Be sure to read through Part II for Wednesday, or get pretty close. We'll take a reading break on Friday so you can get caught up if you need to, and of course you'll have all of Spring Break to read as well (beach reading)!
Answer TWO of the following:
Q1: Sensei tells the Narrator, “We who are born into this age of
freedom and independence and the self must undergo this loneliness. It’s the
price we pay for these times of ours.” What do you think he means by this? Why
does freedom and independence lead to loneliness, especially among the young?
Is he criticizing the Narrator for being too Westernized?
Q2: Related to the above, Kokoro is in many ways a novel
of fathers vs. sons—or how the different generations view one another. Why does
the Narrator dislike or misunderstand about his father? Similarly, why does his
father dislike about him? Consider the lines, “In the old days children fed
their parents, but these days they devour them.”
Q3: How does the Narrator begin to see cracks in his ideal vision of Sensei toward the end of Part I and in Part II? What does he reveal to the Narrator, and is he right to say that “the man seated before me was not the Sensei I loved and respected but a criminal”?
Q4: At one point, the Narrator notes that “Since Sensei and my father seemed exactly opposite types, they easily came to my mind as a pair, through both association and comparison.” How might this explain Sensei’s attraction for the Narrator? Is he merely the ‘ideal’ father he always wanted? Or does the pairing suggest they’re more alike than the Narrator cares to admit?
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