In the final part of Chapter 12 of our latest assigned reading, Yanjin is on her deathbed and reveals her true thoughts about Sunja. To Sunja, "her mother was unrecognizable to her; it would have been easy to say that the illness had changed her, but it wasn't so simple, was it? Illness and dying had revealed her mother's truer thoughts, the ones her mother had been protecting her from" (Lee 416).
This interaction is the second mother-daughter dialogue in the recent chapters. The first was Etsuko and Hana. In that interaction, the daughter was describing the mother's poor, selfish behavior. In Yanjin and Sunja's interaction, the mother was describing the daughter's lack of care for anyone besides her children. It is so difficult to navigate the correct side in each of these scenarios. Yanjin and Sunja's dialogue was very interesting to me. Yanjin accuses Sunja of not caring for her enough and not paying enough attention to her. For Sunja, her priorities have always been her children, and it seems Yanjin is saying that is not right. Or, to a lesser degree, it is not enough for Sunja to only be there for her children.
Looking at it in this way, I find it hard to empathize with Yanjin. It makes sense for a mother to prioritize her children. Of course, Yanjin is likely arguing that Sunja should have done this to a slightly lesser degree, and paid a little more attention to other people in her life. Still, this is too impossible of a task. It seems Sunja was only slightly off in her approach to caring for those in her life and Yanjin is overreacting to Sunja's imperfections.
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