What is the shadow

Since I have read Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World in addition to The City and Its Uncertain Walls, I became very curious about what the shadow, a symbol that carries enormous weight in both novels, actually represents.

In Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the shadow is explicitly linked to human emotion, or more precisely, to the capacity for love. Both novels share a crucial detail: the protagonist never fully loses his shadow. It is taken away, yes, but it continues to exist under the Gatekeeper's custody rather than dying. This incomplete separation is what allows the narrator to fall in love with the library girl. The girl, on the other hand, has no shadow at all, which means she has no access to that emotional register and cannot perceive his feelings for her.

Hard-Boiled Wonderland adds another layer through the forest outside the Town. People who have not been fully stripped of their shadows are driven out to live there, including the girl's mother. When the narrator enters the forest, he finds far fewer residents than he expected. This detail, read alongside the frozen clock on the tower, suggests something important. Inside the Town, time has stopped entirely. But the forest's shrinking population implies that time there continues to move forward. The conclusion seems to be: people who still have their shadows exist within flowing time, while those without shadows are frozen, outside of time altogether.

This leads me to argue that the shadow is not a secondary attachment to the self. It is the self, or at least the core of personhood. The residents of the Town possess people's appearance, voice, habits, and manner of speaking, but they carry none of their interiority. They are physical replicas without a soul. The shadow, meanwhile, desperately wants to escape, while the narrator's physical body is strangely content to remain. That tension, I think, is the clearest evidence of all: if the body wants to stay and the shadow wants to leave, it is the shadow that is doing the wanting.

Boran

The Tangible World and an Illusion

 In class we discussed the concept of the main body and shadow, and the origin of the town. Regardless of whether the narrator is the shadow or the real body, it seems that the protagonist is more interested in meeting the version of the girl in the town, while being attached to her shadow (as she claims)—the part of her outside. Although he frequently exchanges letters with the girl, he is always thinking about the town. I think this dynamic with the girl and the town is like other stories about real life vs. a dream/ideal world. The colorful descriptions at the beginning of the novel and the nuance of their conversations should be better than the cold, ritualistic life in the town, yet he decides to stay in the town. This may be partly due to the girl outside disappearing, which would make him search for a secondary source of happiness. He clings to her 16-year old image. I think it’s also possible that both of them simply believe the town is more important to them than the real world, the girl becoming depressed, and the protagonist constantly searching for the “real” part of her. When reading these chapters I had the idea of a “good ending”—his moving on and searching for meaning in the outside world. However, he continues to hold on to his past, and his shadow comments that there is something unsettling about the town. I think whether intentional or not, the novel brings forth a theme of cherishing reality, which the genre of magical realism or surrealism draws us away from. It’s worth considering this while rooting for the narrator.

River

The City and Its Uncertain Walls -- a kind of Neverland?

 This is just a small observation, and I'm not sure if there's anything to it, but certain details about the other town in The City and Its Uncertain Walls bear some resemblance to Neverland in Peter Pan. For the record, I've never read the book by J.M. Barrie so this is based on my knowledge of the Disney movie. 

In the film, Peter Pan's reason for coming to the ordinary world of London is that his shadow has run away from him, and once he captures it Wendy sews it back onto him. Although its plot involvement goes no further, Peter Pan is the only other story I can think of that involves treating a shadow like an individual separate from the self which has the ability to attach to/detach from the body. Peter's shadow showcases how he -- and Neverland -- operate differently from the ordinary world. The shadows in The City and Its Uncertain Walls serve this purpose as well. Furthermore, as we discussed in class, it's hard to tell which self (shadow or "real") is the actual self, and which is a sidekick of sorts. In Peter Pan, even though Peter is clearly meant to be seen as the "real" self and the shadow just a mute, faceless version of himself, it's interesting that both shadow selves depicted by Murakami and Barrie/Disney are able to survive on their own, at least to some extent.

The other detail that struck me as similar between the two stories is the sense of being hearkened to by the "other" world's dream-like promises but having restrictions placed on the ability to pass between worlds. Wendy and her brothers gladly allow Peter to whisk them away to Neverland, but as time goes on they begin to miss the world they left behind. Peter informs them that they may leave if they like, but if they do so they can never come back. The draw of adventure and being able to stay young forever is appealing to Wendy's brothers John and Michael, but Wendy realizes that she doesn't want to sacrifice everything she has back home to essentially live in a dream. Eventually, she convinces her brothers to return home, and the adventure ends. The City and Its Uncertain Walls' Boku is entranced with the thought of meeting the "real" version of his girlfriend in the other town, giving up his old life entirely, along with his shadow to access it -- with the knowledge that he cannot leave. He becomes so absorbed into the town, however, that even when offered a solid chance at escape from it after realizing the version of his girlfriend within the town isn't the same as outside of it, he is willing to remain there just for the chance of finding a memory in the library from the girl. 

Side note: time also seems to slow down/not really exist in the other town, which is similar to how Neverland keeps its inhabitants from aging.

All things considered, even if inspiration wasn't drawn from Peter Pan,  the other town serves as a sort of personal Neverland for Boku where he has the promise of being able to exist permanently within the happiest memories of his youth... and we see him do this when he finally discovers the dream where he and his girlfriend walk on the beach, having become young again.

 

Sloane 

Reading Murakami

I just finished reading The Strange Library, and it made me reflect on my process of reading Murakami. His stories are so outlandish to me that they sometimes feel inaccessible. Any attempt I make at interpreting what a certain symbol means ends up futile – that’s how I felt reading A Wild Sheep Chase, too. I’m not exactly sure what to make of this…

One thing Murakami does capture very well for me, though, is the whole first love and heartbreak thing. Reading Norwegian Wood and now The City and Its Uncertain Walls (to a lesser extent) makes me think back to high school in a way that is nostalgic but also uncomfortable. For me, reading Murakami tends to stir up more bad memories than good ones when the story really resonates. I find it interesting that others have a sort of therapeutic response to reading Murakami, because it feels the opposite for me. That being said…I did kind of get that feeling for a moment reading “The Ice Man,” which has been my favorite Murakami story by far. It immediately made me think of “ice men” that I had met before; there was something very real about it that I could relate to my life. In this story, Murakami captured a type of loneliness that I could understand, whereas the alienation he portrays in his novels usually feels more distinctly masculine. While Murakami's stories don't all get through to me in a way that feels satisfying, there are sometimes when I'm surprised how well he captures a feeling or idea I can relate to.

Juliet

The Meanings of the Shadows

 I kept thinking about the meaning behind the shadows after class today, and I'm not sure if I'm entirely correct, but here are just my two cents. The shadows are the real selves, because they represent confronting the world with all its suffering, including old age, death, loss, sadness, and pain. The residents of the other world are ghosts, besides the protagonist. The protagonist created the world with his vivid imagination, based on his dead girlfriend's descriptions of the walled city, but the world's powers eventually grew beyond him, attracting the real ghosts of spirits, including that of his girlfriend. In that way, the protagonist is somehow supernaturally gifted, or this is all just in his head.

The ghosts still retain some semblance of memory or personality because it's impossible to be completely rid of those vestiges of emotions. However, they are all trapped in this walled city, which resembles some kind of limbo or purgatory, because they all have things they fear and are avoidant of, such as the old man's experience of seeing the other side of the beautiful ghost's face in the hot spring hotel. The walled city seems to be a conscious entity in and of itself, as it actively prevents the residents from ever leaving and seeks to maintain its equilibrium through the deaths of the beasts. What would happen if one of the residents, supposing they escaped through the whirlpool, reached the outside world? Well, because characters like the dead girlfriend are definitely dead, supposing she was not a completely fictional person created by Boku, I would imagine she would reunite with her shadow and move on to the afterlife. Regarding the transition from when the shadow jumped into the pool to when Boku finds himself working at a library, to me, Boku has never physically left the "real world." Although in Murakami, what happens in the "other" world always shows its signs in the real world, such as when it starts raining fish in Shibuya in Kafka on the Shore, there seems to be a divide between the real and the other world. Likewise, the events of Hardboiled Wonderland occurred while the protagonist's real body stayed in a coma. So I'm guessing we are viewing things from the shadow's perspective when he returns to the library, and the part of the soul of the protagonist that decides to stay in the walled city is still there. Because Boku is now divided and incomplete, missing a part of his soul, he becomes like a semi-ghost, and his presence now goes unnoticed by many others.

The Lost Love of Boku (or Murakami)

After reading so much Murakami back-to-back, I can’t help but start to play detective. I am truly desperate to understand the ultimate story behind the “missing girl” or “lost girl” that plagues so many Murakami stories: Sputnik Sweetheart, Norwegian Wood, The City and its Uncertain Walls, South of the Border, West of the Sun to name a few. In a strangely transparent afterword in The City and its Uncertain Walls, Murakami states, citing Borges, 

 

“there are basically a limited number of stories one writer can seriously relate in his lifetime. All we do– I think it's fair to say– is take that limited palette of motifs, change the approach and methods as we go, and rewrite them in all sorts of ways.” 

 

With that, I find it overwhelmingly interesting that one of these motifs is a lost love or searching for a lost love (in some ways we can see that in 1Q84 as well, though the main female character is not actually lost). I can’t help but wonder what it is about this specific idea/ concept that Murakami feels so drawn to, that it appears in so much of his work. Lots of short stories from, Men Without Women also document, not lost loves in the literal sense, but rather, the emotions and confusion that accompany losing the person that you love. 

 

I want to understand this motif, this role, this girl. What happened to her? In different novels, in different forms, she had either died or disappeared without a trace. Is the basis for Naoko the same for Sumire or Shimamoto? I can’t help but assume the “real” or complete story is buried within these stories (I am positive I am missing some as well since I have not read all of Murakami’s novels). Even in The Strange Library, there is still a mystical, beautiful girl left behind as well. It seems there is really something Murakami is trying to work out, or communicate in bits and pieces, and I would love to put it all together. I am not sure if it’s ethical to speculate about the artist based on the art, but I do find myself wondering how all of these works fit together. 

 

Thinking about how this motif has evolved over time, generally, it feels so interesting that in Murakami’s latest works, The City and its Uncertain Walls, the lost girl is barely mentioned. The entire first part is dedicated to describing their relationship, and how the city itself is integral to the connection between them. In part two and three the relationship is put on the back burner (by design it feels like) and instead we focus on the characters of another town (a real town), and then the journey back to the fictional town with the company of a boy from the real world. But upon finishing the novel, there is little to no resolution on what I thought would be a more central conflict. There is less resolution than the normal resolutions in Murakami novels, where although the ending is not explained, there is some sort of finality/message to take away from the story.  For me, it felt like the reader needed to understand the general mechanics of the “lost love” motif for The City and its Uncertain Walls to make sense. There was a certain intertextuality needed here– once again, like this was a piece in a larger story Murakami wants to convey. Not sure if that’s how anyone else felt. 

 

-Isabella

Thoughts on Recent Readings

 First, about City and Its Uncertain Walls, the symbolism of the shadowless city can be interpreted in many ways. As we discussed in class, I believe the shadow represents the ego and repressed emotions of a human. In Murakami's Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the shadow symbolizes a similar meaning. When the characters in both story are separated from their shadows, they loses their emotions and become almost robotic. There is the saying that a root cause of depression is being stuck in the past, unable to live in the moment, whether it was a mistake or just painful memories. Thus, emotions and memories are intertwined. This could be an explanation as to why people in inside the walls don't have their memories. For them to be relieved of their pain and negative emotions, it also means giving up their memories. This raises the philosophical question of "can we experiencing happinese without knowing sadness? and vice-versa. 

Regarding Solaris, this story struck me as disturbing. It is already terrifying to be in space with almost no other humans around. Then, the protagonist hears about a friend who just committed suicide and his late wife shows up. This is surreal. In many of Murakami's writing, his characters are stuck in the past and are lost because of some sort of trauma or lost. As a result of this, many commits suicide. The protagonist in Solaris falls into a similar temptation with his late wife showing up, and so there is a similar theme of one's past controlling the person. In particular, this is true for Murakami's character like Toro.