#i'd probably be crying falling off my horse and lashing out at the one yaoguai (sun wukong) that i could too!

[sketching-shark]

Do you think Tang Seng feels responsible for the deaths of his mother and his first two human disciples?

You know anon this is actually a really good questions that really should be explored more in Xiyouji retellings!

As it is, you have an eighteen year old Xuanzang, after the truth of his birth was revealed, falling "weeping to the floor, saying, 'How can anyone be worthy to bear the name of man if he cannot avenge the wrongs done to his parents? For eighteen years, I have been ignorant of my true parents, and only this day have I learned that I have a mother!'" Of course it wasn't his fault for not knowing what happened to his parents until the monk who found him floating on a river as an infant told him (his dad was killed by a bandit & his mom was forced to 'marry' said bandit who took her husband's place for eighteen years), but you can see how even here he's expressing guilt for not knowing. And then, after he puts in so much effort to save his mother from this horrifying situation, and "not long after" his entire family is in fact reunited, his mother "calmly committed suicide after all." There's no record in at least the Yu translation as to what Xuanzang felt about this, and sadly enough after going through so many years of such a awful life you can understand why his mom would even after being reunited with her true husband and son decide to take her own life. But you can also easily imagine how her suicide would be a real blow to Xuanzang, who was both A) left in a state where he barely got to know his mother at all, B) could have been left feeling like he wasn't enough for his mother to want to live, and C) may have been forever after haunted by the questions as to whether he could have prevented his mother's death if only he knew about her sooner or had moved faster to rescue her.

Turning to Tang Sanzang's two human followers, their deaths read as equally if not more horrible to his mother's. To quote the Yu translation, Tang Sanzang and his followers are captured by a group of yaoguai kings and their attendants, one of which "called his subordinates at once to have the attendants eviscerated and their carcasses carved up; their heads, hearts, and livers were to be presented to the guests, the limbs to the host, and the remaining portions of flesh and bone to the rest of the ogres. The moment the order was given, the ogres pounced on the attendants like tigers preying on sheep; munching and crunching, they devoured them in no time at all. The priest nearly died of fear..." Tang Sanzang is only spared the same fate from divine intervention from the Planet Venus.

So YEAH, you can easily imagine Tang Sanzang not only developing a guilt complex over this not only because these attendants were eaten because they were following him, but how he was the only one who escaped because he had deities watching out for him. And if they could save him, why didn't they save the others? You can also see how the monk might also develop a deep hatred for yaoguai from this early experience in the journey west. Xiyouji from what I can tell is a work that moves from one even to the next pretty rapidly without taking time to dwell deeply on the feelings of its characters, but even so I think the experience of watching his companions literally get butchered and eaten right in front of him would scar Tang Sanzang in a way that wouldn't be alleviated until he attained nirvana at the end of the journey, ESPECIALLY since so many yaoguai afterwards try to do the exact same thing to him as this early group.

Dang, the journey really traumatized all of the pilgrims to greater or lesser degrees huh.