Naruto: Loneliness vs. Grief
I always found the dichotomy of loneliness versus grief as portrayed in the Naruto manga to be incredibly fascinating and insightful!
In Chapter 3, Sasuke rightfully criticizes Sakura when she states that Naruto is a bad kid simply because he grew up without parents and therefore has no one to punish him for his pranks and misbehavior because he's all alone. Sasuke being an orphan himself and the sole survivor of the Uchiha Clan massacre, is deeply offended by Sakura's condescending remarks because just like Naruto, Sasuke also understands the unbearable pain of solitude. In essence, having no parents at all is far worse than simply receiving parental scorn for misbehavior.
And Sakura's words come across as doubly insensitive since despite her school-girl crush for Sasuke, she should be well aware of Sasuke's status as an orphan due to it being common knowledge that Sasuke is the last of the Uchiha Clan.
So despite their inital rivalry throughout the first half of the manga, Sasuke clearly connects with Naruto's feelings of loneliness as a fellow orphan. However, later on in Chapter 229 after Sasuke's defection from the Hidden Leaf Village during his first fight with Naruto at the Final Valley, Sasuke accuses Naruto of hypocrisy when the latter tries trying to stop his vengeful descent into darkness. Sasuke angrily states that Naruto has no right to judge his desire for revenge, since while Naruto grew up without parents since infancy Sasuke did once have those familial bonds before his entire clan was slaughtered by his older brother Itachi.
Taken completely aback by Sasuke's words here, Naruto tries to empathize with the former's position by stating that he viewing his bond with Irkua as being akin to a father-son relationship, and likewise his bond with Sasuke as a sibling relationship. Naruto states that he's willing to go so far to bring Sasuke back to the Leaf because it's the first time he's ever had a brotherly bond, and that he'll do anything to preserve these new connections he's so desperately longed for.
Despite this, Naruto's inability to truly understand Sasuke’s feelings of grief and loss ultimately resulted in Naruto losing their first fight. It was only after Naruto’s sensei & godfather Jiriya was murdered by the Akatsuki leader Pain (aka, Nagato) that he finally began to truly understand Sasuke. Just as Sasuke sought vengeance against Itachi for the death of his parents and clan, Naruto was similarly tempted with a similar desire for revenge against Pain. What ultimately separated Naruto from Sasuke however, was that Naruto ultimately chose to not kill Pain out of respect for Jiriya’s beliefs about breaking the cycles of the hatred, warfare, and vengeance which plague the ninja world. Upon learning that Pain was also a former student of Jiriya’s, Naruto instead decided to talk to Nagato and convinced him to see the error of his ways, which resulted in Nagato putting his faith in Naruto, entrusting him to be the one to break the cycle of hatred before sacrificing himself to revive all those he killed during his attack on the Leaf Village.
Ultimately, it was Jiriya’s death and Naruto's subsequent battle with Pain which allowed Naruto to finally understand Sasuke’s words from their fight at Final Valley. The pain of grief and the temptation for revenge. And since Naruto now fully understood Sasuke’s pain he was able to successfully defeat and rescue Sasuke from his internal darkness in their second battle at the Final Valley.
Overall, I these scenes from the Naruto manga serve as an interesting and compelling commentary regarding the similarities and differences between loneliness and grief!
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Forget everything else in the update, this is the single best update
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