In his short story “Mine,” Alexander Chee describes the fundamental experience of a young man’s life. The main character is Stanley Yu, a gay man with Korean roots who comes back to the small Maine town where he lived as a child. Though Stanley’s narrative initially serves as a medium for complaint in which the main character expounds upon the harshness of his past, the reader notices a change in him when the protagonist discovers he has a child. In the ruthlessness of this world, the story unearths a stunning act of profound change. Stanley’s feelings shift from an emotionally stunted kid to an emotionally developed man who is starting to understand the importance of love.
The story depicts the power of love as a destructive and constructive force. Still, more importantly, it addresses the main character’s choice when deciding consciously which power of love he prefers. Rather than just a record of an emotionally lost person, the story becomes a document that sends a powerful message about love. Although Stanley does not even understand love at the story’s beginning, what he learns is really of concern to anyone who wants to create a good life.
Initially lost in a search for his definition of love, Stanley appears as an emotionally stunted kid. Arrogance is a wall the protagonist builds between himself and others. His pride distracts him not only from his own emotions but also from having a deep affection for others. He describes it: “My arrogance was my fortress, built to keep me safe from even wanting these kids to like me” (92). Bullied at school for being everything else other than a white straight man, Stanley cannot find himself in any of the available social groups. The understanding he yearns for is nowhere to be found in the world he lives in. His use of self-love as a “fortress” to protect his current emotional vulnerability demonstrates to the reader his emotional underdevelopment.
Extrapolating, one could argue that self-love as the fortress is shared by many adults too. We, as humans, fear being vulnerable. Being vulnerable means the possibility of being hurt. While being hurt and enduring the pain may strengthen, the sheer prospect of hurting is enough to put the proverbial walls up. These walls seem to be solidified each time we hurt. In other words, it takes courage to keep oneself open to hurt. In the example of our main character, by living hidden behind his egotistic walls, he is disconnected not only from others but also from himself. His definition of love is blurred because to experience love, one has to be vulnerable and open to pain and suffering. Only then, by acknowledging the contrast, could one experience love. Whereas in our story, the main character’s exaggerated self-opinion prevents him from being vulnerable to love and being loved.
Stanley’s lack of emotional maturity extends to his family. Love, a deep feeling of attachment to another, is something the protagonist is unknowingly lacking. One occurrence in which this is clear follows the car accident Stanley has had “Years later I would remember that my mom had taken a call about a car accident three years before this one, the one that took my father’s life. I’d managed to replicate a call that had changed her life forever” (94). The wall on which he crushes his car becomes a metaphor for the destructive force of love. His shallow understanding of the word “love” feeds into his worldview. Stanley does not think about how his actions may affect his loved ones. We see his absence of thoughts when he decides to be selfish and break his mother’s heart by not caring for himself. The protagonist had not realized it then, but the accident broke his mother’s heart like he broke the wall with his car.
To begin his process of discovering the meaning of love, Stanley had to feel desired. For the protagonist to find the feeling of passion through a connection with a community meant to leave his hometown for college in San Francisco. After years of social awkwardness, he ultimately felt wanted and socially accepted: “I was finally meeting guys who would look me in the eye and ask me out while they twinkled at me. My ethnicity was not weird there and I had many friends who shared it. I was even at times really ordinary” (103). Living in San Francisco allowed the protagonist to discover the immature form of love based on lust. Only by experimenting with the broad spectrum of love’s possibilities can one choose the best way of expressing it. For the main character, the self-discovery journey begins with a teenage fascination with the human body as a basic form of experiencing love.
Love is also the catalyst for deepening Stanley’s desire to understand his feelings and diametrically changing his perspective on different forms of social attachment. He does not immediately recognize his feelings as they take time to develop, but he notices a change. When the protagonist comes back to his hometown and meets his son for the first time in his life, he recalls, “The bus stopped then, and as I waited for him to come into view, there was a silence in me into which everything I had been until then vanished” (107). His prior feelings could not matter less in that particular moment. The shock of sudden realization that the protagonist feels triggers a process of emotional changes that will, the story suggests, develop gradually over time. He experiences a physical reaction to this overwhelming power of love. This is the first time Staley discovers the absolute supremacy of mature love over other feelings. As his love for his son deepens, he starts to develop an ability to see the love around him.
In becoming a father, Stanley discovers the enormous potential of love as a positive driving force. Placed on a personal spiral of discovery, he changes his approach toward the mother of his child – Katie. As Stanley progressively learns that their relationship is not purely abstract anymore, he develops a profound feeling of affection interlaced with gratitude. The reader recognizes the parental bond of love between them: “(…) I knew that it did mean something; it wasn’t that it didn’t mean anything, her and I. Quite the opposite, I did want to love her as I felt she deserved to be love” (102). Boomer helped Stanley to discover that not all forms of love need to be sexual. Through that process, Stanley finds that love, not only physical desire, can attract good things when encouraged to feel more. By acknowledging this fact, he furthers the process of developing his understanding of mature forms of love.
At this point in the story, the change in the main character’s heart is near completion. The protagonist now realizes what he had done to his family by breaking “the wall” all those years back, and he can reconnect with his family: “I knew I’d finally broken her [his mother’s] heart the right way after breaking it the wrong wall all those years ago. I had brought something into the world that neither of us was ever going to admit we needed, not until he [his son Boomer] was right in front of us” (109). The time of rediscovering his family was a pivotal moment for Stanley. Gone is the arrogance of his childhood. He is focused on creating new bonds with his reborn family. His devotion to establishing meaningful relationships outshines his former longing for desire. In other words, the protagonist’s need for undeveloped love is beginning to fade and gives way for mature love to take the first place in his heart.
In Stanley’s final reflections, the reader recognizes the protagonist’s desire to choose love as a constructive force rather than a destructive. Stanley discovers himself and realizes a primal need to protect his loved ones. He explains to himself, “I don’t think I knew until then what a family was or could be, despite having been in one all this time. That it was something you built to keep what you could of what you loved from the depredations of time and death, no matter what” (108). Choosing one force of love over the other yields the crux of his emotional development. His story, formerly a catalog of his stunted feelings, becomes something he wants to share. Instead of focusing on his problems, as he did in the story, he now wants to embrace the positive power of love in hopes of creating a better life for his relatives.
Had Stanley not been faced with his unplanned journey of self-discovery, it is unknown whether he would have been able to find the positive power of love and reconnect with his family. However, there is no doubt that his life would have been much different if he had not discovered that he had a son. “Mine” is a story of self-discovery, but more importantly, it urges the reader to look inside himself and see that we can create our definition of love. The fact that Stanley narrates his story retrospectively guides the reader to rediscover the potential of love. It teaches us that we can steer our perspective on love and choose consciously which power of love we prefer. To the best of our knowledge, we need to learn to decide which path will lead us to constructive love. Sometimes just like Stanley, who went away to San Francisco to find himself, we need to take a step back to see the love’s whole picture.
The story depicts the power of love as a destructive and constructive force. Still, more importantly, it addresses the main character’s choice when deciding consciously which power of love he prefers. Rather than just a record of an emotionally lost person, the story becomes a document that sends a powerful message about love. Although Stanley does not even understand love at the story’s beginning, what he learns is really of concern to anyone who wants to create a good life.
Initially lost in a search for his definition of love, Stanley appears as an emotionally stunted kid. Arrogance is a wall the protagonist builds between himself and others. His pride distracts him not only from his own emotions but also from having a deep affection for others. He describes it: “My arrogance was my fortress, built to keep me safe from even wanting these kids to like me” (92). Bullied at school for being everything else other than a white straight man, Stanley cannot find himself in any of the available social groups. The understanding he yearns for is nowhere to be found in the world he lives in. His use of self-love as a “fortress” to protect his current emotional vulnerability demonstrates to the reader his emotional underdevelopment.
Extrapolating, one could argue that self-love as the fortress is shared by many adults too. We, as humans, fear being vulnerable. Being vulnerable means the possibility of being hurt. While being hurt and enduring the pain may strengthen, the sheer prospect of hurting is enough to put the proverbial walls up. These walls seem to be solidified each time we hurt. In other words, it takes courage to keep oneself open to hurt. In the example of our main character, by living hidden behind his egotistic walls, he is disconnected not only from others but also from himself. His definition of love is blurred because to experience love, one has to be vulnerable and open to pain and suffering. Only then, by acknowledging the contrast, could one experience love. Whereas in our story, the main character’s exaggerated self-opinion prevents him from being vulnerable to love and being loved.
Stanley’s lack of emotional maturity extends to his family. Love, a deep feeling of attachment to another, is something the protagonist is unknowingly lacking. One occurrence in which this is clear follows the car accident Stanley has had “Years later I would remember that my mom had taken a call about a car accident three years before this one, the one that took my father’s life. I’d managed to replicate a call that had changed her life forever” (94). The wall on which he crushes his car becomes a metaphor for the destructive force of love. His shallow understanding of the word “love” feeds into his worldview. Stanley does not think about how his actions may affect his loved ones. We see his absence of thoughts when he decides to be selfish and break his mother’s heart by not caring for himself. The protagonist had not realized it then, but the accident broke his mother’s heart like he broke the wall with his car.
To begin his process of discovering the meaning of love, Stanley had to feel desired. For the protagonist to find the feeling of passion through a connection with a community meant to leave his hometown for college in San Francisco. After years of social awkwardness, he ultimately felt wanted and socially accepted: “I was finally meeting guys who would look me in the eye and ask me out while they twinkled at me. My ethnicity was not weird there and I had many friends who shared it. I was even at times really ordinary” (103). Living in San Francisco allowed the protagonist to discover the immature form of love based on lust. Only by experimenting with the broad spectrum of love’s possibilities can one choose the best way of expressing it. For the main character, the self-discovery journey begins with a teenage fascination with the human body as a basic form of experiencing love.
Love is also the catalyst for deepening Stanley’s desire to understand his feelings and diametrically changing his perspective on different forms of social attachment. He does not immediately recognize his feelings as they take time to develop, but he notices a change. When the protagonist comes back to his hometown and meets his son for the first time in his life, he recalls, “The bus stopped then, and as I waited for him to come into view, there was a silence in me into which everything I had been until then vanished” (107). His prior feelings could not matter less in that particular moment. The shock of sudden realization that the protagonist feels triggers a process of emotional changes that will, the story suggests, develop gradually over time. He experiences a physical reaction to this overwhelming power of love. This is the first time Staley discovers the absolute supremacy of mature love over other feelings. As his love for his son deepens, he starts to develop an ability to see the love around him.
In becoming a father, Stanley discovers the enormous potential of love as a positive driving force. Placed on a personal spiral of discovery, he changes his approach toward the mother of his child – Katie. As Stanley progressively learns that their relationship is not purely abstract anymore, he develops a profound feeling of affection interlaced with gratitude. The reader recognizes the parental bond of love between them: “(…) I knew that it did mean something; it wasn’t that it didn’t mean anything, her and I. Quite the opposite, I did want to love her as I felt she deserved to be love” (102). Boomer helped Stanley to discover that not all forms of love need to be sexual. Through that process, Stanley finds that love, not only physical desire, can attract good things when encouraged to feel more. By acknowledging this fact, he furthers the process of developing his understanding of mature forms of love.
At this point in the story, the change in the main character’s heart is near completion. The protagonist now realizes what he had done to his family by breaking “the wall” all those years back, and he can reconnect with his family: “I knew I’d finally broken her [his mother’s] heart the right way after breaking it the wrong wall all those years ago. I had brought something into the world that neither of us was ever going to admit we needed, not until he [his son Boomer] was right in front of us” (109). The time of rediscovering his family was a pivotal moment for Stanley. Gone is the arrogance of his childhood. He is focused on creating new bonds with his reborn family. His devotion to establishing meaningful relationships outshines his former longing for desire. In other words, the protagonist’s need for undeveloped love is beginning to fade and gives way for mature love to take the first place in his heart.
In Stanley’s final reflections, the reader recognizes the protagonist’s desire to choose love as a constructive force rather than a destructive. Stanley discovers himself and realizes a primal need to protect his loved ones. He explains to himself, “I don’t think I knew until then what a family was or could be, despite having been in one all this time. That it was something you built to keep what you could of what you loved from the depredations of time and death, no matter what” (108). Choosing one force of love over the other yields the crux of his emotional development. His story, formerly a catalog of his stunted feelings, becomes something he wants to share. Instead of focusing on his problems, as he did in the story, he now wants to embrace the positive power of love in hopes of creating a better life for his relatives.
Had Stanley not been faced with his unplanned journey of self-discovery, it is unknown whether he would have been able to find the positive power of love and reconnect with his family. However, there is no doubt that his life would have been much different if he had not discovered that he had a son. “Mine” is a story of self-discovery, but more importantly, it urges the reader to look inside himself and see that we can create our definition of love. The fact that Stanley narrates his story retrospectively guides the reader to rediscover the potential of love. It teaches us that we can steer our perspective on love and choose consciously which power of love we prefer. To the best of our knowledge, we need to learn to decide which path will lead us to constructive love. Sometimes just like Stanley, who went away to San Francisco to find himself, we need to take a step back to see the love’s whole picture.