends up teaching in a middle school in Matsuyama, which is located on the island of Shikoku. The school different in very different in some way but it is also similar.

The middle school he goes to work and meets the principal who he gives the nickname of Badger. He gives him this name because he feels that the Badger would deceive or bewitch him. His assistant principal, and dean is nicknamed Red Shirt for the red flannel shirt he wears all the time.

As he walks into his classroom he feels very intimidated by the students because they are all taller than him and most have a larger body than him. They don't really seem to care that he is there teaching, they just continue showing disrespect towards him by yelling and talking to each other. He demands quiet, but the kids don't listen. He got very upset even though that was only his first class of the day. The rest of his classes that day went along the same way.

He tends to think a lot about Kiyo, the maid who would clean for him as a kid, whom he had an intimate relationship with. He used the thought of her as a way to relax. Throughout most of the book he really wished that she was there with him. He found a small restaurant and decided to get two plates of dumplings not knowing the next day the students would heckle him about it. He also found a spa type of place where he could go and sit in the pool and just reflect, and feel smug. The next day, the kids again wrote something about that on the board. Botchan found this to be very disrespectful.

Botchan spent a lot of time in this book trying to get the students to behave and actually pay attention. He also tried to teach the kids about some respect to show teachers