How Ash's Sexual Abuse Impacts His Perception Of Himself Part 1:

How Ash's Sexual Abuse Impacts His Perception of Himself Part 1:

I think one of the biggest mistakes people make in their understanding of Ash is in thinking, because he had the intellectual capacity to objectively view the abuse he suffered as wrong and to understand objectively that his abusers were bad people, that must also mean the abuse he suffered didn't have a genuinely negative and crippling impact on his perception of himself. Typically, you see people who make this argument also lamenting the ending of the story as "bad" or "unnecessary", or done for "shock value". They argue that Ash would have been able to recover from the sexual abuse he endured because he already showed an intellectual resistance to it coloring his perception of himself. But I think this is completely wrong, and I think, further, it only serves to undermine the seriousness of what Ash went through, what was done to him, by framing it as something simple intellectual prowess and fortitude should be able to overcomes, as if that's how the insidious nature of abuse and the ways in which it impacts its victims has ever worked. Emotion isn’t dictated by logic. How we feel isn’t dictated by logic. Being able to objectively acknowledge that something that's happened to you is wrong doesn't mean you haven't internalized the experience or will somehow be able to escape any and all feelings of responsibility and self-blame. Victims of abuse, particularly child abuse, can often objectively understand that what they went through was wrong, but they often still struggle with feelings of shame, rooted in the sense that the abuse must have somehow been deserved or otherwise a result of some failing on their part, which is also why you see victims of abuse often struggle to fully blame or hold their abusers accountable for what's been done to them. I think this very obviously applies to Ash, evident in his naked self-loathing displayed throughout the story, and there are so many examples throughout the story that prove without doubt that Ash's perception of himself has been impacted and terribly skewed by the abuse he's suffered.

So I'm going to go through just some of the examples of that evidence:

Example one. When Ash is forced to watch footage of himself being raped by Marvin, he reacts with evident shame, unable to even look at the film being shown, turning away from the screen and falling mute. He explodes moments later in this scene when Willard keeps badgering and harassing him over his age and his history of working as a child prostitute on the streets of New York, before again seeming to crumple and resigning himself to the things Willard is saying about him, insinuating that he's always been a bad person, always been a "whore", etc...

Example two: Ash weaponizing his sexuality. Ash often willingly puts himself into positions of letting others see and treat him as a sex object to advance his goals. This speaks to someone who is willing to sacrifice their sense of self-respect and dignity by allowing themselves to be abused or otherwise objectified, in the name of gaining an upper hand. What this tells us about Ash is that his sense of identity is wrapped up in the idea of being a sex object. He treats taking on this role almost as a natural extension of himself. He falls easily and readily into adopting the persona of a "whore" when it benefits him to do so. That doesn't seem like something someone would do who genuinely believed themselves to be above or to be better than reducing themselves to sex work. It speaks to someone who believes their dignity and body is an acceptable thing to sacrifice because it isn't worth anything, anyway.

Example three: Ash's father calling him a "whore" and Ash not at all seeming offended or angry about it, not even acknowledging it, simply brushing it off like it isn't a big deal at all. Almost assuredly Ash isn't offended by his father calling him something so derogatory because Ash, deep down, likely agrees with his father about what he is. We see other people who have abused Ash do the same thing, blaming him for their actions and accusing him of being a whore or a slut, acting as if Ash seduced them. The police back in Cape Cod do this to Ash, too, blaming him for his baseball coaches actions, telling him and his father that Ash must have done something to make Coach Peterson rape him. It only makes sense for Ash to have started to believe, consciously or subconsciously, that all these people telling him his abuse is his fault, must be right.

Example four: Again, we see how truly bereft of self-esteem and convinced of his own rottenness Ash is when we see him openly express here his genuine belief that Eiji will eventually grow "sick of him", and thus, get over being sent back to Japan. He genuinely believes that Eiji will eventually grow to hate him because he'll realize what a worthless person Ash is.

Example five: Relating to example four, how willingly and ready we see Ash is kill himself to save Eiji. This doesn't speak to someone who holds their own lives as very valuable. There are countless examples of this throughout the story, of Ash willingly sacrificing himself to save the lives of other people. He treats his own life and well-being like it doesn't matter at all, and that tells us that Ash doesn't see his own life or person as equivalently valuable to other people's. Again, this comes from suffering a lifetime of abuse and being told and treated as if he's nothing but an object made to fulfill the pleasure and satisfaction of others.

Example six: Ash having a literal mental breakdown while being held captive by Dino, referring to himself as a "living toilet" made for Dino and all of his other abusers to empty their sperm into whenever they got the urge. Ash starts to laugh uncontrollably at the idea of Dino wanting to make him the heir to his criminal empire, saying it's "the funniest thing (he's) ever heard". Ash sees it as a massive joke, laughing at the irony of being treated as nothing but a worthless object his whole life, only for Dino to want to make him his heir. Ash then says "Sorry, but I don't think I'm going to rise to your expectations "Dad".", and that's indicative of him seeing himself as only being suited to the role of being Dino's and others sex toy, expecting himself to fail at taking on the role of anything "better" or "higher" than that. He can't envision himself as accomplishing anything beyond his life as a criminal and a prostitute, because the abuse he's suffered and the life he's been forced to live as a result of that abuse, have conditioned him into believing himself to be worthless.

Example seven: Ash being willing for Max to use the photographs of him being raped for his article, saying "Dead people don't have any privacy to protect. Or any sense of shame". Again, we see Ash willingly allowing his own sense of dignity and well-being to be sacrificed here, despite the humiliation and shame it causes him to be seen the way the pictures depict him. He's saying here that he has no rights, and no right to even feel ashamed of himself, because this is just what he's always been. A sex object. A thing made for the pleasure of others. This so clearly demonstrates that Ash has indeed internalized this idea that's been drilled into him his entire life, that he's a worthless whore and nothing else, and so he shouldn't even attempt to preserve his dignity or sense of self-respect. He's expressing here that he has no claim to those things, and so it's pointless for him to fight for them.

There's other examples, but I can only fit ten pictures into a single post, so I'll be making a second to drive my point home that Ash's self-perception absolutely was negatively impacted by the sexual abuse he was subjected to. That, indeed, his sense of self-worth was deeply eroded by that abuse.