KARIN’S SENSE OF MORALITY
Kishi only allows us to see into his characters’ heads every so often, and more often than not, our insight about their sense of morality comes from their words and actions, not their thoughts. This is especially true of characters like Sasuke, whose thoughts we rarely get to see. (Though the last time we saw him, he’d gone all Hamlet on us - What is a clan? What is a shinobi? etc.) But Karin’s actions, as well as her thoughts, have given us plenty from which to draw conclusions.
Karin is something of a unique character, I think, because as a member of the morally gray Taka, she’s not a freedom fighter or a harbinger of justice. She’s a survivor. Naruto is on some level, very political. Everyone in Taka got screwed by the village system (Karin’s unprotected village was massacred, Juugo was shunned, Suigetsu was raised in the Mist when it was still a bloody, murderous mess, and Sasuke…well, you should know by now). They fell through the cracks; they don’t fit into the system as it stands. So why would they fight for some abstraction, like justice, when justice hasn’t been shown to them? This doesn’t make their actions okay, but it explains their mentality and makes it easier to sympathize with them and their reasons for fighting for themselves alone. It’s easy to forget that they are all still children (Juugo is 18, and the rest are 16/17), but the horrid circumstances in which they were brought up have forced them into adulthood.
This is why Karin’s empathy for Sakura is so beautiful and admirable to me. Here is a girl who, for all she knew, was going to kill her or at least use her in some way down the line. And Karin cries for her. In spite of what Sasuke has done to her, in spite of the massacre of her village, she cannot be bitter towards someone who shares her pain - the very definition of empathy.
With what could have been her last words, she managed to warn Sakura and show the whole fandom that she was not a jealous bitch (which they all assumed, and many still do) and that she did not want Sasuke to fall any further, having witnessed him fall so far into darkness already with her sensing ability.
Her crying with Sakura over their shared love for a man who is not what he once was is only the second time we have ever seen her cry. The other was when she shed a single tear because she thought the Tsuchikage had obliterated Sasuke.
The rest of what she says is “Don’t cry like that in front of me…!” Then, against her will, she, too, begins to weep.
To me, this kind of empathy from someone to whom life has brought so much pain and fear for so long is admirable enough to make her one of the most emotionally resilient individuals in the manga, with one of the highest levels of integrity.
#KARIN#UZUMAKI KARIN#KARIN UZUMAKI#TAKA#NARUTO#THEORIES
ns 15.158.61.20da2
