I will be looking at K’s betrayal by Sensei in two parts. I will then examine K’s nearly constant state of failed mourning regarding his abandonment by both his birth-family and his adopted-family. Firstly, I will look at Sensei’s inability to constitute his traumatic betrayal by his uncle, resulting in his acting out of revenge fantasies directed at his uncle towards K, as well as in his incorporation of his uncle. To this end, I will examine the traumatic themes inherent in the characters’ relationships which cause them to become traumatized, and which result in the traumatization of others, as well as the varying degrees of recovery or awareness within these characters. Namely, I will be examining Sensei’s betrayal by his uncle, K’s betrayal by both of his families, Sensei’s betrayal of K, and finally, Sensei’s partial recovery and betrayal of his wife. In doing so, I will argue that betrayal-induced social trauma results in and lies at the base of the novel’s various conflicts. In this essay I will examine the dynamics and nature of social trauma within Natsume Sōseki’s seminal work, Kokoro.
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