Freudian Interpretation of Dreams in The Strange Library

Using Freudian psychoanalysis of dreams, I will interpret the meanings of significant elements in The Strange Library. The whole dreamlike story may be the protagonist’s subconscious attempt to reconcile a traumatic loss and consequent mental illness. The big black dog that the boy is afraid of (which attacked him at a young age and reappears again) represents something that the boy is afraid or ashamed of or a trauma connected to his shadow self. The color black also often represents depression and suicidality, which the boy may have been struggling with after experiencing a traumatic loss. Referencing my previous blog post, the boy’s repressed shadow self is the old man, who imprisons him in an attempt to overcome the repression of the shadow self and to exert control over his conscious, dominant self. The shadow self represents everything negative that the boy has repressed, including shame and fear that could be linked to his trauma.

The dog may be a representation of trauma that the boy experienced at a young age, which continues to represent a hurdle to his self-growth and healing, often reappearing at times of distress, like when the boy attempts to escape the labyrinth but is thwarted by the old man, the dog at his side. The starling, which ultimately saves the boy from the dog, often represents positive guidance, hopes, and dreams. The sheep man and the girl may also represent people in the boy’s life who have been support systems for the boy - cooking, consoling, and ultimately helping him escape from the cell in which he is trapped. In this context, it’s possible that the boy is able to overcome a traumatic episode and severe depression through positive guidance, the support of others, and the hope that things will get better and that he will survive to see better days.

Thus, with the help of the starling, sheep man, and girl, the boy is able to escape the old man and the dog and leave the library, which represents his intrapersonal conflict. However, after the boy escapes, he learns that his starling, the old man, and the girl are gone, and his mother has passed away, leaving him alone. The current sources of positivity in the boy’s life have disappeared. This may represent the idea that healing is not linear, and trauma recovery and mental illness cannot be simply “cured.” These are not things you can simply escape or run away from, but rather a lifelong, difficult process, which can be exacerbated by additional losses or traumatic experiences, leading to compounded trauma. The Strange Library shows that while it is possible to overcome difficult experiences, you must accept the reality of traumatic loss and experience and deal with them, rather than trying to escape. While you can absolutely survive this emotional pain and perhaps even grow stronger because of it by relying on others and your own hopes, dreams, and resilience, it may be something you will contend with for the rest of your life, and it’s okay if your healing and grieving process are not linear.

- Christa

Psychoanalysis of The Strange Library

After our last class, I’ve been thinking a lot about The Strange Library through a psychological lens, especially considering the characters in relation to Jung’s theories.

To me, the labyrinth represents the collective unconscious. Many people can access it but are fragmented in time, on their own journeys, and cannot control when they can access it. Everyone wants to access it to gain more knowledge but don’t always know how or why they want knowledge, just as the boy when he wandered into the library.

The library is literally a well of collective knowledge, exactly like Jung’s collective unconscious. The boy’s descension into the dark labyrinth below the library symbolizes his descent into the collective unconscious. It is there he enters a dreamlike state, not questioning or judging anything, but rather engaging in what Jung calls “sensing and intuiting,” through which one accepts experiences but does not judge or evaluate them. Thus begins the individuation process in which all of the selves comprising the boy’s conscious and unconscious encounter one another.

While delving into his own subconscious and tapping into the collective unconscious, the boy encounters the parts of himself: his shadow, his anima, and his animus. Jung explains that through individuation, there is a danger of what Jung describes as “falling victim to the shadow...the black shadow which everybody carries with him, the inferior and therefore hidden aspect of the personality."

Shadows are traditionally the parts of oneself that are negative and repressed by the consciousness. Your shadow often appears in dreams as a person who is the same gender as you. The old man represents the boy’s “shadow” (also known as id), which represents all of the parts of the boy’s self that his consciousness is unaware of. The old man is aggressive, violent, and cannibalistic, as he forces the boy into a jail cell and says that he will eat his brains after he learns how to read three massive tomes. In Freudian psychoanalysis, the concept of cannibalizing another can mean that the “cannibal” wants to exert power over and subdue over the person they “consume.” In this case, since the old man wants to eat the boy’s brain, it means he wants to control the boy by feeding off of his energy and knowledge.

Essentially, the shadow, which has been repressed by the boy’s conscious self, attempts to forcibly assimilate with the boy to gain more power over his conscious self. In psychoanalytic terms, the old man represents the boy’s unconscious aggression, jealousy toward others, and need for control, which attempts to dominate the boy’s ego, or rational, conscious self (which lost control when he descended into his subconscious, leading to such intense intrapersonal conflict).

The sheep man and the beautiful girl represent the boy’s animus and anima, respectively. In this case, the animus represents the boy’s masculine, “logical” side, while the girl represents his feminine, “emotional” side. The sheep man attempts to reason with the boy, explaining why he cannot set the boy free because of the punishments he will receive. He also thinks of a concrete, realistic plan to escape, but only after he is sure it is feasible. On the other hand, the girl is gentle, encouraging, and appeals to the boy’s emotions, giving him hope and encouragement to escape (even though he and the Sheep Man didn’t believe it to be possible). These selves all act independently and only sometimes interact. For example, the boy says to the girl, “our worlds are all jumbled together - your world, my world, the sheep man’s world. Sometimes they overlap and sometimes they don’t. That’s what you mean, right?”

While the boy has no trouble communicating with the girl, she is unable to talk. This symbolizes Jung’s belief that men repress their “opposite” feminine self and instead favor their masculine side. The girl does not have a voice because that which she represents the positive, "feminine" aspects of the boy that he has been taught by society to silence.

Ultimately, it is only by drawing upon knowledge found in the collective unconscious and uniting with his two selves that the boy may overcome his intrapersonal conflict with his shadow and escape the labyrinth of his subconscious.

- Christa

Comments on The Strange Library

 When I first purchased my copy of The Strange Library, I thought we would read a comic book that somehow had to do with Murakami. Well, in class, we learned that Murakami first wrote a short novel in 1983, and it was more than two decades later when an illustrated edition came out in Japan. I am not sure if Murakami himself commissioned the illustrations. I am leaning towards a "no," and even if he did commission the Japanese graphics, the British and German versions probably were done by other people since the illustrations were drastically different. Hence I consider the (different) graphic adaptations to be in the realm of excellent "fan fiction". I particularly adore the British version, not just because that is the copy I own but also for two other reasons. One, the German graphics were too dark, yet the Japanese graphics were too light. In my mind, neither depicted our subconsciousness (if we were to accept that reading) as well as the exaggerated, perplexing, and memorable British illustrations did. Also, I guess I just really like the art. The collections of pictures and paintings were visually pleasing to view and created a stream of consciousness that shadowed the plot. For example, when the girl appeared, the book supplemented pictures of birds and feathers. When the dog emerged in conversation, there was a page of bulldogs. When the sheep man spoke of donuts, there was a nice assortment of donuts that I can see myself getting in a box from Dunks. The echo resembled how our mind functions when we think of an object (or a concept?), and I think the British edition was ingeniously done. 

-- Marshal

The Strange Library: Boku's Heroic Journey of Committing Matricide(?)

I found an article that discusses Carl Jung's mother archetype and here's the link to it: https://ejop.psychopen.eu/index.php/ejop/article/view/401/html

To summarize, Jung's mother archetype can be both loving and nurturing, and also absorbing and manipulative. According to the article, Jung argues that men must tear themselves loose from their mothers or "kill" their mothers to fully mature, and that "the transition from unconscious life to conscious life in the development of humanity and the individual is mirrored in the separation of the child from the mother." Jung also proposes that “the first creative act of liberation [of the unconscious] is matricide."

I found the story of The Strange Library resembles Jung's theory of achieving maturity through "matricide" in many aspects.

I would like to first argue that the library (contaning its employees) is the mother figure in Boku's unconscious mind. On the surface level, Boku's mother and the library both nurture  and restrict him. While Boku's mother takes delicate care of him but gives him strict rules to follow, the library provides him great knowledge but locks him in a confinement. At the beginning of the story, Boku was directed to see the old man by a female librarian, and just like how he always obeyed his mother, he didn't question the librarian's word even though he wasn't so sure of the existence of a basement. He was wearing a pair of new leather shoes gifted by his mother that made "hard, dry sound" that he was not used to, and when he escaped from the library, he left the shoes behind in his cell. In a way, wearing shoes is like putting one's feet in confinement, and similarly, the old man in the library also ordered objects to be attached to Boku's feet, which he also broke away from when he escaped the library. Boku's mother considered the starling to be very noisy, so the starling-girl did not have a voice inside the library. Boku worried that his starling would starve to death if he doesn't feed her, which suggests that his mother was unable to recognize the need of the starling, and that also parallels to how the starling-girl was not seen by others in the library until the very end.

Boku on the outside perfectly fits Jung's description of "the persona" as the "conformity archetype." He did not seem to have his own judgements and simply made decisions because his mother/the old man said so or because he didn't want others to feel bad. When he returned Memoirs of a Shepherd, he compared himself to a shepherd who sticks to his schedules so his sheep don't go "completely bananas," which suggests that the sheepman in the story is likely "the shadow." The shadow is the animal side that has both creative and destructive energies, and this duality is also reflected in the sheep man who worked for the old man and locked Boku in his cell but also cooked for Boku and unlocked him in the end. Boku's "anima," the starling-girl, is a beautiful and courageous female figure who defied the rules and constraints in the library and helped Boku and the sheep man escape. Although the girl did not have a voice, Boku can still hear her in his mind, which suggests that she is part of him. After Boku left the library, both the girl and the sheep man disappeared because they were internal entities within him and not actual beings in the world.

After Boku the persona, his shadow and his anima teamed up and helped Boku break free from the library, his mother passed away from a mysterious illness and he was truly alone in the world. According to Jung's theory, his loneliness can also mark his independence as a fully matured individual who has committed matricide. It is said in the story that all libraries have similar cells and kidnap children in a similar fashion. Boku in the end also chose to not report the library, even though he knew other children will undergo a similar awful experience, perhaps because it's necessary for other children to cut their ties from their library by themselves and it's an internal process that takes place in the mind and cannot be intervened by any outside forces.

Crystal

The Strange Library

By far the strangest story I have read. After reading this story, there was a lot to digest. I am curious about who the voiceless girl was supposed to represent as well as the sheepman. 

After discussing in class, we can see the labyrinth under the library to be Boku's mind. The psyche is always a dark and cold place. The fact that he was going through a labyrinth made sense for it to represent his mind because the mind consists of many complex things such as memories and thoughts. 

During class, we mentioned how the old man could have represented the abusive dad that he might have had when he was younger. Is there a chance the voiceless girl might have been his mother? Boku did not have any sexual intentions when the girl came (based on assumption) but he felt a sense of ease when he talks to the girl. If the girl represented as his mother, maybe the reason why she was voiceless was that she might not have been able to speak up and save Boku when he was a child from his father? The voiceless girl wanted to save him from the old man and wanted to keep him from danger just like his mother in real life. Also, I felt like there was a link between the voiceless girl and the mother because of how they left the world and how close the timing was from when Boku was at the library until his mother's death.

I think the sheepman could have represented as younger Boku in his own mind because he was afraid to disobey the old man and will do everything he can to not displease the man. In the scene when the voiceless girl came in, the sheep man did not know who she was but it was mentioned how Boku had to connect the two together and align the worlds in order for them to meet. 

I am probably going on a tangent but I think it feels like a memory that Boku has that he needed to face in some way to save himself. The idea of an abusive father is a possibility and I was just also trying to find a way to make sense of the sheepman and the voiceless girl that fits with this scenario.

 

Caroline

Theory: the Strange Library is a dream of an abused child

 The "Strange Library" by Haruki Murakami lives up to its name, as it portrays a dream-like event in the story, starting with the Boku having to go downstairs in the library, and entering a labyrinth-like structure. I believe that Boku going downstairs represents him going deep into his subconsciousness, representing the story to be a dream. As dreams are where the subconscious mind takes over and projects itself strongly. Every character he meets after he goes downstairs is significant in his life that has rooted themselves deeply into his consciousness. The mother passes away at the end of the story, but I think that the real story actually begins. I believe that the old man represents an abusive relative that took Boku in, as it is evident in his forcefulness in him getting Boku to do things with the threat of violence, but also has a very father-like tone when talking to him. I think the whole story of the "Strange Library" is the dream of Boku who is facing the harsh reality of domestic violence. I believe that the starling is a pet bird that Boku saw as his only friend in his abusive family, someone that he can only rely on, as the starling takes the form of a little girl and takes care of him in the story, and ultimately defeats the big black dog who bit Boku years ago. The sheepman, who is too scared to escape and defy the old man represents his fear for the abusive relative, as Boku had to ultimately convince the sheepman to finally escape the old man.

Zion

The Secret Library

    The Strange Library is an interesting story with magical realism and eerieness throughout the story. It felt like an attempt by Murakami to write a horror story mixed with the usual topics that he likes to address within his stories. The artistic visuals of the book remind me of a children's book. The visuals are abstract in the version released to the United States while the ones in the Japanese version are cartoonish and child-like. I wanted to talk about the idea that the story is about an abused child comprehending his emotions. I feel that the images from the Japanese version fit that idea better because it makes it feel like a child had put together those drawings in order to sort their emotion on the situation they are going through. 

    The girl that appeared in the story could be an instance of his mother because she isn't really sexualized by the character in the story, which could explain why his mother died at the end of the story because she sacrificed herself for her son. I do feel that the scene in which the starling is in the monster's dog mouth was an actual event that happened in the real-life where his abusive dad allowed his dog to eat the bird in order to punish Boku for not studying or listening to directions properly. And the reason the mother died at the end was that she had already died defending Boku from his father and the dog along with the starling, which would explain why Boku is alone at the end of the story and the fact that his father is not brought up at all. Since the library could be within Boku's mind it could just be sorting his memories and emotions of the event in a way that a child could imagine such a situation. 

- Michael L.

The Mystery of The Strange Library

    Trauma in children can lead to varying effects in development. Lifelong abandonment issues, split personalities, and more can result from events that occur during development. For the child in The Strange Library, the primary catalyst seems to be death. His mother is dying, and his pet bird has died, leaving him feeling stranded and alone. Thus, I believe that the place under the library where he is imprisoned is conjured by him, a prison for himself made by himself. 

    The library may very well be real, but that's where the line between reality and fantasy is blurred. It's obvious that his descent with the old man further into the labyrinth represents moving into the Other World, as is so common in Murakami's stories. The characters, I believe, are created by the child in order to cope with the trauma of death. The old man could be symbolic of a father figure, forcing his child to study for an important exam. The sheep man could be symbolic of a brother, feebly obeying his father and offering companionship to the child. The girl, who is part-starling, apparently, serves as a reprieve from the harsh reality that his mind has constructed. Because he has lost his pet bird and will lose his mother soon, the trauma of the events in his life force him to hide in this fantastical world.

    Other than the conjuring of familiar presences around him, his ability to read and memorize the typically boring books on Ottoman tax collection at a remarkable speed shows that he has some power over this world, further serving as evidence that he created this world in order to shelter himself away from loss. Furthermore, past trauma gets dug up in this world in the form of the dog who bit him long ago. Thus, we can conclude that this is his inner psyche manifesting former traumas and methods to cope with those traumas. The dead starling grows bigger and protects him from the dog, as he metaphorically moves on from his traumas and the world he has created to escape them. 

    As he escapes this world, his mother sets down his breakfast without mentioning how he's been gone, which to me means that he was never really gone; he was in his dream world. He questions whether that place really existed, as we often do with imaginary friends and fantasy situations. After his mother dies, he is older and fully realizes that he's all alone, without another strange library to enter.

James

Sexual Disconnect in "Pornography as the Winter Museum"

 In Murakami's Pornography as the Winter Museum, he opens with the line, "Sex, copulation, intercourse, sexual relations, and other words like this always make me fantasize about the winter museum". These two ideas are continuously compared throughout the short story and Boku's thoughts about his job at the museum seem to mimic his experience of sex. In the beginning, he describes how getting to the museum is arduous and complicated, but it eventually becomes easier with time. This connection between sex and the museum seems obvious and unobscured, but the analogy quickly runs deeper. 

There is a constant feeling of disconnect between Boku and his job. As he fetches a key from a drawer, he says "I am working at this museum, if I’m not mistaken", implying a slight uncertainty. He runs through his opening tasks at the museum meticulously, checking them off of his mental list one by one. It's possible that Boku also feels this disconnect during sex, a feeling that he's not quite sure if this is what he should be or wants to be doing, but yet he completes the actions the way he's expected to, in a distant and clinical way. He speaks of the museum without reverence or awe of the collection surrounding him, but rather with confusion, as though he doesn't understand why people would enjoy it. 

When Boku takes a break from his duty to go to the bathroom, he notices that he's sexually aroused, though he expresses no sexual interest or thoughts. His literal physical disconnect is apparent in the final paragraphs as he simply ignores this fact and leaves the bathroom to watch people filter into the museum that he is so utterly disinterested and confused by. 

- May Painter

The Idea of Freedom in The Strange Library

     The main ideas revolving around The Strange Library seem to be about trauma, with the main protagonist being traumatized in some way from his dog attack. It was this initial trauma that seemed to set him on a path of fear and obedience of others, mainly from his mother but is also reflected in his interactions with the old man and his willingness to be chained underground. It's possible that the old man represents his mother in some way, with how he complies with the old man's demands so easily like he seems to do with his mother, an example being to return home on time, and that in both cases he fears how they would react if he doesn't comply, with him fearing that the old man will get angry and verbally abuse him, and with his mother she'll become mentally unstable. 

    The main character's desire to leave the underground cell might stem from his unconscious desire to escape from his responsibilities placed on him, the desire to escape his responsibilities placed on him by the old man representing those placed by his mother, like some idea spawned from the Id. It could be his Id is represented by the sheep man and is being obedient to his Superego represented by the old man, and it might make a little visual sense since devils, a common form of the Id, can be associated with goat features, and goats are similar to sheep. The sheep man does express desire to leave the underground area and help fulfill the protagonist's wish to escape, but is too dominated by the old man, so it could be a representation that the protagonist's mind is in a state where the Superego is completely dominant.

    But there seems to be some wonder if escape from his situation is what the protagonist really desired, since when he does escape the cell and his mother dies, he feels a sense of loneliness, that it's like being back in that cell underground and alone. So instead of being free from his responsibilities, the protagonist could've just wanted a more relaxed and normal relationship with his mother, as she seemed too overbearing, but the reaction to completely change the situation wasn't actually the correct choice.

-David Barnes

Why the Ottoman Empire?

   After spending a while in another course writing about Genji's words on fiction from the Hotaru Chapter in The Tale of Genji, wherein regard to fiction and its usefulness Genji says "nothing is empty"(Washburn, 520 modified by Melissa McCormick) it left me wondering. If nothing is truly empty, then why did Murakami choose tax collection in the Ottoman Empire as a book topic of interest in his story The Strange Library. Although I am not convinced that there is any meaning behind it or that there needs to be, and I am fully confident he wouldn't tell us if there was, here is an argument that could be made for why he made such an outlandish decision.

     Although from my understanding, the Ottoman empire had little direct interaction with the Japanese, the vast size of the Empire made it an important link between the east and west of Asia. Through the empire, trade routes allowed many people and goods to travel. Although the empire itself was engaged in much of the trade, in this way it acted almost as a conduit for the far east and far west to trade and connect. In many ways, this is what Murakami does as well. As we have discussed in class many times, Murakami's work often lives in a weird liminal space between Japan and the west. It would not surprise me if Murakami would have some level of a personal fascination with the Ottoman Empire or something like the silk road, that would have allowed goods, services, ideas, and cultures to spread across vast areas of land. Geographically speaking, the Ottoman empire's area of direct control and its accompanying vassal states and allies changed drastically over time. The area of influence is defined by blurry lines, and this malleability and change over time, as well as blurred lines, can be seen in Murakami's work and ideas as well. Murakami blends cultures, often having various influences (such as literary influences, language influences, musical influences, familial influences, etc.) forming his characters and their spaces. None of his main characters seem to be true of one origin and in this way mirror the lack of permanence and the variability of the Ottoman empire. 

     Militaristically, I think Murakami may have drawn some connections between the Ottoman Empire and that of the Japanese around WWII. The Ottoman empire engaged in a lot of rapid expansion movements with their military power. Their Navy in particular played a key role in a lot of their expansion into Europe. This rings true with what the Japanese were doing towards the beginning of the 20th century leading into WWII. Both Empires expanded rapidly, faster than they could manage, and in many ways, this led to their downfall. I think Murakami likely linked these two militaries together by their brutality, with both being known for their mass killings of the people who they would conquer. With Murakami commenting on the Japanese military's actions in many of his works, it would not surprise me if he had linked their actions with those of the Ottoman empire. 

     I think the reasoning behind the focus on tax collection is very important to the entire argument. With the size of the Ottoman empire, a system to tax its citizens would have to be a miraculous work of planning and organization. But beyond that, it would be a way to unify and control the population at the same time. With Murakami's interest in writing about individuality (or lack thereof) in people during and following WWII and the student movements of the 60s in Japan, he is likely somewhat absorbed by how governments go about controlling their people, and how people try to deny this control.

  In The Strange Library particularly, I think that the main character being forced to read the books in the library and memorize them can be viewed as a commentary on the government of Japan following WWII. The information being controlled and censored by the US government in Japan, and not allowing for freedom of speech and thought amongst the people, mimics the main character's desire for knowledge and the control over the accessibility, when and where it can be accessed, what he is allowed to do with it, and the repercussions of wanting to access it. The old man in the library would then represent the US government's cruelty in enforcing these new systems over the people. His slurping the boy's brain in return for him being able to read the book in many ways is similar to the taxation practices of many empires, including that of the Japanese (namely in the Kamakura and Muromachi periods, if I remember correctly. Where rice taxation was extremely brutal and left many people with only one option: to desert their homes and land and run from the government. Which of course, the boy has no choice but to run from the old man, leaving his shoes (family) as well as the books (land, offerings from government) behind.....)

 

     Unfortunately, I am no expert on the Ottoman empire. I barely knew anything about it until I decided to write this blog post, and still know practically nothing. I hope that my information and inferences are correct, and if not, please correct me. Either way, I think that there is quite a lot more to be said about why Murakami chose the Ottoman Empire in his story, and I would be interested in hearing any other thoughts on the matter.

Bergen

Random thoughts about the winter Museum

      Frankly, the short story Pornography as the Winter Museum is utterly baffling to me, but because of that bafflement I feel the need to understand it. What is not confusing is why no publisher ended up translating it into english, though that in itself might halt me in my attempts to understand. Is the story confusing because of the translation, or was it never officially translated because it is confusing? Maybe both things are true simultaneously. I can't answer that question, I don't know Japanese. Either way, I'm going to dig out whatever deeper meaning I can from this very strange extended metaphor of sexuality being like a winter museum.

    Firstly the narrator's perception of the event of arousal makes it sound like a job. He says, "I am working at this museum, if I'm not mistaken." One would think one would be aware of both when they are aroused and when they are employed, so the fact the narrator seems on shaky ground gives the reader cause to pause. It is possible to read into this that this Boku is like Watanabe with the random hook-ups in the love hotels in Norwegian Wood, going about sexual exploits mechanically more out of bodily necessity than any enjoyment for the fact. That would explain why it is a "winter" museum, that being that it is cold and unemotional, just a collection of carnal facts being presented to a disinterested party. Sometimes Murakami's writing makes me think he needs a hug.

    I would think the segment in which he digs through complaints and suggestions might be indicative of the public's opinion on the sexual elements of his stories, though I don't think he actually had published much by the time he wrote this. Either way, people get riled up at the museum as they do with sex, but Boku shrugs it off saying, "After all, isn't the stuff here all just really old news?" Copulation has been around since the dawn of humans, yet it is true that people in the modern world still can spend large segments of their lives getting excited or angry about certain sexual acts. To Boku, all of that is getting worked up over old news, which returns to the idea of him being in some way disenchanted with sex or sexuality.

    On an unrelated note, it is hard to say if arousal is the thing that is like the winter museum, as one would think that the fact just hearing about sex is enough to send him to the winter museum is a sign that what is being discussed is arousal and not sexuality itself. But then at the end it talks about the final step being intercourse so maybe it is not just arousal. The man is clearly lonely if he sees sexuality as a large cold stone building, and the implications of the line "everything can be handled by one person," suggests someone who doesn't necessarily need a partner for the act. But then why would he prepare the museum for guests then?

I can look up nothing about this story because if you look up Murakami and Museum in the google bar you'll just get Takashi Murakami, who is a famous graphic designer. Apparently he was going to sell NFT's but then stopped himself, so I guess that's some good news.

Lingering questions that particularly bother me:

Are melted chestnuts a thing? I've heard of roasted chestnuts, I didn't know you could melt them. In the in-person class on Wednesday we discussed the use of seminal imagery, this might just be more of that or it might be a translation mishap.

Why does Murakami always bring up random numbers when it comes to sexuality? In this story we got 36, 52, 21, and 76, which are all numbers that have no relation to one another as far as I can tell. They aren't prime, they don't have a common denominator, I only know so much number theory. Then again I'm not sure Murakami is much of a mathematician either.

-Luke Ptak

Slow Boat by Hideo Furukawa

 It was fun to read Hideo Furukawa's "Slow Boat" because I felt like this story did a good job of borrowing elements from Murakami. I felt that in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, the author seemed to borrow a plotline from Murakami, which is fine, but that was distracting for me to read, personally. In "Slow Boat", Furukawa seemed to carefully incorporate Murakami's style into his story, so much so that if I was told Murakami wrote the story, I would believe them. The story opens with "I toss a pebble into the well of my consciousness." Already this is a comparison between the two writers, as Murakami tends to delve into the realm of consciousness/unconsciousness in his writing. Going on from this aspect, I could tell that Furukawa borrowed elements of Murakami's "other world," as he shows how cold the protagonist is, and how he tries to warm himself up with "warm thoughts" at the beginning of the story. This idea of the other world continues as the character falls asleep and enters a dream. It really struck me when the protagonist described his dream in which he was looking at himself, as an observer instead of an active participant. In a previous blog post, I mentioned how Murakami, whether intentionally or not, tends to describe episodes of dissociation when characters delve into their unconscious or the "other world." In this instance, what Furukawa described was an episode of depersonalization, in which a person has an out-of-body experience. During depersonalization, a person is looking at themselves from outside of their body and watching them perform actions. As this happens, as I have learned in previous classes, a person feels like they are not in control of their body, they are simply watching it. In the story, the protagonist says, "I'm a character in this world" and closely follows that with "I'm a part of it - under its control" (37). In this way, specifically, I could tell how this author was inspired by Murakami. There were other elements too, such as the importance surrounding the age 19, the emphasis of sex in his writing, and how Furukawa incorporated a sort of "hunt" for a place neither character knew definitively about. Overall, I think Furukawa did a great job of incorporating elements of Murakami's writing into his story, and I enjoyed the story as a whole.

Corrina

"Boku" in Number9Dream and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

After reading the two stories for class, I felt like the main character, Eiji, in Number9Dream was much less like Murakami's typical protagonist "Boku" than Changez in the Reluctant Fundamentalist. Even though, as many people pointed out in class and in the blog, Hamid did borrow many of Murakami's themes and actions in the excerpts of the novel we read, I think that he captured what people enjoy about Murakami and what is one of the most interesting aspects of his writing. 

The biggest difference in Changez and Boku is that Changez is extremely accomplished and would be considered as more than just average guy, as Boku typically is. But in many other aspects of his personality, they is the same. Changez practically watches his life occur from the sidelines, frequently without emotion. For example, when he describes Pakistan to Erica he said "I told her that I had driven with my parents and my brother to China...I told her that alcohol was illegal for Muslims to buy and so I had a Christian bootlegger...she said, 'You miss home.' I shrugged" (27). This non-plussed behavior is typical of Boku in Murakami, and an important aspect as it makes Boku appear more mysterious and removed from the rational world. Changez also acts as if he is unsure of his own feelings, saying that "perhaps it was this sense of protectiveness that prevented my attempting to kiss Erica; equally likely, it was the shyness and awe that accompany first love" (87). Here, Changez is offering multiple options to explain what he is doing, without offering any hints as to which one is *more* likely, which I believe is characteristic of Boku as well. 

This is compared to Eiji in Number9Dream, who I thought was more aware of himself and present in the world than Boku and Changez. He states his emotions instead of just contemplating them, saying "I am flattered" (102) when being offered a game of pool, which makes him seem for sure of himself than Boku. Eiji also says, about Yuzu, that "He is brilliant. I meant it." (102) which seems to me also more sure, and opinionated than something that either Boku or Changez would say. 

Overall, I think both stories were distinct from Murakami's novels, but the narrators had some particular distinctions that made one more Murakami-esque than the other. It was really interesting to compare them and look at the differences in Murakami's influences on both.

-Audrey

Darkness, Light, and the Moon in Murakami

 Murakami often employs light symbolism to suggest a shift in reality and to potentially mark a point of transcendence. In Norwegian Wood, Naoko’s fear of the deep well that people sometimes fall into with no return is representative of her struggle with mental stability as well as her entrapment within her own psyche. In The Strange Library, as the boy descends towards the reading room, he becomes engulfed in total darkness which now separates him from the conventional world. Whether the reading room is a construction in the boy’s psyche following a traumatic experience or a regular dream, there is an overlap between the two worlds which is not purely metaphorical but actually very physical: the boy leaves the library with no shoes on and when he returns home, his pet starling is gone. Interestingly enough, right before the boy flees from the library with the Sheep Man, he notices that the girl who often brought him food seems to be disintegrating in the moonlight. Specifically, it is the new moon that seems to play a crucial role in the development of events. One of the wives of the Ottoman tax collector - whose identity the boy had temporarily assumed while reading - mentions how “the new moon will shape our destinies”  (17). Moonlight, being the reflected light of the sun, can be representative of the relationship between dreams, the psyche, and reality. Because of the new moon, the setting of the library is primarily dark with minimal light. In Norwegian Wood, Naoko mentions how from the bottom of the well, you can see a faint streak of moonlight which is the only thing dissipating the complete darkness. So, if the bottom of the well and the lowest level of the library where the reading room is located, represent our consciousness, then what does the light represent? In Norwegian Wood, the light seems to be a glimmer of hope but in The Strange Library, the moonlight harms the girl who the protagonist wants to help. Or maybe the moonlight did not hurt her but rather helped her to transform. In that sense, light can be anything that causes a change in someone’s core identity which allows them to escape from the prison of their own mind. 

Ruska

Strange Library, Reluctant Fundamentalist, Number 9 Dream

 Strange Library:

    I have some friends who've told me stories about dreams they had while stoned/tripping on acid that sounded really similar to this one. I liked it. Feel like it would work well as an adult-swim animated short or something. Also thought the packaging was neat; not matching the eccentricity of a story like this in its marketing would be both unfortunate for the story and a missed opportunity to enhance the reading experience. Personally, the packaging of the story made me appreciate it even more than I would have just reading it off a PDF on my laptop.

"Why the hell did they make all the text in this book font size 800 with double-spacing? What a massive waste of paper................................................................................................................................I love it!"'

(Probably not the way I should react to things like this given the urgency of environmental matters in today's world, but I confess, I'm a sucker for novelty)

Not a critic but I liked it / 10

Reluctant Fundamentalist:

    Thought it was near 1-1 with Norwegian Wood (the excerpt we read at least), yet still found it pretty interesting. Have never read or heard the perspective of someone originally from a heavily Islamic country on the 9/11 attacks before, was pretty intriguing. Liked the author's writing style too. Maybe I'm just a sucker for more traditional, more formal writing, I don't know though. Made me curious about the rest of the book, might try and read it over the summer if I have time.

Not a critic but I liked it / 10

Number 9 Dream:

    Had a hard time following what was going on in this book. In that way, reminded me a bit of the text from Gibson that we read earlier. Once the pieces started coming together though, thought it was neat. In my head at least, the atmosphere gradually became more and more threatening and unsettling as the author wrote more about Daimon, thought he was a very neat character (not one that I would want to be friends with in real life though).

Not a critic but I liked it / 10

 

Dylan

Dream Number 9 & The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I must admit that I have not read the entire The Reluctant Fundamentalist, however, from the passages I have read, I found them highly analogical to the narrative of Norwegian Wood. In fact, I did not have the pre-knowledge that this is going to be related to Murakami (although this course is based on him and his sources), but after reading for a couple pages, I started to notice the similarities between the two works. The most prominent detail that struck to me was when Erica disappears after the unsuccessful sex between her and Changez before she goes to an institution for treating her mental illness –this is already beyond being similar or an imitation of Norwegian Wood. Furthermore, a character who is similar to Reiko in Norwegian Wood also appears at the exact same timing as the latter, not mentioning the suicide of Erica and the death of her ex-boyfriend which left her a trauma. Furthermore, details such as Erica leaving her clothes before she attempts to suicide (assuming that is what she did) can also be seen in a more obscure way in Norwegian Wood as Naoko gives Reiko her clothes.

On the other hand, chapter 3 of Dream Number 9 can be seen as a proper imitation of Norwegian Wood, that is to say, the narrative between Nagazawa and Watanabe. As one of our classmates said, the story in Dream Number 9 seems to be unpacking one of the nights Nagazawa takes Watanabe out, and expands the night in more details. And the character Daimon also acts like Nagazawa whereas the protagonist’s naivety and innocence are also like that of Watanabe.

To compare the two works’ relevance to Norwegian Wood, the latter is far more acceptable because the former seems to be a copying and pasting, that there is almost no creativity. It almost felt like the author, Hamid, did not bother to change a tiny bit of detail to make the story more like his own rather than a parody. But the latter indeed pays more attention to details and the author was aiming to create a story with his own thoughts and ideas.  

Alice
  

gender in Murakami's writing

Since I started reading Murakami's writing, I have been both intrigued and sometimes disappointed by his portrayals of women. What I gathered from the interview we read between Mieko Kawakami and Murakami is that the lack of depth in many of Murakami's female characters is not due to misogyny, but to the fact that Murakami doesn't really understand the female perspective. This is especially clear from Murakami's response to Kawakami's question about why Mariye in Killing Commendatore (who is a 12-year-old girl) talks about her breasts with the narrator so often; Murakami says "the fact that she asks him for his opinion on her breasts suggests that she doesn’t really see him as a man. She doesn’t recognize him as a sexual object. This strengthens the introspectiveness, or philosophical nature, of their dialogue." I have not read Killing Commendatore, however, it is quite unrealistic that such a young girl would feel comfortable talking about her breasts with an older man and I am skeptical about how this would add to the introspective or philosophical nature of their conversation. 

I would also agree with Kawakami's claim that the majority of Murakami's female characters are not able "to exist on their own." Many of Murakami's female characters serve a distinct purpose for the main male protagonist whether that is for their sexual desires or their psychological journeys (or both), but it is unclear what purpose they serve for themselves, what they truly want. Even if Murakami has not consciously or purposefully created this pattern for his female characters, that does not mean it doesn't exist. 

However, I also could understand Murakami's perspective from this interview. Murakami says "We can talk about the women in my novels as a group, but to me, they’re unique individuals, and on a fundamental level, before I see them as a man or woman, I see them as a human being." I think Murakami's intention to see all of his characters as human beings before seeing them as a man or woman is good, but a bit unrealistic. Also, even if Murakami isn't focused on the gender of his characters while writing them, his characters themselves (if they were real people) would certainly be aware of their gender, especially his female characters since there different societal standards that come with being perceived as a woman. 

Penny

The Inner Psyche In The Strange Library

    Murakami's The Strange Library can be interpreted as Boku's journey through his own inner psyche. I interpret the library itself to be representative of a place in his mind that obscures reality; potentially representing a psychological disorder such as PTSD. Once he enters into this library, it seems as though he falls deeper and deeper into this journey with seemingly no way out. With the simple intention of renting a book, Boku is effectively forced deeper into the labyrinth-like library, losing sense of all direction. In connection to living with psychological disorders such as PTSD, people with these disorders may wake up everyday with positive, simple intentions of having a good day. Yet these disorders often end up getting the best of people, and result in a disconnect from reality and/or depressive symptoms. When Boku is at what seems to be the lowest and darkest level of the library, he meets the Sheep Man, who I interpret as the part of Boku that has given up on getting back to reality and has accepted his life in the library (given up on the hope that his psychological disorder can be cured). However, when these two parts of himself come together (Boku and the Sheep Man), the part of Boku that has given up is finally encouraged to make an escape back to reality. Finally, once they reach the final door, the Old Man and the Black Dog are there, blocking their exit. Both of these figures represent the root cause of psychological disorder, such as a traumatic experience. When there seems to be no escape, a familiar pet from the real world (Boku's bird) saves him from the last obstacles. I interpret his pet bird representing the connection between the imaginary world of the library and the outside reality in which Boku is trying to escape to; it is this connection (the bird) that saves Boku from this overpowering psychological disorder.

Boston

Murakami and Dreams

In a previous interview, Murakami once said: “For me, writing a novel is like having a dream. Writing a novel lets me intentionally dream while I'm still awake. […] It's also a way of descending deep into my own consciousness. So while I see it as dreamlike, it's not fantasy. For me the dreamlike is very real.” 

From these statements, dreams can be theorized as representations of reality and “truth.”  Keeping this in mind, I started thinking about Murakami as a magical-realism writer. Based on my experience reading Murakami (all of which is limited to the readings assigned to this class), his stories often seem very “strange” and “weird” to me (but not in a bad way). The strangeness of his stories and the sometimes inexplicable nature of certain events and characters matches well with Murakami’s claim that his novels are like dreams. Our dreams are capable of portraying fantasy and reality, but while we are in that dream-state we wholeheartedly believe that everything is real. Sometimes in my dreams, events are out of sequence, sceneries suddenly change, strangers are considered trustworthy, time doesn’t exist, and people’s faces are blurred; despite this, I easily accept that where I am is reality, and the strangeness doesn’t phase me. Thus, dreaming is like stepping into another world or reality, similar to boku at the Rat’s house in A Wild Sheep Chase, or boku in the basement in The Strange Library.  In this way, the magical elements of Murakami’s stories can be described as “fantasy-like” and “dream-like” but are still depictions of reality. 

Because dreams are often nonsensical, perhaps Murakami isn’t putting too much symbolism into every little detail of his works. I don’t believe that every character of Murakami’s has to have a specific significance for its existence, and sometimes I think they’re added just to exist in that universe— this happens in dreams as well, where one may interact with many different people and be instantly comfortable with associating with them, but then the characters disappear forever, as if they never existed. Perhaps the inexplicability that sometimes occurs in Murakami’s works is not meant to puzzle the reader, but simply to add another layer of detail to make the world seem more “real.” Or, perhaps there are characters that are invented just purely for entertainment purposes. Of course, I do believe that there are characters that act significantly to serve a purpose, and that there are details in Murakami’s works that definitely do hold symbolism. In some cases, however, I think the strange elements in Murakami’s stories exist simply to be “strange.”

-Michelle

Overwhelming Hunger in Murakami

 Something I’ve noticed several times in Murakami’s works is a kind of overwhelming hunger that drives the character to immediately seek food. This is no ordinary hunger. In “The Second Bakery Attack”,  Murakami uses phrases like “...the pangs struck with the force of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz” and “tremendous, overwhelming hunger pangs” to describe the extent of the feeling. In “Samsa in Love”, Samsa’s hunger is described as a kind of excruciating pain. In the most recent example I noticed, the protagonist of “Sleep” experiences “unbearable” hunger pains. In each example, the character is rendered unable to focus on little else than the all-consuming hunger they feel. This hunger often drives the characters to engage in activities beyond their comfort zone, such as robbing a McDonalds or beginning the laborious task of exploring an unfamiliar house with a foreign human body.

I found myself wondering what function this hunger serves in the story. Though I haven’t necessarily found a satisfactory answer to this question, I have noticed some similarities in each case. It appears that the characters are experiencing some kind of change when the hunger comes. Once the characters have finished satisfying their craving, they are on the other side of that change. 

For example, the hunger comes to Watashi in “Sleep” during the first day she reads through the night. By the time she eats, it is the morning of the new day, marking the beginning of a series of sleepless nights and whatever affliction she is experiencing. In “The Second Bakery Attack”, the protagonist effectively ends the curse that has been apparently plaguing him since his first robbery when he indulges in the stolen McDonalds burgers. In “Samsa in Love”, I saw Samsa’s aggressive feasting on the abandoned meal as solidifying his status as a human rather than an insect in some way. This concept isn’t a surprise considering some of our previous class discussions on how eating food often solidifies one’s presence in another world.

-Angela

My thoughts on the Strange Library

 As I was reading The Strange Library, I was at first very confused and puzzled by the many messages and strange themes throughout the story. However, after the final scene where Boku and the Sheep man try to escape and are confronted by the old man and the black dog, one particular theme stood out. As I stated in class, the old dog reminded me of something crucial in human development. The incident with the dog took place during Boku's childhood and he noted that after that incident he was never the same and his mother was always worried about him being out after a certain time. At a certain point in life, as children grow into true adults, there is an amount of reflection on the self that takes place. Forming an identity separate from the one during childhood is a part of that reflection; getting rid of baggage from the past, letting go old memories and learning to think for yourself instead of adults making decisions for you are common things. The dog in this story for me symbolized the part of Boku that was still holding on to his childhood. He was unable to think for himself properly and resist the ushering of the old man because he was still unable to put himself in a place of higher status as an adult. In the end, that canary destroying the dog was a natural liberation from that baggage that would ultimately set him free from that part of himself.

It reminded me a lot of nightmares I used to have as a child about a statue my parents owned and brought with us even after we moved to a different state. I would bring up having nightmares about it so much that my parents put it in the garage out of sight. One night however, I was having my usual nightmare about the statue, it was chasing me down a hall, but I turned back and started to smash it. I kept smashing it until it was a pile of dust and after that I did not have any nightmares. For me, that felt like the end of an era, because I had feared that statue since I was a toddler. I also felt a similar release of that type entering college and realizing that I was able to say no and make my own decisions/create my own opportunities. So when we talked in class about how the library was all in Boku's head, it was easy for me to believe that that world was a big subconscious meta-representation of an inner battle between the Boku of his past and the Boku that is struggling to break through.

Ariel

Similarities between Norwegian Wood and The Reluctant Fundamentalist

I had never read or watched The Reluctant Fundamentalist before this, so after reading it with the plot and characters of Norwegian Wood in mind, I could immediately recognize the similarities between the two of them. Although the two stories still have many differences, the similarities between them are impossible to ignore.

First of all, Changez and Erica's love story in The Reluctant Fundamentalist is almost identical to that of Toru and Naoko in Norwegian Wood. Naoko's and Erica's life stories are very similar. Both of them have been pulled into a terrible depression due to the deaths of their childhood friends turned boyfriends. Since Naoko and Kizuki and Erica and Chris grew up together and really only hung out with each other, when Kizuki and Chris die, Naoko and Erica lose the one person they have shared their entire adolescent life with. However, their situations are slightly different in that Chris died of lung cancer and Kizuki committed suicide, and in addition to Kizuki's death, Naoko had to cope with the suicide of her sister. Also, Toru was friends with Kizuki and Naoko in the past while Changez was not friends with Chris and Erica, and Erica--surrounded by friends when she meets Changez--seems much more outgoing than Naoko, who is very meek and quiet.

The stories then follow a very similar plot. Eventually, Toru and Changez sleep with Naoko and Erica, but the sex itself is full of sadness and loneliness, both women letting things be done to them rather than actively participating. The Reluctant Fundamentalist at first seems a little more optimistic though, as Erica and Changez finish the day on what Changez at least believes are good terms, whereas Naoko was lying away from Toru, silent and unmoving, the morning after. Then, both Toru and Changez don't hear from Naoko or Erica for a while, so Toru sends Naoko letters and Changez sends Erica emails in an attempt to reach them. They then find out that Naoko and Erica are in sanatoriums in the mountains. Snowy hills and woods are present in both of these sanatoriums, and Toru is greeted by Reiko/Changez is greeted by a friendly nurse when they first get there. The sanatorium in Norwegian Wood, however, seems to be a more specialized, different kind of practice (the patients and doctors intermingle and "heal" each other) than the one in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, which seems more like a general sanatorium.

The way that the stories (or at least the given fragments) end are very similar, as well. Both Naoko's and Erica's mental states end up rapidly declining, and they seem to be stuck in the past (specifically, stuck on people in the past). They both sneak away to the outdoors and commit suicide, Naoko hanging herself in the woods while Erica most likely threw herself off of a cliff. However, Erica's death is not confirmed, whereas Naoko's is definitely ascertained by the other characters.

 Melody

Blog Post 5: How Hamid and Mitchell Borrowed Relationships from Norwegian Wood

 

In Norwegian Wood, Watanabe deals with life as a nondescript college student, and his first experience of love with his childhood best-friend’s girlfriend, Naoko. Watanabe’s character is explored primarily through his interactions with 3 characters, Naoko (who he has fallen in love with), Midori (a girl he is falling in love with), and Nagasawa (his only friend). These relationships explore the difficulty of loss (Naoko), living with loss (Nagasawa), and moving on from loss (Midori), and the result is an immersive understanding of a young person’s difficulties navigating his troubled relationships. As a reader of Norwegian Wood, I was entranced by Watanabe’s issues; I am of a similar demographic and find myself dealing with issues that are less pronounced but of a similar grain. The story left me ruminating about my own experiences for days, and I am not surprised to find that other writers' intertextuality borrowed elements from Murakami’s story.

In The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hamid, Changez is a Pakistani immigrant who deals with many issues foreign to Norwegian Wood. Transnationalism, immigration, terrorist attacks, and commentary on American life are all evident in just the chapters we read for class and are all nonexistent in Norwegian Wood. However, it seems that Hamid borrows the relationship dynamic between Changez and Erica heavily from that between Naoko and Watanabe. Erica grew up with the original love of her life, Chris, who died from lung cancer before the age of 22. She is haunted by his loss and deals with mental health issues stemming from his death. Like Watanabe, Changez is the first man (and person) she opens up to about her issues, but the result of their opening up (and sex) leaves both Naoko and Erica in such an unstable mental state that they end up in mental institutions. The three-way love triangle between a dead childhood lover, a mentally unstable girl, and a compassionate and confused young man is remarkably similar. Hamid successfully brings to light many of the feelings Watanabe demonstrates in Norwegian Wood through his character, Changez. The reader of both texts feels a sense of familiarity that is hard to shake.

In Number 9 Dream by David Mitchell, Eiji Miyake is a 20-year-old bastard in search of his wealthy father, and there are many similarities between this book and Norwegian Wood that extend past the setting in Tokyo. The primary thing I noticed when reading the excerpt for class was the relationship similarities between Eiji and Damion with that of Watanabe and Nagasawa. Both Damion and Nagasawa are highly intelligent, wealthy, persuasive individuals that see the pursuit of women as a game. Inexplicably to both the reader and Eiji/Watanabe, they take a liking to them, and bring them along to bars in pursuit of women for casual sexual encounters. When at the bars, the parallels between Nagasawa/Damion’s abilities to entertain the girls, and Eiji/Watanabe’s hesitation in engaging the women, are obvious to the reader. The power dynamic between wealthy benefactor and poor tagalong are obvious, and the way Damion/Nagasawa seem to transcend human emotion except for certain triggers is eerily similar. Just like in The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a reader of both texts gets a feeling of Deja Vu from reading these literary foils.

Just as Murakami intertextually propelled elements of previous works, so too it is a new generation of writers deciphering and adopting the themes and characters of Murakami for their own works.   

Andrew

A Critique of a Feminist Critique of Murakami Novels

I was looking forward to reading the interview between Murakami and Mieko Kawakami because, like Kawakami, I’ve had concerns about the roles that women-aligned characters play in Murakami’s novels. However, I was disappointed with both Murakami’s responses and Kawakami’s questions.

When discussing the protagonist of Sleep, Murakami said he “wrote the character to be a human being, without really being conscious of her as a woman.” This “gender blindness”—a term used to describe treating all genders the same regardless of the roles and responsibilities placed upon different genders by society—is harmful and ignorant. The logic behind being “gender blind” when writing characters as a way to avoid prejudice is that if you do not even consider gender, you cannot write in a biased manner. However, what’s actually happening is ignorance to the experiences that gender minorities face and an unwillingness to acknowledge the gender-based discrimination that occurs. It also fails to acknowledge the gendering of language itself, and by describing characters through written text, this act of passing through language creates meaning that's constrained by current hegemonic systems of oppression and stereotyping.

Additionally, regardless of whether Murakami is conscious of his portrayal of women or not, his implicit gender biases are at work when he’s writing. He refuses to take an introspective look at those socially-constructed ideas of gender roles that have been ingrained in him by society. There's an obvious pattern of women in Murakami’s novels being used by male protagonists to cure their loneliness through sex. In addition, there is obvious sexual objectification and judgement of women’s bodies by men. Here's an example from Norwegian Wood:

“Almost a year had gone by since I had last seen Naoko, and in that time she had lost so much weight as to look like a different person...There was something natural and serene about the way she had slimmed down, as if she had been hiding in some long, narrow space until she herself had become long and narrow. And a lot prettier than I remembered” (p. 17).

Especially considering that she lost so much weight due to her depression after her boyfriend died, this emphasis that Toru found Naoko more attractive after losing weight was utterly uncalled for. It also feeds into the stereotype that being “skinny” or underweight is inherently more beautiful, natural, and healthy than people with different body types, which is definitely not the case here considering that Naoko was malnourished and struggling with her mental health.

I also feel as though Kawakami’s praise of Sleep is unwarranted, as this story plays into several stereotypes and in the end, Watashi still ends up trapped by society and men (in one scene, literally, as she’s being shaken violently in her car by two men). She’s the classic stay-at-home mom who cooks, cleans, does the laundry, does the grocery shopping, etc. and her “freedom” and breaking free from these gender roles is reading a book, eating chocolate, and drinking brandy. This seventeen-day experience seems more like a break from reality than actual self-liberation or empowerment because Watashi does not sleep the whole time, which is entirely unrealistic and inapplicable to actual women, and also because it is short-lived. There's no real character-development or significant situational change for Watashi afterwards.

Ultimately, almost all of the women-aligned characters in Murakami’s books are established and valued based on their relationships with men, with their lives, thoughts, feelings, and experiences being viewed through the lens of the cisheterosexual male gaze, or what Laura Mulvey describes as fascination with the human form: “the erotic basis for pleasure in looking at another person as object. At the extreme, it can become fixated into perversion, producing obsessive voyeurs and Peeping Toms, whose only sexual satisfaction can come from watching, in an active controlling sense, an objectified other” (835). Indeed, the women are subjected not just to the male gazes of their fellow characters (usually male protagonists) but also Murakami himself, who by placing his own (conscious, or as he insists, unconscious) beliefs and desires about women onto these characters while writing them.

The male gaze can often be seen through the aforementioned descriptions of women’s bodies and fixation on the sexualization of women’s bodies, with the male protagonists projecting “[their] phantasy on to the [passive] female figure which is styled accordingly” (Mulvey, 837). The fact that Murakami does not even acknowledge the ways in which cishetero-patriarchy impacts the gendering of language and women’s experiences erases the very real implications of these interlocking systems of oppression, leaving women-aligned characters to be the passive recipients of the male gaze: an object to be consumed and discarded for the self-advancement of the male protagonist. 

- Christa

Citations

“A Feminist Critique of Murakami Novels, With Murakami Himself.” Translated by David April Boyd and Sam Bett, Literary Hub, 8 May 2020

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Leo Braudy and Marshall Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999: 833-44

Strecher Discussion Questions

 In the article, they argue that Murakami writes to “Expose the steady decay of individual identity” Using your own personal experience in reading Murakami’s works, do you agree or disagree? Why?

The article states that Murakami's underlying question is that how can the protagonist create relationships with others and identify himself to prove to himself that he even exists? Do you feel that this was the case for Watanabe in Norwegian Wood? Why?

The author of the article coined the term “Textualization of the Inner Mind” which describes the process where a nostalgic object placed in the protagonist’s mind leads to “Narrator's obsessive desire for the object to bring it magically from inside the mind out into the external world.” Why do you think Murakami incorporated this in his stories?

The article states that some believe that Murakami tries to “Dissolve proper names into fixed signifiers is to dissolve them into bundles of predicative terms, or to put it another way, into bundles of generalized concepts," Do you agree with this statement? Why?

NW

In just Norwegian Wood, there were four different characters that ended up offing themselves in some way or another. Two of them died by hanging, one died by slitting her wrists, and another (chronologically the first) died by poisoning (inhaling exhaust from his car). In 3 of them, the run-up to actual event reminded me a lot of some experiences I've had with some friends of mine who've attempted suicide in the past, one man in particular. It was eerie how closely things lined up.

If a friend you know to be in a bad way magically 180s all of a sudden and starts acting confident, cheery, and strongly motivated by something, in many cases, you should probably be afraid.

 

Dylan

An Analysis of Gregor Samsa’s Memory

When reading Samsa in Love, I tried to analyze everything through a psychological lens to see if I could understand Gregor’s mental state, and particularly the state of his memory. It’s clear that Gregor is experiencing some sort of amnesia. He most likely has retrograde amnesia, since he appears to have lost a lot of his previously made memories. He doesn’t appear to have anterograde amnesia, which is when you can’t form new memories. Although this story only takes place over a short period of time, it seems as though he is able to remember new things he learned such as what bras are, characteristics of the woman that comes over, etc.

Thinking further about Gregor’s memory, long-term memory can be broken up into two types: declarative memory and nondeclarative memory. Declarative memory is associated with explicit, declarable facts. Nondeclarative memory is for things you can’t explicitly state and include procedural memories, such as skills, habits, and behaviors. Gregor seems to have difficulties with both declarative and nondeclarative memory. However, his case appears to be complicated.

Walking, climbing stairs, pouring coffee, and putting on clothes are examples of procedural memory that are seen in the story. Gregor had to learn to walk after he adjusted to standing, and “walking on two legs amounted to a kind of torture” (p. 2) for him. Navigating the stairs was a true nightmare, and he held onto the bannister the whole way down. However, he appears to pick up a metal pot and pour coffee into a cup with no difficulties (p. 3). Not only was the idea of clothing unfamiliar and strange to Gregor, he also had no clue how to put clothes on or wear them: “too many buttons, for one thing, and he was unsure how to tell front from back, or top from bottom” (p. 5). 

Within declarative memory is semantic memory, or memory of facts. This includes world knowledge, object knowledge, and language knowledge. A fact that Gregor knows is his name, although he is unsure how he knows it. Gregor also understands other facts, such as how the sound of a doorbell means someone is at the front door. The point of view of the story makes my analysis of Gregor’s memories difficult. For example, when the story discusses that Gregor pulled a walking stick out of the closet to help him move around by “grasping its sturdy handle,” I wonder whether Gregor actually recognizes the object as a walking stick and knows how to use it, orif he instinctively sees something that he could use to help balance himself as he walks. Another interesting aspect of Gregor’s semantic memory is his knowledge of language. He appears to have no trouble understanding language and speaking, although his knowledge of certain concepts, such as bras, God, and tanks, is limited. 

Another type of declarative memory is episodic memory, or memory of events. He clearly does not remember many events from his past, and when he tries to think about it, “something like a black column of mosquitoes swirled up in his head” (p. 1). Although he does not explicitly remember that he was a bug before he woke up as a human, there are several things he says that allude to that fact. For example, he describes his body as having “no shell for protection” (p. 2) and throughout the story has a strange fear of being attacked by birds, even warning the woman to “look out for birds” (p. 11) when she leaves. Another interesting example is that he describes the woman as looking “as if she were crawling on all fours” (p. 9) as she was walking down the staircase. He later says that “walking the way she did made a lot more sense than wobbling around upright on two legs” (p. 11).

It's clear that he has some understanding of the world from his perspective as a bug in his previous life, as well as from his perspective as a human before he was a bug. There's no way to classify what type of memory loss Gregor is experiencing, since there are several contradictions that show his declarative and nondeclarative memory are not completely impaired. When Murakami wrote this story, it's evident that he didn't have a specific memory impairment in mind for Gregor Samsa after his metamorphosis, but it's still interesting to think about the ways his memory functioned after this strange event took place.

- Christa

Norwegian Wood and the Predatory Lesbian Stereotype

While reading Norwegian Wood, I was extremely shocked and turned off by Murakami's depiction of Reiko and her former piano student. In the past Murakami works I have read, I always felt he had a rather sympathetic depiction of LGBTQ characters (though no doubt without flaws), Oshima from Kafka on the Shore being the first person to come to mind. I had heard and considered the critiques of misogyny about his works and although I understood where many of these complaints came from, the novels and short stories I'd read didn't contain particularly egregious examples of sexism and often I could brush it off as simply being part of the character's personality or some theme or medium through which the story had a purposeful reason for including it.

That being said, the extremely pernicious predatory lesbian stereotype depicted in Norwegian Wood made me truly reconsider my stance on many of these issues. Lesbians in media are regularly shown to exploit, intimidate, or be otherwise aggressive towards their "love interests" and this stereotype has real impacts on the community. It is far from uncommon to hear lesbians echo concerns of "coming on too strong" and doubting themselves long after consent is given for whatever pursuit they're seeking. The example of Reiko and her student is especially appalling, given that the story flips the blame entirely onto the child in the situation. Not only does Murakami portray this lesbian relationship as pedophilic, but also places the predatory nature within the minor. It's interesting that many of the critiques about Murakami's depiction of women are related to the male protagonist's oversexualization of nearly every female character. It's hard to not consider that perhaps his portrayal of lesbians is so damaging because the male protagonist cannot reasonably sexualize them or have any feasible sort of physical connection with them.

As far as I can tell, this entire chapter dedicated to Reiko's story had little to no impact or guidance in the rest of the novel's plot and left more than a sour taste in my mouth.

- May

Thoughts on Gregor in Metamorphosis and Samsa in Love -Caroline Huynh

After reading both stories it felt like a cockroach and Gregor had switch bodies. Murakami's side of the story seems more of the perspective of the cockroach turning into a human while Metamorphosis was Gregor turning into a cockroach. Murakami’s story seems to be a sequel to Kafta’s story. At first, I thought that Gregor had turned back into a human because he woke up very skinny and weak and I thought about how he shriveled up and starved in Metamorphosis but as I kept reading the story, it felt like he did not know how to be a human which makes me think he was a cockroach previously. The cockroach had some memories but did not know why he had them but that those memories just made sense with him. I think it was because the cockroach was already living in the same space as Gregor. Also, Gregor in Samsa in Love mentioned birds a couple of times which made me think that Gregor in the story was a cockroach previously since he was a bug and birds eat bugs to live.


I felt that the tone in both stories was different, in Metamorphosis, I felt bad for the character because his family basically cast him to the side and was done with him even though he was the one that supported them through the rough patch they had in their lives. Gregor has a kind heart for his family and wanted what was best for them but they did not reciprocate for long when he was a cockroach.


In Samsa in Love, Gregor did not know anything and how to function with himself. However, the girl that came by to fix the lock was not mean nor very friendly in the beginning but was nice to him even when he struck her as odd and slow. Gregor was still learning about himself and the girl helps with explaining and letting him know a thing or two about what is going on. Gregor mentioned that he was glad to be human while in Metamorphosis, Gregor wishes he was human again.

Thoughts on Samsa in Love

     To me, the world of Samsa in Love reads like a manifestation of the dying Samsa in Metamorphosis, since the Gregor Samsa in it has both human intellect and animalistic weaknesses and several aspects of the world he wakes up in are completely opposite to what he has experienced in real life.

    In the opening of Metamorphosis, Kafka establishes that it is about an ordinary human who suddenly transformed into a bug. Although the opening of Samsa in Love is quite similar to the opening of Metamorphosis, Murakami has offered many hints throughout the short story to suggest that his Gregor Samsa isn't merely a regular bug before he wakes up. Murakami's Gregor clearly possesses human emotions and human intellects that are too complicated for a bug to perceive. He experiences fear as he starts to walk, curiosity to explore the other rooms in the hallway, and affection for the locksmith. He has vague memory about a past human life and understands that eggs should be peeled, coffee tastes good with cream, and the belt of the dressing gown needs to be fastened. He has also mastered the use of language and can even understand the sexual metaphor of "wiener." At the same time, he also follows animalistic instincts and displays characteristics quite similar to the bug in Metamorphosis. In the opening of Metamorphosis, Gregor takes notice of his "back as hard as armor plate" and "pitifully thin legs." In Samsa in Love, Gregor's inability to control his legs (despite being able to make coffee with his hands) and remark that he has no shell for protection both echo back to Kafka. Based on the human-bug duality in him, it seems like Murakami's Gregor has both experienced a past life as a human and a past life as a bug.

    Gregor isn't the only one who displays the human-bug duality in Samsa in Love. The locksmith who comes to his house is also said to have a rounded back, and toils up the stairs "much like a crawling insect" and walks down the stairs "as if she were crawling on all fours." She constantly twists and writhes to reposition her unfitting brassiere, but that can also be interpreted as she is uncomfortable in her current body, just like Gregor. She also uses the word "crawling" to describe the soldiers and tanks on the street, which suggests that it is quite common for beings in this world to display bug-like tendencies. The world (beyond Gregor's bedroom) in Metamorphosis is quite ordinary with people doing their businesses, renting apartments, and just overall following their daily routine, so the somewhat unnatural world in Samsa in Love seems to exist in another dimension.

    Gregor in Metamorphosis seldom experiences kindness and is a social outcast who annoys almost everyone he interacts with, but his situation in Samsa in Love is quite opposite to that. He is the only one at home with the entire apartment to himself. He is free to devour a great amount of food and make a big mess with no one else to regulate him. Although furnishings of the apartment suggest that he has family members, there are no human traces of them, so he doesn't need to work at an unsatisfying job to support anyone or behave in a certain way to please anyone. There is also a woman who has risked her life just to come to fix a lock for him and lets him experience what love is. The only unnatural space in Metamorphosis, Gregor's apartment, becomes the only safe haven in a chaotic world in Samsa in Love.

    Since Gregor in Metamorphosis really manifested his own death after hearing how his father and sister both want to get rid of him, the whole story of Samsa in Love reads like an imagination of Gregor's dying human consciousness. Although Samsa in Love ends on a positive note, the world outside that he wants to learn more about is really extremely chaotic and filled with bug-like soldiers and tanks, and due to the theme of Metamorphosis, I feel like the whatever faith Gregor has gained in humanity at the end of Samsa in Love would turn out to be merely a blissfully ignorant illusion. 

Crystal