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