Mother Character Analysis

Though the narrator’s mother is not alive during the short story, her presence looms large in the lives of her family members. At the beginning of the story, the narrator explains that his mother died a “hideously painful death” after eating an improperly prepared poisonous fish called fugu at a friend’s house, where she was invited for dinner. Her death’s connection to upholding conventional expectations of etiquette furthers the theme of the painful consequences of sticking to traditional values. Throughout the course of the story, the mother takes on a ghost-like quality. First, while discussing a childhood belief that the well in the backyard was haunted by a ghost, the narrator tells his sister Kikuko that he sees a ghost in the form of an old woman in a white kimono, and she thinks that he is trying to scare her. Later, the narrator sees a photograph of an old woman by the same description on the wall, and his father is surprised to discover that the narrator does not recognize the woman in the photograph as his mother. When the father takes the son on a tour of the home, he reveals his suspicion that the mother’s death was not an accident, but a suicide, explaining that she suffered from “many worries. And some disappointments.”