The Kangaroo Communique- 09/26/08.

"Maybe that strikes you as odd.  You ask yourself, Why should looking at kangaroos make me want to send you a letter?  And just what is the connection between these kangaroos and me?  Well, you can stop thinking those thoughts right now.  Makes no nevermind.  Kangaroos are kangaroos, you are you.

In other words, it's like that:

Thirty-six intricate procedural steps, followed one by one in just the right order, led me from the kangaroos to you--that's it.  To attempt to explain each and every one of these steps would surely try your powers of comprehension, but more than that, I doubt I can even remember them all."

This passage is located toward the beginning of the book.  It sets up relationships the relationship between the main character and the person he is writing to in an unorthodox way.  First, Murakami uses informal diction and the second person point of view when writing this short story.  This makes the reader feel as if she or he is that person he writes to.  Though this allows for a connection with the narrator, it also leaves us a little confused because as this other person, the reader supposedly knows everything.  In this way, the reader starts out incredibly confused in the beginning of the story and slowly accumulates information indirectly.  The association Murakami sets up between this other person and kangaroos is one example of the gap in our knowledge.  For some reason, Murakami chooses to set this association then tells us to forget about it.  It is difficult to understand why Murakami piques our interest through the use of rhetorical questions, "Why should looking at kangaroos make me want to send you a letter?  And just what is the connection between these kangaroos and me?" and then completely tells us to abandon the idea.  Then, Murakami aggravates the reader further by repeating this structure.  He tells the reader he arrived at his connection through 36 specific steps and then refuses to reveal these steps claiming they "would surely try your powers of comprehension."  These little irritating things are syntactically compiled to bring about the most irritation in the reader.  Murakami begins a thought, drops it, begins another, drops this one, and then tells the reader she or he simply would not understand.  I think Murakami does this to stimulate as much interest as he can from the reader.  By purposely and obviously with holding information, he causes the reader to eagerly wait on the rest of the story hoping he'll throw a few more scraps of information our way.

The Second Bakery Attack-09/19/08.

"Whenever my wife expressed such an opinion (or thesis) back then, it reverberated in my ears with the authority of a revelation.  Maybe that's what happens with newlyweds, I don't know.  But when she said this to me, I began to think that this was a special hunger, not one that could be satisfied through the mere expedient of taking it to an all-night restaurant on the highway.  

A special kind of hunger.  And what might that be?

I can present it here in the form of a cinematic image.

One, I am in a little boat, floating on a quiet sea.  Two, I look down, and in the water I see the peak of a volcano thrusting up from the ocean floor.  Three, the peak seems pretty close to the water's surface, but just how close I cannot tell.  Four, this is because the hypertransparency of the water interferes with the perception of distance."

This passage establishes the relationship between husband and wife.  The reader understands that the wife is the higher authority of the two through Murakami's use of syntax and connotation.  Murakami's use of parentheses in the line segment, "an opinion (or thesis)" is so odd syntactically that it draws the reader's attention.  We notice that the first word "an opinion" has a rather neutral connotation while the word "thesis" has a more authoritative connotation.  In the way that the word is enveloped in parenthesis, it makes me think of a resigned concession.  It is almost as if he realizes the word, "opinion" does not accurately encapsulate her superiority and decides to throw the second word in there.  This is supported by a second use of this structure later on in the story.  

Next, we have the metaphor Murakami draws between hunger and the act of sitting in a boat and seeing a volcano whose distance cannot be determined due to the hypertransparency of the water.  I thought this was a ridiculous metaphor.  The two compared states seem to have no similarities whatsoever.  However this motif of sitting in a boat is constantly being brought up through references of "mermaids," "dead fish," and "waves."  It seemed improbable to me that such a frequently reoccurring motif and even the entire short story were really about something as trivial as hunger.  Instead I saw the metaphor as a representation of married life.  The volcano was a symbol of the couple's individual pasts unknown to each other.  The ominous presence of a volcano is similar to the way the protagonist's past (attacking a bakery) seems capable of harming the couple's relationship.  The possibility of this happening, however, is difficult to determine because of the state of being newlyweds.  The two do not yet know each other completely, and the protagonist is probably uncertain about how his wife will react.

However, trying to fit this metaphor around my idea was still a bit of a stretch.  I'm not really certain at all about what the man is trying to say to me.

p.s. Is my analysis too long? The directions say to write about 50-100 words, but I didn't know if this was absolute.

The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday's Women.- 09/12/2008

Discussing time.

"At 5:30, the telephone rings twelve times; but I don't pick up the receiver.  After the ringing has died away, a lingering hollowness hovers about the dark room like drifting dust.  The clock atop the TV strikes an invisible panel of space with its brittle claws.  A regular wind-up toy world this is, I think.  Once a day the wind-up bird has to come and wind the springs of this world. Alone in this fun house, only I grow old, a pale softball of death swelling inside me.  Yet even as I sleep somewhere between Saturn and Uranus, wind-up birds everywhere are busy at work fulfilling their appointed rounds."

This passage is important because it portrays the main character's view on time and life.  Life to him is like a wind-up toy.  It is something that keeps on going and going until it's predestined time runs out.  The main character seems to be obsessed with this idea. He is always either checking his watch or limiting himself to a certain amount of time to do something.

The first line of passage supports the theme of time.  Many paragraphs begin with the time at that moment to stress how everything is being clocked and how our time in this seemingly immortal world is finite.  The last line of the selected passage supports this idea.  The juxtaposition of the planets, the infinite, and the wind-up birds, the finite, highlights the discrepancy between one's world and one's life.