47 pages • 1 hour read
Yukio MishimaConfessions of a Mask
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1949A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Symbols & Motifs
Blood
The motif of blood allows Kochan to explore Eroticizing Death and Violence: Blood is part of nearly all Kochan’s sexual fantasies from an early age, signifying his profoundly ambivalent relationship with his own sexuality and his sense of sexual desire as transgressive and dangerous. Blood shapes his internal concepts of sexuality and attraction. While Kochan is having extended dream sequences of blood and gore, his body is suffering from anemia, implying a connection between his literal bloodlust and his own unpredictable health. Blood fascinates him on all levels, not just sexual; the anemic woman on the train draws his attention, as her unhealthy blood interests him enough to cause him to think he is attracted to her. Even at the novel’s end, he envisions the violent death of a handsome young man, emphasizing the beauty of the blood in his imagination.
Kochan’s obsession with blood and bleeding shows not just his lurid interest in death, but his inability to regulate or understand his sexuality. He cannot envision a healthy sexual relationship with a man and instead conjures up possessive, deadly ones, where blood and death are byproducts of his fascination. His struggle to include his emotions in his relationships with men leaves him with nothing to center them on except the body, and with his own body unpredictable and unhealthy, he fantasizes of bodies he can control, even to the death.
Kiss
Kissing is a symbol of heterosexuality and romance, both of which Kochan struggles to contextualize and understand. He idealizes the singular kiss at different points in the novel, and it often supports the theme of The Insidious Nature of Heteronormativity. When he is young, a kiss is a thing of fairy tales; despite his disinterest in women, he still claims to be interested in the aesthetic and symbolic power of the kiss. He daydreams of kissing a classmate’s sister, but the fantasy is forced and leaves him fatigued. At the height of his relationship with Sonoko, he convinces himself that a kiss between them will enable him to feel love and attraction for her, and he finally achieves self-understanding when it fails to do so.
Derived from fairy tales, the kiss stands in Kochan’s imagination as a potent symbol of heteronormative desire. Its appeal is strictly imaginary. At several points in the novel, Kochan experiences kisses that he either responds neutrally to or actively dislikes. His real desires remain hidden, even from himself, displaced in the additional symbols of blood and violence, and he has no outlet for them. The kisses he experiences only force him to acknowledge his real desires, as there is nothing in the action of a kiss that comes close to the experiences he longs for.
Nudity
The motif of nudity, as with blood, emphasizes Kochan’s tormented understanding of his own body in relation to those of the men he is attracted to. Seeing his own body nude or partially nude in comparison to others, such as Omi, causes him to react with both jealousy and attraction. Additionally, it is the mostly nude body of St. Sebastian that spurs Kochan’s first sexual experience.
Significantly, though, nudity alone is not usually enough to interest Kochan. He cannot conceptualize why his classmates would respond to the nude bodies of women not only because he is gay, but also because it is St. Sebastian’s wounds and the inherent tragedy of other nude men he sees that causes him to feel attraction. Nudity alone inspires Kochan to jealousy, as it reminds him of his own physical failures; nudity combined with gore or tragedy arouses him.
Reflections
Reflections, particularly on liquid, are a symbol of identity and impermanence within the novel, illustrating The Tension Between Private Self and Public Persona. Kochan’s earliest memory involves a reflection, as he claims to remember the way water and light glimmered together; this memory, however, is a fabrication of his mind, more an act of self-invention than of memory. The novel additionally ends with the reflection of sunlight on spilled liquid, although now Kochan describes it as “threatening” rather than beautiful. In other scenes, reflections cause Kochan to imagine death and violence, drawing him closer to his true interests and desires.
Reflections appear at key moments when Kochan is struggling to define his own identity beyond the titular masks he wears. The emphasis on natural reflections, rather than manmade mirrors, shows that Kochan’s inner self cannot be truly hidden. He will always conflict with his inner self due to its contradictions with the world around him.
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By Yukio Mishima
