Sensei's wife was not so modern a woman as to take pride and pleasure in being able to display her mental prowess. When he follows Sensei to the cemetery and then receives deflecting answers to his questions about it, he experiences for the first time an inability to understand Sensei. 32Įven though the narrator does not learn the full significance of the grave at Zoshigaya until he reads Sensei's testament, he feels very early on that the alienation between him and Sensei is centered on it. The grave stood like some monstrous thing, forever separating us. Sensei probably dreaded others analyzing out of his sense of guilt. However, the narrator approaches his relationship with Sensei with a very respectful and understanding attitude, treating him as another human being instead of an interesting thing to be analyzed. For the most part, Sensei is reluctant to give many details, but tries to impart the lessons he has learned to the narrator, who is ever dissatisfied at not knowing the full picture. 14Īs the narrator gets to know Sensei better, he asks him more direct questions, trying to pry into Sensei's background in order to learn from him. More importantly, this friend is the only one with whom the narrator spends time over the course of the book, and the narrator's separation from him is the incident that begins the story.Įven in his relationship with me, he was in constant dread of being coldly analyzed. Yet another parallel may be found in the narrator's friend being pressured into a marriage, a situation that, it will be revealed, Sensei also went through. In the beginning of the story, the narrator is traveling on summer vacation with his friend, when that friend is unexpectedly called back home because his mother falls sick, just as the narrator himself will later be called back home due to his father's sickness. I, who had taken so much trouble to join my friend, was left alone.

Kokoro natsume soseki