[ a literary analysis / introspective piece I wrote for a college application this past month. the prompt was to talk about a recent piece of media that impacted you. ]

Since I can remember I have enjoyed reading.  As a child my mom would read to me in the afternoons, and I would always carry a book around with me.  Now that I’m older my mom no longer reads aloud to me, and I don’t take a book with me wherever I go, but my love for reading has stayed the same.  This past spring I read Lonely Castle In the Mirror by Mitzuki Tsujimura.  The book is about a girl who can’t go to school due to bullying.  She finds a magical portal in her mirror that takes her to a castle where she meets other kids who aren’t in school as well.  Through the book the children get to know each other and find that their newfound friendship may be the thing that saves them.

While books can provide a place to escape from the world, they can also cover important and social issues.  Fiction can provide a place to look at these things in a format that feels safe because it’s distanced from reality.  Lonely Castle in the Mirror combines magical realism and social commentary in this way.  Loneliness is one of the main themes in the book.  The main character, Kokoro, spends her days in her house, afraid to go outside in case of seeing the classmates she thought were her friends but instead turned against her.  Each of the other children she meets in the castle are lonely in their own way.

One aspect that has stayed with me since reading this book is that the characters are very different from each other in their lives and experiences.  Had it not been for the castle, the characters would never have met.  So much of what I experience and feel I keep hidden inside of me.  It’s difficult to be able to talk to people on a deeper level and the social interactions I have daily, such as work, aren’t the right place for it either.  It can be easy to feel like I’m the only one experiencing the difficulties I have.  It’s lonely and isolating to have these thoughts.

The need for connection is something I believe we all feel.  There are many ways to find connection, such as through music, movies, books, etc.  I’ve found a lot of comfort in books like Lonely Castle in the Mirror, but it doesn’t ever compare to human connection.

This book made me more aware that everyone is dealing with their own difficulties, their own battles.  Just like I keep mine hidden, theirs are too.  Though I might not know what they are going through I can understand that my struggles aren’t wholly intrinsic to me.  Even if I think someone is very different from me that doesn’t mean we don’t feel similar things.  In the book the characters need for connection transcends time and distance to bring them to the castle.  And though this is the case it takes a while for them to open up and listen to each other.  Reality isn’t like this.  There’s no mirror I can step through and find myself in a castle like that one.  The connections I make with other people are ones I have to make myself.  However, I have the choice to make them if only I’m willing to look past our differences and truly listen.

~ Ming ❤