Reflection

Thoughts on Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Leave a comment

First, I REALLY enjoyed this work. For a while now, I’ve been meaning to read Murakami’s works, so I’m glad I was able to read this one. It was definitely unlike anything I’d ever read before, and it caused me to reflect on how the mind works and what the subconscious is capable of accomplishing.

After reading the first few chapters, I initially thought that the Narrator in the End of the World was a reincarnation of the Narrator in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, and I guess I was kind of right. There were obvious parallels between the two, especially in regard to their attraction to the Librarians. It would’ve been interesting if the Chubby Girl also had a counterpart in the End of the World, but I don’t think she had a significant enough role in the Narrator’s mind.

At the end, I kind of wish that the Narrator would’ve followed his Shadow into the whirlpool. I think that if he had jumped, he would’ve woken up in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and been able to live out the rest of his life. However, I think the author makes the ending purposely obscure to elicit reflection by the audience and make us question what we would have done in the Narrator’s position.

Furthermore, Murakami uses techniques of other authors, and my favorite references were of those to Tolkien. When I first saw the map, I got really excited because the maps in the Lord of the Rings are iconic, and if this novel was anything like LOTR, I’d probably really enjoy it. However, the plots of each work didn’t share any apparent similarities, but the structure of the novels did. LOTR had dual stories that were separate but connected (Frodo and Sam’s journey vs. everyone else’s), and Murakami uses this technique, but his chapters alternate while Tolkien’s do not. Overall, I really liked Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, and I’m looking forward to reading more Murakami novels in the future.

Anna Truong

Reflection

The Relationship of the Mind and Body in Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

1 Comment

In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, Haruki Murakami explores the concept of the mind and its relationship with the body, arguing that they are ultimately disconnected, and one can never know their own mind. Murakami presents two parallel universes, one in Tokyo, which often uses past tense, where the narrator is a Calcutech scrambling data using his own mind and the other in the End of the World, which is set in present tense,  where the narrator  is a dreamreader that reads the minds of the Town’s inhabitants.

These two parallel universes are placed side by side throughout the novel rather than having one and then the other to show that they are parallel universes that both exist at once. The Town represents the narrator’s subconscious, and hardboiled wonderland is his reality, but after being experimented upon, he slips into his own subconscious. Murakami demonstrates the skewed temporality of the two worlds when the chubby girl says to the narrator, “your memory is running backward,” which symbolizes that although the End of the World is the world to which the narrator is heading in twenty four hours, he has in a way already experienced the End of the World and remembers the future. This concept of parallel memory tracks highlights Murakami’s argument that the mind and body are disconnected because the narrator’s mind has traveled to places his body has not; it has a reality of its own.

The same idea of the mind and body being disconnected is present when the professor tells the narrator that the world itself will not end, but that the world as the narrator knows it will end; the narrator will enter his subconscious which has always been running in the background unbeknownst to him. It is clear that the End of the World has existed as a parallel reality or as the narrator’s subconscious since the beginning of the novel since the narrator experiences small memories of the other world, and the link between the worlds is the unicorn skull, which symbolizes the minds of the people in the Town.

Just like the people in the Town are mindless because they have been separated from their shadows, the narrator experiences the mind-body disconnect when his shadow jumps through the whirlpool and leaves him in his subconscious. The narrator has left reality and entered his subconscious, never to return. Instead, he exists in the Town, where he will have recollections of the past and the hardboiled wonderland world but will not feel their full force since his mind has left him.

Murakami’s cyperpunk novel uses the fragmentation of the narrator’s mind to comment on the unbridgeable gap between our reality and our subconscious, our body and our mind, and what we have know that we are on Earth and what might lie in wait for us after we have passed on.

– Lauren Hodgson

Reflection

Thoughts on the unicorns

1 Comment

*insert timely snapchat filter that makes you a rainbow-vomiting unicorn*

So other than unicorns being majestic and whimsical AF…. why did Murakami pick unicorns to represent memories of the people that reside in the subconscious of the main character? Unicorns are mythical (I think) creatures that show up in many different cultures across time…. Scottish coat of arms, Renaissance art, the Indus Valley, Harry Potter, and some even argue that a unicorn-like creature was mentioned in the bible.

My first thoughts if someone mentions unicorns are the My Little Pony figurines, but I’m sure that was not was Murakami was thinking. I think he was more leaning towards the idea that unicorns are a thing of dreams and that dreams arise from the subconscious. Secondly, the narrator of the End of the World is “The Dreamreader,” so it seems fitting that the medium for his job is unicorn skulls. He’s reading dreams through a thing of dreams.

Upon asking my family the first word that comes to their mind when I say unicorn, this was their response:

Younger Sister: Magic

Stepdad: Bull shit

Mom: Horn

Older sister: Horse

My mom wasn’t exactly helpful, but she’s busy knitting. However, my sistesr and stepdad were pretty on point. Unicorns are magical and remind me that the  End of the World chapters resemble magical realism while the other chapters are more technology, information, and industrial related. Secondly, from class discussions we have determined that the act of shuffling is totally pointless because it is essentially destroying information. The professor should have taken a note from the scientist in Gojira  and simply burned all of his work and data. That being said, shuffling is bull shit just like how my dad thinks unicorns are bull shit. Lastly, my first impressions of the setting of the End of the World  was that it was incredibly pastoral. It focused on the trees and the beauty and the nature found in the walled city. I didn’t realize at first that the beasts were unicorns so I at first pictured them as cows and horses. Interesting that my older sister’s first thought of unicorns was horses. Unicorns represent a range of things from the narrator’s line of work to dreams to  magic to even pastoral images.

Dani dms10

 

Argument

How Æon Flux is “cyber-punk”

1 Comment

According to the super dependable and accurate site, Wikipedia, cyber punk  “features advanced technology and science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.” The plots tend to be staged in dystopian futures and revolve around protagonists that are rebelling against some form of system or government.

The movie I have chosen to watch and write about, Æon Flux, contains all of these elements and more. The story takes place in the walled-in city of Bregna in the year 2415 after 99% of the population has been killed by a virus. The city is run by the Goodchild family, however,  the rebels, The Monicans, are trying to bring down the regime. The leader of the Monicans communicates with the rebels through the subconscious and electric neural pathways. An ingested chemical allows the rebels to enter their own mind where they find the leader of the rebels who then gives them information on their next assignment.

Later in the plot we see that the Goodchild regime is actually not multiple generations at all, but the same man over and over again. Trevor Goodchild, has actually saved his genetic makeup in a gene bank and remakes himself every time. I’m unsure how the population doesn’t realize that he look sooo similar to previous generations. There’s even posters of himself next to other posters of himself and the people still don’t notice that it’s the same guy! However, the leader of the regime is not the only person whose genes are being replicated. Every person in the city suffers the same fate, but they are unaware of the replication. It further becomes clear that the people have been chosen to live this way because they are immune to the virus. This being said, the inhabitants are not allowed to have children of their own because natural genetic mutation could render them susceptible to the virus once again.

The genetic replication is indeed advanced technology and the secrecy of the government makes an easy target for the rebels to try to defeat. The breakdown or change in social order arises when the blimp flying around the city crashes into the wall and lets the people free. The blimp, or Rellicle (sp?), is actually an information bank for the government and they keep their secrets from the citizens right under (or I guess above) their noses.

 

Dani dms10

Reflection

The Faults of Speciesism in “District 9”

Leave a comment

District 9 was disturbing in a lot of ways because there were so many parallels between what happened in the movie and the apartheid, or any time when a certain group was oppressed in some way. The prawns are treated as subhuman, even though they are far more technologically advanced than the humans are in the film. But, even though black people are higher in social status compared to the prawns, they’re still portrayed negatively. Black people sell meat to the prawns and they believe that eating the prawns’ body parts will give them some alien power. More interestingly though, is the irony in which Wikus, the character who transforms into a prawn himself, becomes more humane the less human he is. In the beginning he used extreme profanity when addressing the prawns and treated them like pests. When he begins the transformation, he even demands that Christopher help him even though he stole Christopher’s canister in the first place. As the film goes on, however, Wikus uses the mechanized suit not only to save himself and Christopher, but volunteers to stay behind and fight Venter so Christopher and his son can escape. A good portion of the film is spent trying to retrieve the canister back to activate the mothership which has a cure for Wikus – only for Wikus to sacrifice himself at the end. It is almost as if the film is making a commentary on the idea of humanism and the irony that those considered subhuman (whether it be blacks, Asians, Jews, etc and the aliens themselves) may be more humane than those who fight so hard to keep non-humans out (whites in this film). The concept of speciesism is critiqued here as it is the humans, who have no moral character. They’re the ones who put the prawns into District 9 and they’re most likely the ones who caused the unrest that came with the prawns arrival. The “other” species, the prawns, are actually the ones who are the most human.

–Julia

Uncategorized

Theory on the ending of Hard-Boiled Wonderland

Leave a comment

In Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, the ending is rather ambiguous. In class, we discussed a couple of different ideas, but eventually just agreed that it was intentionally left ambiguous; everyone could get something different from it. In this post, I’m going to share what I got from the ending of this book.

My own personal theory is that if the main character had joined his shadow in escaping the End of the World, he would have woken up in the real world and not been trapped in his own consciousness. The professor did not mention this possibility, because he only works in the realm of science. The thought that the main character could choose to leave the End of the World would not have occurred to him as a scientific possibility, because the human mind cannot be predicted scientifically. If the main character had made the decision to jump into the pool, he would have basically chosen to break free of the world his mind had created. However, I think we are supposed to realize that this actually isn’t possible, simply because the main character doesn’t have the willpower to leave the world that he created. As the shadow says, it is his own world, of course he thinks he cannot leave it.

Reflection, Uncategorized

Gender Relativity in “The Cure”

Leave a comment

We talked a lot about oppression – especially of Baby – in “The Cure” during class. However, I want to discuss the gender dynamic Kamani explores in the work. It seems pretty obvious that Baby lives in a highly patriarchal society, and that Dr. Doctor is a prime example of the power men have. First and foremost, Dr. Doctor sexually abuses Baby under the guise of medicine. Medicine gives Dr. Doctor an uninhibited authority that allows him to do such things – even  Baby’s mother, who is supposed to be her guardian, turns a blind eye to what Dr. Doctor does as he “extracts Baby’s bodily fluids” to cure her tallness. However, the gender dynamic becomes more interesting because Kamani seems to intentionally draw parallels between Dr. Doctor’s and Baby’s appearances. They are both tall and thin. However, Dr. Doctor’s tallness is an asset as it gives him authority as a doctor as he towers over all the other characters in the short story. Baby, on the other hand, is seen as “demonic” and deformed because of her tallness. Men and women in society are clearly held up to different standards and Baby’s tallness becomes the very thing that alienates her from society. There’s nothing physically unsound with Baby, but society treats her as if there is because she towers over others where she should be shorter than them. Not only are women expected to be socially inferior, but they are also expected to be physically shorter as well. I thought it was really interesting how Kamani weaved this into the story because it gives us a visualization of just how differently men and women are viewed.

Uncategorized

Major and Minor Characters in Breakfast of Champions

Leave a comment

It’s really interesting what Vonnegut does with all of his characters in Breakfast of Champions. Everyone in his novel gets their own “time in the limelight,” and gets to share parts of their backstory and perspective. This goes back to the ideas that Vonnegut expressed in his interview: he wanted his novel to be like a mythological story, and he wanted to abolish the distinction between major and minor characters. We are able to connect a little bit more with all of his characters because of the tidbits of personality we learn about them and, as a result, everyone becomes a major character. Or perhaps everybody becomes a minor character? When I read the book, I couldn’t really empathize much with any of the characters, including Kilgore and Dwayne, who the story revolved around the most. Even the omniscient and omnipotent narrator of the story didn’t have as much control over the path the novel was going down as I expected him to have. In a humorous ending to the book, the narrator was going to prove himself as Kilgore Trout’s maker and reveal all to him but was suddenly attacked Kazak the dog, who he claimed was originally the “main character” of the story. Although he eventually showed Trout his powers, it seems unusual that even the writer could not have anticipated everything that happened in the story. Just like in Trout’s story, it appears as though most of the characters in the novel are just machines that lack free will, and are unable to do anything outside of their programming. In the end, Vonnegut is calling into question whether or not we truly have free will through the carefully defined yet somewhat equal-in-power roles he has assigned to all the character machines in his novel.

-Sofia Yi

Uncategorized

Cut-Ups and Their Role in Nova Express

Leave a comment

Some of my cut-ups include:

  • “The peering this way and to a time machine would object was forcibly maintained by <<The La Baba,>> a wormhole just before it the lawsuit.”
  • “On one occasion the refusal to malshape of the oil jars in the back reaction only takes attached to Salim’s wall.”
  • “An example is air in General Stern travel: physicists have to Salim in the stomach, table expand, then a big nose and theory, both of which are at Bagram.”

The cut-up technique also plays an important role in Nova Express. Not only is it responsible for making some humorous paragraphs about insect people and the Gods that live in the cool spots of Venus, but it reflects the overall tone of the novel as well. Throughout their varied and slightly nonsensical journeys, the Nova Police appear to be fighting against corruption in governments and in societies. As a result, many of the themes of the book go back to control, or the lack thereof. I remember one passage in particular, about how negative thoughts are replayed over and over again until they eat you from the inside and you’re nothing but a shell of hatred and resentment. How much control do we really have over our minds? Perhaps the cut-up technique is also used to emphasize this idea of our lack of control; by piecing together random parts of other texts, Burroughs is basically relinquishing some of his control over the meaning and message of the novel and leaving it up to chance. However, as humans, we are still hard-wired to try to convince ourselves that there is some sort of meaning even when there isn’t. Do we lack control over our roles in society and merely try to convince ourselves that we don’t? Am I, at this very moment, also trying to find a deeper meaning in a text where there is none? Either way, we are ultimately left with a strange, semi-coherent amalgam of words that has the potential of being infinitely profound… or not.

-Sofia Yi

Reflection

The Cut-up Technique

Leave a comment

Popularized in art by the Dada movement and in literature by Anthony Burroughs, the Cut-up Technique involves physically splicing content from two or more sources to create a product. A variation of this technique is the Fold-in method, for which you take two sheets of text, cut them in half, and match the opposing halves of the different sheets together.

I thought it would be interesting to create a cut-up of some of the major works we have covered so far during our Postmodernism unit. To that end, here is a line from my cut-up containing elements from Nova Express, Breakfast of Champions, The Cure, and Biography of a Dress:

Nova Police. Yes I think we can quash this cocktail waitress here, this vertical band of light, I placed the wrapped and ribboned box of sweets (giving to me a false air of delicacy).

-Cara Baxter