He keeps calling himself a coward, but he isn't. Being scared isn't synonymous with being a coward. Fear is the feeling; cowardice is choosing not to act because of that fear.
You can be both scared and a coward, but being scared alone doesn't make you a coward.
Soleum is brave. He's scared, but he continues to persevere despite his fear. Being brave doesn't mean you're fearless; it means you do what you need to do even when you're scared.
A coward is someone who lets their fear stop them from doing what they should or need to do.
This was actually a critique i had of the novel back in the early days when i first discovered it but believe me when i tell you its actually written that way on purpose. Soleum is canonically an unreliable narrator at times. If you read the novel, as you go on the later chapters youll start to notice and piece together whenever he makes judgements of other people's thoughts or personalities when in reality its not how he thinks them to be.
I think the most solid evidence of this is when he's making internal judgements of Baek Saheon. (if u havent read the novel yet, i highly recommend it. The moments when soleum does this to him are the funniest cause he always overexaggerates saheon's "evilness" to the max)
He keeps calling himself a coward, but he isn't. Being scared isn't synonymous with being a coward. Fear is the feeling; cowardice is choosing not to act because of that fear.
You can be both scared and a coward, but being scared alone doesn't make you a coward.
Soleum is brave. He's scared, but he continues to persevere despite his fear. Being brave doesn't mean you're fearless; it means you do what you need to do even when you're scared.
A coward is someone who lets their fear stop them from doing what they should or need to do.
This was actually a critique i had of the novel back in the early days when i first discovered it but believe me when i tell you its actually written that way on purpose. Soleum is canonically an unreliable narrator at times. If you read the novel, as you go on the later chapters youll start to notice and piece together whenever he makes judgements of other people's thoughts or personalities when in reality its not how he thinks them to be.
I think the most solid evidence of this is when he's making internal judgements of Baek Saheon. (if u havent read the novel yet, i highly recommend it. The moments when soleum does this to him are the funniest cause he always overexaggerates saheon's "evilness" to the max)