Saturday, February 27, 2021

The Zone

In all the Murakami’s works we have read so far, I constantly came to perceive to a feeling of a “different zone” for all the characters, especially the protagonists. To me, it felt like Murakami is purposely placing them into this zone that separates them apart from the rest of the world and disconnect his relationships with everyone surrounding them. This is especially conspicuous in The Wild Sheep Chase, where the protagonist Boku is not only physically separated from the mundane world at last, but also mentally he was alienated from the surroundings. Boku was enticed to look for the sheep which made him detached from his work, and his divorce with his ex-wife and the death of the “girl who sleeps with everyone” are the demarcation between his seemingly normal life and the absurd adventure of the searching for the sheep. Further, at the end of the book, Boku was again separated from his girlfriend and eventually ended up being physically himself, but he entered a “world” that only himself was allowed to be entered, with the Rat. In fact, the character Rat was in that even deeper zone already as he was possessed by the sheep, but Boku was on the brink, which is a quite subtle position to be placed in, and this is where he differs from everyone else.

Other than The Wild Sheep Chase, in Chapter 12 of the Sputnik Sweetheart, the protagonist even experienced a sudden aging in one night where she couldn’t even tell the reason herself. It all happened in the gondola which acted as another zone that all things happened remain in that space. Other than the Sputnik Sweetheart, in Where I’m likely to find it, Murakami describes the character who vanishes from the stairs and reappeared after a (or two?) months. To me, the stairs is an analogy to the gondola, that not only people outside don’t know what happened in that space, neither does the person who experienced it know.

In addition, in The Year of Spaghetti, Murakami describes a period of his life when he spent with cooking spaghetti. To me, the apartment he lived in, the process of making the spaghetti and the time when he was remembering things when he was eating form another space that Murakami intentionally created for himself. Which he implied they all represent a sense of “loneliness”.

The point I attempt to make here is that, most characters Murakami created are normal people living a life that can’t be more normal, whether the guy working in Meryl Lynch, Boku, or Miu. However, the more insignificant Murakami makes these character, the more fantastical, miraculous and eccentric life and experiences he puts on them, as if to prove the world that no matter how normal and ordinary a person may seem, they could be experiencing or experienced something that you cannot imagine and will never know. To create something randomly out of air may be abrupt, but there are always significance and reason behind, and the zone may only be part of the process.

 

Alice

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