What is the theme of the story "He-y, Come On Ou-t!"?

One theme that is central to this story's message centers around the importance of caring for the earth and its resources.

When people first discover the hole, they are shocked by its depth. A reporter shows up to investigate, and then a scientist tries to discern the depths of the hole. It is utterly spectacular; no one has ever seen anything like it.

Instead of pausing to appreciate the wonder of such a natural phenomenon, the people quickly begin to use it to absorb manmade waste, grotesque by comparison. The hole first receives nuclear waste, often symbolic of the deadly potential of mankind. Later, boxes of classified documents are tossed in. The decaying bodies of animals which have been decimated through human experimentation are next thrown into the hole.

All of this waste has been generated by mankind, which looks for a quick and convenient means of ridding itself of the byproducts of its efforts. Not having to look at their own waste gives them a "peace of mind," and they concentrate on producing "one thing after another." No one wants to think about the "consequences" of all their production, destruction, and disposal.

Eventually, of course, the people of the town must pay for the way they have disrespected nature, as is evidenced when the workman hears that initial call echoed back to the town in the final lines. The hole is symbolic of Earth itself; across the world, humans stuff our trash into the Earth's hills, plains, oceans, and mountains, trying not to think about the eventual reckoning that mankind will have to pay for disrespecting the natural wonder of our planet. Like the workman, all too often we have our eye on the manmade "skyline," which we are continually trying to improve and grow, and we fail to notice the impending disaster our efforts are creating.

The theme of the story is that you can't just bury your problems and forget about them: they will always return to haunt you.

In this tale, a typhoon and landslide create a deep hole near a village. The villagers contract with a company that collects trash to dump in the hole. Nuclear waste goes down there, and the villagers are told it doesn't matter, because it won't be a problem for thousands of years, and they will be paid well for accepting it. Classified documents go down the hole, as do contaminated animal bodies and unclaimed corpses. The town prospers, and the very air seems cleaner. This society feels it has found the solution to all its messy problems.

However, at the end of the story, the cycle begins again, except that now the beautiful city with its clean blue skies is the new hole that things will begin to drop in.

The story can be read in many ways. It can be interpreted as an ecological commentary that argues it is a mistake to think we can dump or bury our trash and believe it has gone away. We have witnessed this in our own world, as trash dumped at sea has sometimes come back to wash up on tourist beaches.

The story can also be read psychologically. Freud argued that all the unpleasant "stuff" we repress and try to forget comes back to haunt us. He called this "the return of the repressed." To be emotionally healthy, we have to deal with our problems, not just bury them and hope they will disappear.

The theme of the story is that you will get out what you put in.

In this story, a group of villagers finds a hole that seemingly has no bottom while they are trying to repair a shrine after a typhoon.

They do not know what to make of the hole, and someone finally yells into it.  When there is no response, he picks up a pebble.

"You might bring down a curse on us. Lay off," warned an old man, but the younger one energetically threw the pebble in.

Here is the moment of truth.  They are doomed from this point on.  Whatever goes into the hole is going to come out, but they do not know that yet.  So they continue to throw things in the hole without thinking about the consequences.  They use the hole as a depository for all of their trash—an endless landfall.  Yet what goes in must go out.

Then, as he resumed his former position, from the direction where the voice had come, a small pebble skimmed by him and fell on past.

The man does not notice.  The old man was right.

This story is an example of an ecological cautionary tale.  We can do whatever we want to the environment now, but we do not really know what the long-term effects will be.  We may not see the damage we are doing until much later, but the damage will still be there and it will come back to haunt us.

What is the theme and author's purpose in "He-y, Come On Ou-t!" by Shinichi Hoshi?

One could argue that the theme of the story is the perennial one of man's destruction of his natural environment. Instead of protecting the large hole, treating it as a precious natural phenomenon, the people in this throwaway society see it as nothing more than a giant dumpster. Before long, the hole is being used as a depository for all kinds of junk: nuclear waste, corpses, classified secrets, and lots of other stuff that people want to hide.

The hole could've been put to so many other, more environmentally-friendly, uses. Instead, people saw it as nothing more than a giant landfill. To be sure, a beautiful city soon grows up around the hole, but it's been built on foundations of sand, so to speak. It only exists because of the many ecological horrors committed in the years since the hole was discovered.

The overriding message of the story seems to be that, no matter how hard we try to avoid the consequences of our actions, our destruction of the environment will always come back to haunt us. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but definitely at some not-too-distant point in the future, as the workman sitting on top of the skyscraper at the end of the story discovers.

The theme of Shinichi Hoshi's short science fiction story "He-y Come On Ou-t" is certainly an ecological warning against pollution and the careless discarding of our trash. In the story, a bottomless hole is discovered in a town. After scientists and other researchers cannot ascertain why and how there appears to be no bottom of the hole, a man offers to buy the hole and then promptly begins discarding all manner of hazardous and dangerous waste down the hole. Everyone else thoughtlessly follows suit. As years go on, a grand city is built around the dumping ground that is the mysterious hole. One day, as a worker sits upon a scaffolding, he hears someone call out, "he-y come on ou-t!" and a pebble falls upon his head from the sky, foreshadowing the pollution and hazardous waste that is about to be released upon the city and the people who so carelessly threw out their trash. Our thoughtless pollution has serious consequences and this story is warning us that unless we fundamentally change our ways, ecological disaster will be the only result, no matter how much we choose to ignore it.

The above answer is absolutely accurate, but the story can also be connected to a broader theme beyond the ecological message. While many people do use the hole to get rid of trash that will significantly damage the environment (such as nuclear waste and chemicals), other people use it to get rid of things they simply do not want to think about, see, or have others see or know about. For example, the government uses the hole to get rid of "unnecessary classified documents," women use it to get rid of mementos of previous lovers, and criminals use it to get rid of evidence.

This connects the idea articulated above, that people have polluted without thinking about the environment, with a greater message: we prefer to do things in general without thinking about or acknowledging the consequences. Once we have done something, we want to be "rid" of it. Even if it was something we wanted to hold on to, such as a love letter, once we "move on" from it, we want it out of sight— not only for ourselves, but also so others do not see the parts of our past we don't want in the open. The hole speaks to the human desire to bury the past, and that doing so is ultimately impossible.

There is a strong ecological message in this story. The people disregard the environment and think that they have found an easy solution for all of the harmful chemicals they have created and all the dangerous waste they have generated. However, it turns out that their thoughtlessness for the well being of the earth is going to revisit them as their waste rains down on their heads. The author wants the reader to think about our actions as we quickly pollute and damage our environment. A few decades ago, people just dumped trash into the ocean because they couldn't see the damage it would do in the water, and just wanted to get rid of it. It seemed like an easy solution then, just throw it in and it disappears. Throughout history we've just dumped our waste in places and watched it disappear, but it never just "disappears." It always comes back to affect us in some detrimental way, whether it kills off species of animals or pollutes our water or depletes our ozone. This story illustrates the very thing that we do, we dump our problems and hope that they'll disappear. No one wants to think about it, but Hoshi's story reminds us that we can't hide our mistakes so easily, because it will come back to us somehow.