For Monday: Soseki, Kokoro, Part 3 (Chs.52-70)

NOTE: For your edition of the book, start around the passage where the narrator’s father is dying and he starts talking to his brother about the property; finish roughly around the part where Sensei moves into the house with the widow and starts falling in love with her daughter. In other words, read about half of Part 3. 

Answer TWO of the following:

Q1: Sensei writes that “although I despised women, I could not find it in me to despise Ojōsan...I felt for her a love that was close to pious faith.” Why doe she seem to fall in love with her—and is it truly love? Can a man who claims to despise women suddenly make an exception? And how did she convince him to reform his views?

Q2: Besides the fact that Sensei intends to die, why does he finally decide to tell the narrator his secrets? What does he have to gain from recounting the story of his secret shame? Do you think the narrator understand it himself?

Q3: How are the narrator’s and Sensei’s stories of coming to adulthood similar? Are both of them “egotists,” as the narrator’s brother calls Sensei (and people like him)? Do we begin to understand the hidden attraction of the narrator for his ‘teacher’ as we read his letter?

Q4: At the end of Chapter 62 (in my edition), Sensei writes, “But I believe a commonplace idea stated with passionate conviction carries more living truth than some novel observation expressed with cool indifference.” Why might this be an idea we’ve previously encountered in other works in the class? What idea is Sensei actually trying to get across here?