Line #12 Literature/IAmACat

Context Literature / IAmACat

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1	[[quoteright:279:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/51qwf2ntu1l.jpg]]
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3	-> ''"I am a cat. As yet I have no name."''
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5	''I Am a Cat'' (''Wagahai wa Neko de Aru'') is a satirical novel written by Natsume Sōseki (the pen-name of Natsume Kin'nosuke), which first appeared in ten installments in the literary magazine ''Hototogisu'' ("Cuckoo") between 1905 and 1906. Soseki had not intended to write more than a short story but it was so popular that he expanded it to fill a whole book. It is the chronicle of an unloved, unwanted, wandering cat who spends all his time observing humans, from his schoolteacher master, his servant, his horrible children, and more.
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8	!!Examples:
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10	* AnyoneCanDie: The deaths aren't common, but nobody's safe. [[spoiler: Not even the cat.]]
11	* ButtMonkey: Chinno Susami, or "Mr. Sneaze" as he's known in some translations, the English teacher who took the cat in, is shockingly incompetent at nearly everything he attempts to do.
12	* DownerEnding: [[spoiler: By the final chapter, practically not a single character has a better life than they had at the start of the story. The cat proceeds to get drunk and subsequently drowns in a water basin.]]
13	* DubNameChange: The second English translation gives the main characters English names that are supposed to mirror the meaning and/or the feel of the original Japanese names. Kumumaya no Kuro, literally "Richshaw Owner's Black (cat)", becomes the somewhat questionable "Rickshaw Blacky", to use one example.
14	* ExpositoryPronoun: One of the most famous examples in Japanese literature − the cat uses the noble pronoun "wagahai", which comically contrasts his not-so-noble position. Thanks to PopCulturalOsmosis, it's become very heavily associated ''with'' anthropomorphic cats.
15	* HumansAreTheRealMonsters: One of the first things the cat tells us of was how a student catches, boils and eats cats. It doesn't get much better from there when he tries to sneak into the school-teacher's house and repeatedly gets thrown out by the maid. The children spend a lot of their time torturing the poor thing.
16	* NoNameGiven: The cat is never named at any point in the story, and resolves to be a nameless cat for the remainder of his days early on, though he is given the nickname "Professor" by a fellow cat otherwise, in reference to his master.
17	* SelfDeprecation: The cat has nearly nothing but a laundry list of negative things to say about his master the English teacher, a fairly blatant caricature of the author himself.
18	* ShoutOut: Two of them in the first chapter to contemporary literary magazines ''Hototogisu'' and (now defunct) ''Myōjō'' – the master tries to send his works to these magazines in one of his stints at trying various crafts.
19	* StrayAnimalStory: An early example. The story is about the life of a wandering cat.
20	* WiseBeyondHisYears: The cat, in everything from its erudite language to its observations on human culture.
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Context Literature / IAmACat