Essay Questions

How does reading Kerouac’s novels impact Sumire’s identity?

K expounds, “Sumire wanted to be like a character in a Kerouac novel—wild, cool, dissolute. She’d stand around, hands shoved deep in her coat pockets, her hair an uncombed mess, staring vacantly at the sky through her black plastic-framed Dizzy Gillespie glasses, which she wore despite her 20/20 vision. She was invariably decked out in an oversized herringbone coat from a second-hand shop and a pair of rough work boots. If she’d been able to grow a beard, I’m sure she would have.” Sumire’s obsessions with the character surmises that literature is a persuasive tool that can be exploited by individuals to build their superlative identities. Sumire’s aspirations regarding her ideal Self are ascribed to the character who she absolutely identifies with the character even though he does not embody conventional perfection. The character’s penchants are pointers of the Queerness which Sumire hankers for.

Explain Sumire’s unconscious intent in relation to her deceased mother.

K explicates, “The only memory she had of her mother was a vague one of the scent of her skin. Just a couple of photographs of her remained—a posed photo taken at her wedding, and a snapshot taken immediately after Sumire was born. Sumire used to pull out the photo album and gaze at the pictures…Sumire was determined to brand her mother’s face on her memory. Then someday she might meet her in her dreams. They’d shake hands, have a nice chat. But things weren’t that easy. Try as she might to remember her mother’s face, it soon faded. Forget about dreams—if Sumire had passed her mother on the street, in broad daylight, she wouldn’t have known her.” Sumire’s resolve to imprint her mother’s look in her memory surmises that she does not want to eradicate the mother’s images from her unconscious. The anticipation of meeting her mother in dreams heartens her to strive to preserve her look in her unconscious. The vanishing of the face depicts the natural repression of the appearance which is beyond Sumire’s control. Perhaps, the memory dwindles because at the time of the demise, Sumire was young and her unconscious was not fully advanced to emphatically preserve the face.

What psychological shield does Sumire’s father exploit in relation to Sumire’s mother?

Sumire’s father appeals to Avoidance: “Sumire’s father hardly ever spoke of his late wife. He wasn’t a talkative man to begin with, and in all aspects of life—as though it were a kind of mouth infection he wanted to avoid catching—he never talked about his feelings. Sumire had no memory of ever asking her father about her dead mother. Except for once, when she was still very small, for some reason she asked him, “What was my mother like?” She remembered this conversation very clearly. Her father looked away and thought for a moment before replying. “She was good at remembering, things,” he said. “And she had nice handwriting.” Sumire’s father circumvents the topics relating to his departed wife as way of subduing all her memories. Talking about her often would be contributory to rousing is memories which he wants to be blocked. The generalized rejoinders that he gives concerning his wife, indicate that he does not want to delve into particulars which would emotionally bother him.

Using Psychoanalysis explicate K’s approach of dealing with Sumire’s unreciprocated love.

Freudian psychoanalysis: K employs Displacement: “In order to ease the pain and, I hoped, eliminate any sexual tension between me and Sumire, I started sleeping with other women. I’m not saying I was a big hit with women; I wasn’t. I wasn’t what you’d call a ladies’ man, and laid no claim to any special charms. For whatever reason, though, some women were attracted to me, and I discovered that if I let things take their course it wasn’t so hard to get them to sleep with me.” K displaces his erotic feelings on other women to help deal with the reality of the improbable romance with Sumire. Although he does not love the substitute women, like he loves Sumire, they assist him to divert his anxiety which if left to accrue could elicit pressure between him and Sumire.

Lacanian Psychoanalysis: K’s endeavors to build an Imaginary Order are not productive: “These little flings never aroused much passion in me; they were, at most a kind of comfort. I didn’t hide my affairs from Sumire. She didn’t know every little detail, just the basic outlines. It didn’t seem to bother her. If there was anything in my affairs that was troubling, it was the fact that the women were all older and either were married or had fiancés or steady boyfriends. My most recent partner was the mother of one of my pupils. We slept together about twice a month.” K’s resolves to get intimate with different woman so as to fabricate the Imaginary Order of him being in charge of his emotions. The Imaginary Order does not aid him to discard or overturn his feelings for Sumire.