- #1
As a psychology graduate, I have to say that this novel succeed in describing and explaining to the readers about the extent of a mental illness, and how it affects the bearer AND the people around them. Personally, I agree of Zhang Man's approach to Li Wei after she is reborn. Li Wei's problem is very complex and involves many layers of society, but the real problem was that he is too lonely. Here we can see how loneliness can break a person, especially if it is experienced by someone who already has innate problem like Li Wei's inherited mental illness.
If you say that Zhang Man barge into Li Wei's life without delicacy, then I assume you don't have real knowledge about how to treat a mentally ill person as an equal. And that's okay, not many people know how. But in this case, Zhang Man already understood Li Wei's nature, and even though she never knew how real his illness was, she certainly does not shy away from it even a little bit. She is very brave, and there is not even a moment where she hesitated to face Li Wei's problem. She does not brush it as a momentary gap in memory and thoughts, she accepts it as it is and try to fix the problem that she even consults a psychiatrist for his sake.
I am still at chapter 28 and hopefully Zhang Man doesn't disappoint but so far, she took the best route she could to slowly introduce Li Wei to the outside world. To make him be acquainted with the real world so he can leave his comfort zone after more than 10 years of loneliness and distrust to human nature. What Li Wei need is assurance, assurance that a human can have unconditional love to him like what he craved from his mother. Li Wei needs someone to wake him up from his defense mechanism, and with his distrustful nature, if others were to approach him with too much cautiousness then he will perceive it as mere curiosity and fear. So the best way is to continuously remind him that he is needed, he exists and can affect other people, that he is not someone who is fine with being alone.
[collapse]