Reading Mr. Sommer again, years after childhood

“Then please just leave me alone!”

— From The Story of Mr. Sommer by Patrick Süskind

When I was about 10, my mother handed me a book she loved, "The Story of Mr. Sommer" by Patrick Süskind. She added that she had cried uncontrollably because Mr. Sommer’s story was so sad. Perhaps I was simply too young. At the time, I did not find Mr. Sommer sad at all.

When I turned 20, I moved to Seoul. Life there unfolded in ways I could neither predict nor control. Unexpected problems arose constantly, and I rarely managed to resolve them well. Around the time I was searching for a small room to live in and preparing for the move, I came across the cover of "The Story of Mr. Sommer" again. Mr. Sommer was still walking, as tirelessly as ever, gripping his large walking stick.

On a day when violent hailstones were falling, Mr. Sommer was walking relentlessly as usual when the narrator’s father called out and stopped him. From inside his father’s car, the narrator saw Mr. Sommer much closer than before. The father warned that he would end up dead if he continued like that and urged him to get into the car.

Mr. Sommer replied, “Then please just leave me alone!”

Did he mean that he wanted to be left to die? Or was he saying that he feared that very outcome, and that was precisely why he kept walking, asking only to be left in peace? Before I realized it, tears began to fall. I simply felt an overwhelming sadness for Mr. Sommer. He walked for hours every day, yet he never managed to escape whatever it was he longed to leave behind. His endless walking makes that clear.

Still, I do not think this realization proves that I have grown. It only means I have come to understand that people can suffer so deeply that they must bury themselves in something simply to endure it. What looks like being buried may in fact be a struggle to break free.

So if he is still walking somewhere even now, I would have no choice but to leave him alone. The effort he is making lies beyond anything I can measure. I would leave him be so that he never again has to cry out, “Please just leave me alone.”