Nicole Barclay February 19, 2013
Deep River essay
The novel Deep River by Shusaku Endo has many symbolic meanings. Each time you read
over a page carefully you will be able to find more and more significant symbols. This
novel expresses many functions as a literary expression of religious stories. Laurence
Cunningham once spoke about religious stories and how each religious story deals with
transformation of some sort. In the book Deep River each character undergoes a mental
change related to a specific physical environment.
Mitsuko is one of the best examples of a character who has undergone a major
transformation. The beginning of the novel starts off with her in college and she is not very
nice to any of the boys, she has little to no respect for herself. Mitsuko is a broken and
troubled girl. When she was in college she played around with a boy named Otsu’s feeling
and always left him heartbroken. Otsu had always forgiven Mitsuko and welcomed her
back even after all the pain she has caused him. She eventually gets involved in a loveless
marriage; where she has no feelings for her husband at all. Eventually her and her husband
get a divorce and that is when she is left thinking about how she has made so many
mistakes in her past. She finally realizes how much she had hurt Otsu and realizes the fact
that he is her “suffering servant” (pp. 210). She goes on the trip to India in search to repent
