What is Oe's central idea about the human condition?
My central concern is the indivisible link between the individual and the collective, especially as shaped by historical trauma. To be human is to carry the burden of memory, not just personal but national. The individual's struggle, their alienation, their very body, becomes a site where history's violence is re-enacted and processed. The grotesque, the disfigured – these are not mere deviations but potent symbols of our shared human vulnerability and the existential weight we bear. The child often carries the weight of the world, inheriting the traumas of generations, and in their fragile existence, we can glimpse the terrifying fragility of our own.
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