Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

In this post, I will not be dwelling upon the story, summary or the analysis of the characters, but upon the impression this book had on me and how it kept changing with every few chapters.

The title of the book is definitely weird. It made me wonder why Murakami chose such a long title and one that does not seem complete. The two parts “Hard-boiled wonderland” and “End of the World” do not complement each other either. This was before I began reading the book. Subsequently it was clear that he has two storylines and he has used separate titles for each of them.

“Hard-boiled” as I understand is a genre of crime fiction which is tough and unsentimental. Hard-boiled fiction used graphic sex and violence, vivid but often sordid urban backgrounds, and fast-paced, slangy dialogue.

Murakami’s “Wonderland” shares several characteristics with this genre of fiction. The characters are cold. No one is related, no one seems to care much about other’s personal lives. They have no names which shows a high degree of anonymity. The characters feel like different regions of a megalopolis – several disconnected areas joined by a common thread. They do not care what happens in the lives of others. When the chubby girl calls the Calcutec about her grandfather, he outright denies to help her. He is tough and unsentimental. The setting is urban, in fact, its hard core science fiction which makes the setting further utopian, justifying the “Wonderland.”

The second title “End of the World,” in my opinion, refers to a dead end. The Town is strict about people leaving their shadow behind. It gives a sense of alienation. The conscious seem to have detached itself from the unconscious world and from the words of the librarian, the gatekeeper and the Colonel that there is no turning back from this world. The narrator of both the storyline is same and the narrator has last his identity in the second one. He is a dream reader but with no dream of his own. His job is to read other people’s dreams. He has no idea of his past life or how he turned up in that world. Even if he escapes the town, where will he go? Will he meet anyone who he would like to spend his rest of the life with? What would the rest of his life look like if he escapes the town and forgoes the job of a dream reader? From the look of it, this life seems like his last escapade.

Murakami’s style and subject choice is fascinating. I like how his narration seems conversational and yet packs huge chuck of information.

His narration starts with description of the surroundings of any character of the story and turn into stream of consciousness narration in several chapters.

In the first chapter we see the narrator in an elevator, almost suffocated by the soundless, seemingly motionless surrounding. He begins with narrating his doubt if he is actually moving, but soon he discusses how he counts the coins in his pockets, relates it the function to left and right hemisphere of his brain and then jumps over to discussing how earth is like a giant coffee table as well as the effects of gravity on our existence. Then, as if the narrator realises that he was talking about the counting the coins in the elevator, he jumps back to the topic without notice.

When the narrator gets off the elevator, he meets the chubby girl in pink and her description takes us on trip to the narrator’s choice of women, his sex drive, and then back to the girl. When he reaches the empty room, his gives us a glimpse of the surrounding and soon explains how he judges a person by what kind of sofa they keep (car not sofa), and why sofas are good at knowing more about people who own them.

The narrator seems to live in two worlds in the same storyline – the present (where he meets people – the girl, her grandfather, the librarian) and one that exists in his mind. His meetings and acquaintance in the present connect us with the narrator’s mental world where he talks about several related and absolutely unrelated topics and these discussions helps us know more about the narrator.

I have read Mrs Dalloway and Portrait of Artist, which use the concept predominantly but Murakami’s world is different. His stream of consciousness at times has nothing to do with what the narrator is actually experiencing. The discussions are seem absolutely random unless the reader looks at the bigger picture.

What’s fascinating is how does Murakami comes up with which dis-connected topics to link.

So we know that Hard-Boiled Wonderland is the narrator’s conscious life (which is a great work of Murakami’s imagination – the science fiction, the Calcutec, Inklings are all excellent examples of his diverse imagination especially in the context of 1985 when tech was not what it is today). The End of the World part is the narrator’s subconscious world. However, in my opinion it is not the end of the world only because the narrator in living in his subconscious (which is definitely a sad event). The world spells disaster for the narrator’s individuality because that “subconscious world” he is living in was actually designed by someone else.

From the explanation we understand that the scientist called the Calcutec on the pretext of doing some secret assignment and actually used him as a lab rat. He took pieces of narrator’s memories and joined them according to his understanding. So when the switch from the conscious to the subconscious world happens, the narrators ends up in a “fake” subconscious and that makes the narrator even more miserable.

In my opinion, Murakami wanted to explore the doomed effect of someone else’s manipulation of our subconscious. I would like to explain this with the help of an example. Suppose A asks B how they looked in a certain dress and B replies “fat and ugly.” Thus, A’s image in their subconscious changes. It doesn’t matter what A thought of themselves earlier, now whenever A looks in the mirror, all they imagine is a fat and ugly person. This disturbs A’s subconscious, which has been manipulated by B’s words.

When A begins to constantly think of the undesirable image, they go crazy. Their self-confidence shatters, because someone else maneuvered their self-image at the subconscious level. Excessive dwelling in that thought would definitely lead A to the end of a “happy and satisfied” world.

However, the story leaves me with several questions. What happens at the “end” of the End of the World?

When we are alive, we know that death would be the end. People believe or do not believe in afterlife as per their choice, but what happens when we live in the sub-consciousness? Where is the end? Where does that life or the abstract presence leads us? Will the light ever extinguish? And finally, what do we live for if we have forever to live? Imagine a world that never ends and we have unending time to fulfil our desires – would the desires mean the same?

Would the narrator’s existence have any meaning if all he had to do is read someone else’s dreams every day?

There is another theme that comes to mind upon finishing the book.

The narrator upon realising that he has less than twenty-four hours to live is extremely angry at first – which is absolutely understandable. He does not want to forgive the scientist. He is angrier to know that the granddaughter knew about this all along. However, by the end we see him coming to terms with the idea of losing his conscious self. He drinks, listens to music, and goes to a park to experience humanity.

In the second part, the narrator finds his shadow, escapes town but ultimately decides to let his shadow die. He wants to go back to the town and live with the librarian, reading dreams. In a sense, he has come to terms with his existence in the strange world of his sub-conscious.

Here, Murakami dwells with the idea of peace that comes with “letting go.” Holding grudges, trying to change the tide of times is tiring. We have all experienced days when despite our best efforts, we fail. In those moments, letting go, accepting life as it comes is the only solution and the way to find peace with ourselves. I find that it is what the narrator does in both parts. He lets go of the anger, the desire to escape destiny, the anxiety to fight his future and embraces what is in front of him. He accepts that his life is going to flow in a certain direction, and in my opinion, that makes things easier for him.

Be it losing himself to his sub-conscious or losing his shadow to be tied down to the strange Town – both ideas although bizarre, become bearable because the narrator decides to “let go.”