One theme
from the novel Please Look After Mom by
Kyung-Sook Shin that really struck me, on a personal level, was the idea that
we do not know the people we are close to as well as we claim to, due to
assumptions we make, people we take for granted and personal desires that we
let outweigh those of others.
In the
first section of the novel, Shin shows how we make assumptions about the people
we love without even bothering to ask them how they feel about things. Chi-hon
is completely bewildered by her sister’s question asking her, “Do you think Mom
liked being in the kitchen?” (p. 53). Their mother spent all of her time in the
kitchen and Chi-hon had never thought to ask her if she enjoyed it. When she
actually bothers to ask, her mother confesses that sometimes she use to break
jar lids to keep the kitchen walls from closing in on her. Chi-hon’s assumption
leads her to unintentionally take her mother’s sacrifices for granted. This scene was especially powerful to me and
made me reflect on some of the things I may be taking for granted about the
people I care about, because I do not take the time to ask them how they feel.
In the
father’s portion of the novel Shin expands on the idea of taking the people we
care about for granted by showing us the father’s regrets regarding his
treatment of his wife. He expresses in numerous places throughout this section
the idea that he assumed his wife would always be there. He looked at her as
being there to take care of him not the other way around and ignored the
obvious signs of her illness, because he did not want to deal with it. This
particular feeling of regret came vividly alive for me do to a personal
experience that was very similar. When I was a freshman in high school my
grandfather, who I had been very close with growing up, died of Alzheimer’s
disease. For several years leading up to his death I was scared of the person
he was becoming due to his disease and avoided spending time with him and
talking to him. I denied that there was anything wrong. Instead of taking the
time to get to know him better and treasuring the time I had left with him.
In the last
two sections of the novel Shin shows us how we often take our own desires and
reflect them on others blocking ourselves from being able to see what the other
individual actually wants. He shows this through the mother’s relationship with
two of her children. The mother had high hopes for both her son and daughter’s
futures. She wanted her son to become a prosecutor and for her daughter to have
a career and not be stuck at home as a mother.
Her son chooses a different, lesser, career and her daughter has three children,
becoming a stay at home mom. This makes her feel as though her children have
given up their dreams to settle for something less and is disappointed in them.
The reality of the situation is actually that the children’s dreams were not
the same, as their mother’s dream for them, but this was not clearly
communicated. This also struck very close to home for me, because I have often
had fights with my parents, because I felt like they did not understand me. I
felt as though they were reflecting their dreams for my life onto me and trying
to make them my own instead of asking me what I wanted for my own life.
I believe
that Kyung-sook Shin does an incredible job of portraying the lack of
understanding between people who think they know each other well and why these
lapses in understanding exist.
