Please read the guidelines on the first page before adding any words.
Discussion questions
What sentence/passage gave you the most difficulty? Feel free to request some help, or if you figured it out on your own break it down for the rest of us!
What was your favorite new vocab word from this week’s reading?
Was there any passage that you found particularly intriguing? Did it resonate with you (either positively or negatively)? Was it surprising? Offer any insight or new perspective? Was it just beautifully written?
So if I understand correctly, the protagonist always had issues with behaving ‘appropriately’ in social situations, which caused her not to come to her classmate’s aid. The backlash from that was so traumatising for her, that Hosio became a coping mechanism. That makes you wonder what happened to make Misako the way she is
Not done with the reading yet but I finished that part. Definitely got strong コンビニ人間 vibes. And the sentence right before the one you posted is also beautifully and hilariously Murata.
My impression was that Hosio was already a coping mechanism even before this happened. Wasn’t part of the reason that she didn’t help Mio because nothing in the world mattered to her except Hoshio? Although maybe this trauma turned what could have been a normal relationship between a little girl and her stuffed animal into whatever it is now. It definitely seemed cruel of the teacher and classmates to blame the tragedy on her–this episode definitely couldn’t have had any positive psychological effects.
That is also very コンビニ人間esque, the hostility from the outside world as a result of not understanding the rules. Though I would say it is even more hostile here than in コンビニ人間’s shovel-incident, because there the protagonist actively did something wrong, whereas here she only neglected to do something right.
Having read the rest of the section and a little into next week, your understanding seems spot on. I might have been a bit confused when reading about the incident. And I’m also curious about what happened to Misako. I’m kind of nervous to find out.