In Pachinko, Min Jin Lee offers an insight into the important of having someone to share day-to-day experiences with. And in one Dear Sugar Radio podcast episode, a guest related the difficulty of living with a sense of loneliness within her marriage; the biggest problem for this guest was being unable to share her feelings with the person she shared everything else with- her husband.
Those two ideas were kicking around my head a little bit for this post. Maniac is an orphan who, by the time we readers meet him, has been on the run for the past four years. His sense of loneliness is not immediately obvious but I did notice how few options Maniac has for sharing his thoughts and feelings with the other characters.
Ultimately, I did not work out anything useful to examine this insight further. Maybe next year I'll be better prepared to comment on how, in most of his relationships, Maniac feels the other needs him more so than he does.
