Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Natsume Soseki's novel Kokoro

This study will examine Natsume Soseki's novel Kokoro, focusing on the love triangle among Sensei, his friend K, and the woman they both loved. The study will explore the ways the love triangle symbolizes the miseries and alienation of life in the modern world.

The novel is about the way morality was changing as the old traditional life passed away in Japan and the modern world emerged. The old ways were ruled by strict moral views. There was a sense that people owed one another loyalty and fidelity. Friendship was important, maybe even more important than love. But these ways were passing away at the time this novel was being written. The modern world was coming into being. The major difference between the old world and the modern world was the fading away of the sense that people owed moral behavior to one another. In the modern world, the most important value was individualism, rather than group loyalty and friendship.

Sensei is a man with one foot in the old world and one foot in the modern world. He knows that the moral code of the old world said that he should not have taken the woman K loved. But Sensei also is in the modern world, and he has become more individualistic and selfish as a result. He takes the woman, K kills himself, and the rest of Sensei's life is spent in guilt, alienation and misery. Finally, Sensei himself chooses suicide as a way out of his suffering, telling himself that it is a moral action.

Soseki's novel would not be the great work which it is if it told the story of a love triangle which only had to do with a certain country at a certain time. Selfishness and betrayal are parts of every culture and every era. Sensei's betrayal of his friend (and of himself) could have taken place in any nation at any time. However, the fact that Japan was moving into the modern world at the time gives the love triangle a special meaning. Sensei gives the novel a special moral power because he has felt guilt...

Page 1 of 7 Next >

More on Natsume Soseki's novel Kokoro...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Natsume Soseki's novel Kokoro. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 16:09, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1690738.html