SUM 2021 – EALL 272
Term Paper: Practice Literacy Thesis
“My Dearest” is a story that portrays how complex family relationships can get.
The story dives in deep to show how actions made by the parent of the family could
affect the mental health of the child. The story goes beyond the sense of sibling rivalry.
Under the first-person perspective that the story was told, Toshiko’s way of portraying
the relationship between her mother and Arisa didn’t seem complete. From Toshiko’s
point of view, she was being mistreated by her mother compared to Arisa. However,
sibling rivalry could just be the surface of the whole situation. There are other
possibilities to the reasoning behind the mother’s actions, Arisa’s as well. It is possible
that Toshiko might have some sort of mental disability from birth which is why her
mother is stricter with her than Arisa. It is due to the possible strictness from her
mother that caused Toshiko to rely on Scarlet, the pet cat that later arrived in the family.
In “My Dearest”, Toshiko views Scarlet as her “other self” and treats Scarlet as she is
treated by her mother. Furthermore, she associates the fleas on Scarlet with Arisa, as
she feels Arisa is sucking the attention from her mother away from her.
Toshiko, the protagonist, feels that her mother has heavy favoritism over Arisa
due to her younger sibling being able to many things that she herself isn’t allowed to.
Toshiko had grades high enough to be enrolled in an elite school, yet was enrolled in an
a women’s college. The thought of her mother making these actions under the purpose
of protecting herself (Toshiko) never seemed to come up in her mindset. As shown in
SUM 2021 – EALL 272
Minato (2018) p. 1, “Ever since I can remember, Mother was always strict with me. But
I’ve never seen Mother raise her voice to Arisa—not once.”
Toshiko doesn’t seem aware that the strictness from the mother was possible
protection of her well-being. A textual evidence that may indicate of Toshiko’s mental
state was the conversation between Arisa and her mother. ““Could she be in
menopause? You hear about premature menopause. She should be taking supplements.
No, I think it’s more serious than that. It’s definitely nothing that started recently”
(Minato, 2018 p. 29). From this quote, it seemingly confirms the fact that Toshiko may
have some undiagnosed mental illness.
Later in the story, when Scarlet arrived in the family, Toshiko viewed Scarlet
