Reading Reflection-Sylvia Chen

 

In The Flying Tobita Sisters, everyone can fly, but the sisters decide to run instead. It’s kind of ironic—people once
dreamed of flying, and now that it’s easy, they just take it for granted. The sisters run to remember what effort feels
like. It’s a quiet rebellion in a world that’s forgotten its struggle. Like Icarus, the story’s about freedom and falling,
but here the sisters choose the ground, not the sky. In the end, the narrator joined them, as if having grasped
something. Perhaps existence is not about running or flying, but remembering the efforts once made.

I Chase the Monkey and the Monkey Flees from me, I don't quite understand the story, but it seems like there is a
real chase happens inside the narrator’s body. And the monkey isn’t real( or it’s real, if getting schizophrenia), it’s
a part of the narrator’s emotional side. No matter how far the narrator runs, it always comes back. The author mixes
the human and animal and just feels like we can’t really separate the two. The harder the narrator tries to fight it,
the more the entanglement. Don’t quite get the theme, but seems to symbolise the inextricable entanglement　between reason and emotion, civilisation and primal nature.

Mogera Wogura is the story from a mole's perspective, a mole who tries to live in the human world. He follows human routine, but he does not really belong. The more he imitates people, the more he sees how empty life is. Wogura lives between two worlds. He seems to understand humans, but also doesn't know why people become numb. I feel really weird about the pocket and take-home part. It’s a symbol of compassion, I doubt. However, I do feel that people are more genuine when they become part of the underground. And it’s not death but the truth of the people's inner selves. 

A Peddler of Tears was my favorite story this week. It reminded me of a tale where tears turned into pearls, but this
story felt deeper—a devotion to art. It shows how emotions can be sold, turning sadness into something measurable
and controlled. When crying becomes a work, it loses its truth. The ending moved me most. The narrator cuts the
body for the musician, not from pain but from self-fulfilment. It becomes an act of creation. 

My Baby seems to show ordinary maternal fear at first, but then slowly collapses. The Mies feels less like a literal monster and more like a projection of anxiety — a physical form of the mother’s deepest fear of losing control. It’s unclear whether the Mies truly exist or whether they represent an internal breakdown. But the mother keeps asking if they should kill the Mies. Her desperation made me reflect on the need for control in a world. After the child’s death, her fear transforms into obsession. She tries to reassemble the baby’s body piece by piece. Her actions are like a cycle where fear gives birth to creation, and creation leads to destruction.