 Rubin attributes the reception of Sōseki's contemporaries to the novel's focus on perception rather than plot or character.Scholar Beongcheon Yu has asserted that "The Miner" has no thematic connection to Sōseki's other works.In contrast, Rubin sees "The Miner" as a turning point in Sōseki's view of the average human being — from an evil "other" to an unreliable "self" — that persisted in his later works.