In Deep River” by Shusaku Endo, Mitsuko Naruse is one of the main characters who goes on a tour to India in hopes of finding herself. The theme of failure prevails throughout the story as Mitsuko fails to find herself and to make Otsu nonreligious. Endo portrays Mitsuko as a selfish and atheist woman who had a failed marriage and comes to the epiphany of her incapability to love. She decides to go to India to find the meaning of her life.
She judges Otsu, her schoolmate whom she cruelly seduced for believing in God. She refers to God as an onion. Mitsuko doesn’t believe in God and doesn’t comprehend how someone can waste their time praying, being devoted, and helping others. She doesn’t believe in these things and didn’t understand why Otsu did. Mitsuko tries her hardest to corrupt Otsu and make him change his beliefs, but Otsu stood strong by his beliefs and did not change them. Towards the end of the novel, Mitsuko realizes how she miserably failed, although she understands Otsu.
Mitsuko understands Otsu’s beliefs and why he does certain things. Ms. Naruse goes on the journey to India for different reasons compared to the other characters. The other characters go to India for religious matters and to find something meaningful to them. Mitsuko feels lost and thinks that if she goes on this journey, she can find herself. Mitsuko had no idea what she wanted. Just what the hell is it I want?” It was the only thought that filled her mind throughout her honeymoon (Endo 68). She is struggling with her inner emptiness and incapability to love after her failed marriage.
She is an unloving and hypocritical woman who hates affection and seeing it being exchanged. She despises the sentimental affection a wife feels for her husband (1 13). Mitsuko even states in her letter to Otsu her reasons for divorce: I cannot truly love another person. I have never once loved anyone. How can such a person assert their own existence in this world?” (117). Thus, Otsu has a completely different view of affection. Love, I think, is the core of this world we live in, and through our long history, this is all that Onion has imparted to us (119). Otsu strongly believes in love and the love God has for everyone. Feuerbach’s idea of love is key and is portrayed by Otsu. Another idea that is portrayed is that love is God, not God is love. Mitsuko does not believe in God and refers to him as “an Onion.” She couldn’t believe Otsu would go to pray in the Kultur Heim. She said, “It makes me sick to think of a man coming to a place like this and dropping to his knees to pray” (Endo 39). Otsu’s actions bothered Mitsuko, and she did not accept them, but she was not able to feel indifferent towards Otsu.
Mitsuko did not tolerate the fact that Otsu’s life revolved around God. She stated, He had everything snatched away from him by his Onion” (116). Mitsuko wanted to corrupt Otsu so that he would change his view of God and become an atheist like her. Mitsuko is a perfect example of Feuerbach’s belief in alienation, which is the projection of a part of oneself onto an imaginary fantasy called God. She ended up failing and finding herself. Mitsuko had an equivalent view of God as Marx did. They believed that people would be better off without God in their lives.
No matter how hard she attempted to change Otsu, it was a failure, as well as her trip to India. However, she ended up understanding Otsu at the end of the novel when he sacrificed himself: At the end, he sacrificed himself in order to protect SanJo, an action that parallels that of Jesus Christ” (211). Otsu stood by his beliefs until the end, but Mitsuko still remained with her inner emptiness.
Works Cited:
- Endō, Shūsaku, and Van C. Gessel. Deep River. New York: New Directions, 1994. Print.
