Short Paper #1: Regret

In several of the novels we have read so far this semester there are characters whose actions are driven by a sense of regret that they cannot shake or find amends for. Although each character’s circumstances are different each one’s regret also has something to do with relationships, specifically family relationships.  The most obvious examples of this form of regret are seen in Please Look After Mom by Kyung-Sook Shin, where almost all of the characters experience feelings of regret. There are also examples of regret found in Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz and in My Michael by Amos Oz.

After the mother disappears in Please Look After Mom both her children and her husband experience feelings of regret over the way they treated her while she was alive and in their lives. Her oldest son Hyong-chol regrets that he gave up his dream to become a prosecutor after he failed his college entrance exam, because he had promised his mother that he would become a prosecutor. He regretted this, because the failure put a distance between him and his mother and he stopped caring or thinking about his mother like he should have. This distancing manifests itself in his regret over the part he played in his mother’s disappearance. “Instead of going to Seoul Station, Hyong-chol went to a sauna near work. As he sweated in the sauna, which he often visited the day after he drank too much, Father was getting on the train without Mom” (Shin, 86). Hyong-chol believes that if he had cared enough about his mother she never would have been lost, because he would have met his parents at Seoul Station.

Hyong-chol’s sister Chi-hon also had very similar feelings. He says, “After Mom went missing, his sister muttered to him, ‘maybe I’m being punished…’” (Shin, 73) for ignoring Mom.  His sister tells him that once they find Mom she is going to get married and stop going on airplanes, because Mom always wanted her to get married and hated when she would travel on planes. Chi-hon says, “After Mom went missing I realized that there’s an answer to everything. I could have done everything she wanted me to. It wasn’t important I don’t know why I got under her skin over things like that” (Shin, 114). Chi-hon regrets making waves about things that did not really matter with her mother instead of being respectful and doing things her mother’s way just to show her how much she cared about her.

Like his son, the father also feels regret both about how he treated his wife while she was alive and about the part that he played in her disappearance. “Before she went missing, [he] spent [his] days without thinking about her. When [he] did think about her, it was to ask her to do something, or to blame her or ignore her” (Shin, 129). He regrets that he “lived [his] entire life heaping all of [his] pain onto [his] wife” (Shin, 168). He wishes that he could go back and buy her medicine to make her feel better when she was sick or even just pay attention to her and listen to her when she talked. After her disappearance he realizes how little he really knew about his wife while she was alive and he blames himself for her disappearance, because he never listened to her. She was always telling him to slow down and walk next to her, but he never listened and if he had she never would have gotten lost. He says, “Since [his] wife has gone missing, [his] heart feels as if it will explode every time [he] thinks about [his] fast gait” (Shin, 149).

The mother also feels regret after her death regarding the way that she treated her children. She regrets the distance between her oldest son and herself as much as he does and she wishes that she could go back and support him in his choice to not retake the exam. She also has a lot of regret associated with her relationship with her eldest daughter. She was angry with her daughter for choosing to become a mother with three children instead of pressuring a career. After she dies she sits outside her daughters house in a tree and talks to her daughter and her grandchildren. She says to her daughter “Please forgive me for the face I made when you came back to Seoul with the third baby in your arms” (Shin, 190). Not only does she regret that she tried to force her own dreams for her daughter on her, but she also regrets that she never showed an interest in her grandchildren. She says to them, “When you children were born, I cared more about your mom then about you three” (Shin, 189). She regrets not caring about the children, because now she realizes that those children are a part of her daughter and the best way she could have shown her daughter she cared was to show an interest in her daughter’s children.

The examples from Please Look After Mom are all interconnected and it is therefore easy to see how each person’s regret is related to the family dynamic. Arabian Nights and Days by Naguib Mahfouz also has several examples of regret in relation to family, but these examples are not connected as cohesively.  After Gamasa al-Bulti is executed he miraculously returns in another body as Abdullah the porter. Immediately following this transformation it says that “his astonishment at his appearance did not cease, neither did his sadness for his family” (Mahfouz, 51).  He feels regret over his actions, because his family lost their home and their standing in society due to his treason. He moves into the same apartment building that they are staying in so that he can still be apart of their lives. However, he voices on several occasions his regret over not being able to do more for his family or be closer to them. He also wishes he had done certain things while he was ‘still alive’, like marry Husniya as a second wife. Shahriyar regrets his past actions of sleeping with virgins every night and then killing them, because of how it affects his current marriage with Shahrzad and his relationship to his son.  Shahrzad tells him continuously that “true repentance wipes away the past” (Mahfouz, 217). However, he still feels so much shame and regret over his past actions and how they affect his family that he leaves the palace. He believes that his wife, child and country will all be better without his corruptness and leaves in the night.

There is also one concrete example of regret in relation to family in My Michael by Amos Oz. Both Hannah and Michael show regret over the way their relationship has turned out. However, neither of them really identifies where it went wrong or exactly what their regret steams from. At one point Hannah describes their relationship saying, “My husband and I are like two strangers who happen to meet coming out of a clinic where they have received treatment involving some physical unpleasantness. Both embarrassed, reading each other’s minds, conscious of an uneasy, embarrassing intimacy, wearily groping for the right tone in which to address each other now” (Oz, 224). There is awkwardness in Michael and Hannah’s relationship, which they both seem to regret. They want to know each other better, but they do not know how. Hannah sums up her feeling of regret beautifully when she says, “Will we die, Michael, you and I, without touching each other so much as once? Touching. Merging. You don’t understand. Losing ourselves in each other. Melting. Fusing. Growing into one another. Helplessly coalescing” (Oz, 228). Hannah regrets their lack of emotional intimacy as husband and wife.

Although the circumstances are different in each novel there is a common theme of regret woven throughout them. Also in all the example this theme of regret is in relation to interactions within the family context. Regret is a common human emotion and few human beings manage to escape from its grasp. This may be the reason that it is such a prominent theme in contemporary world literature, as seen through these examples.