J314 FINAL PAPER TOPIC

Due Monday December 12

3:00 p.m.

Genuine--authentic, true, real, pure, natural, sincere, easrnest...[I]n his present state, Bird thought, none of those meanings came even near to applying to him. A Personal Matter, Ch. 7.

No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive.

That is what makes the life I have now possible.

Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that.

                                                                               Kitchen , pp. 59-60

Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing directions....This storm is you. Something inside of you...And you will really have to make it through that violent, metaphysical, symbolic storm. No matter how metaphysical or symbolic it might be, make no mistake about it; it will cut through flesh like a thousand razor blades. People will bleed there, and you will bleed there.   Hot, red blood. You'll catch that blood in your hands, your own blood, and the blood of others...But one thing is certain.   When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about.

Kafka on the Shore , pp. 5-6

Murakami's fiction claims what the enlightened of every era and country have always claimed: existence is fleeting; certainty is illusory; thought is stranger than you can think; reality is a running compromise; the self is a house on fire, so get out while you can....Real or surreal, global or local, familiar or strange: Murakami's fiction knows that all of these worlds are affirmed or rejected entirely inside the theater of the brain. Such an embrace of the ultimate neural nature of all experience might easily collapse into self-absorption, as it threatens to do in the extremes of conventional and postmodern fiction that flank Murakami's work. We would each of us be locked inside a sealed and unknowable simulation of self, were it not for the truth that globalization, neuroscience, and Murakami's fiction have all simultaneously hit upon: there is no self unto itself. The private life is always a propagating conversation, always mirroring of something far larger than it can ever formulate.

From Richard Powers' essay on Murakami's fiction as a "Neurological Soul-Sharing Picture Show"

 

 

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Kafka--and Hoshino and Nakata as well, for that matter--are all on a journey, they a are part of a quest fueled by a desire to probe memory, the past, and discover his own identity. Kafka seeks self-understanding and the knowledge of how to live in the world. To what extent do you think these characters change their lives or even change who they are? Nakata is an older person, but Kafka is young and still in the process of becoming. He must go through his metaphorical and symbolic "sandstorm" and come out a different person.   As John Updike writes of Kafka and Nakata in his review of Kafka on the Shore, "The novel’s two heroes interact only in the realm of kami. Of their entwined narratives, the story of Kafka Tamura is more problematic, more curiously overloaded, than that of the holy fool Nakata, with its familiar elements of science fiction, quest, and ebullient heroics...." Kafka has many encounters in the novel, reads voraciously, sees ghosts and experiences psychic projections, but, in the end, somehow, he learns to conquer his demons and live in a world that is brand new to him. So, Kafka goes through his personal sandstorm, succeeds in becoming the "toughest 15 year old on the planet," and will apparently learn about life by "look[ing] at the painting" of Kafka on the Shore and "listen[ing] to the wind."

Bird, in A Personal Matter, is also young and not fully formed, but he is confronted with a personal crisis that puts all other issues into perspective for him. His initial response to the birth of a brain-damaged child is to descend into a kind of nightmarish hell. He experiences fear, shame, a sense of inadequacy, a feeling of worthlessness and a tortured ambivalence about his "damaged" child and about becoming a father. He wants to do nothing more than run away, to escape. What does he learn about himself along the way? How does he change? Is his transformation naything like Tamura Kafka's?

Yoshimoto Banana's characters--Mikage in Kitchen and Satsuki in "Moonlight Shadow"--are also young and must confront death and loss, and find ways to come to terms with them.  Mikage, especially, needs to find a new family or something to anchor her in the world after her grandmother--and later, Eriko--dies.

For your final paper, write an essay that discusses the nature of the dilemmas confronted by one or more of the characters from Murakami's Kafka on the Shore, Oe's A Personal Matter, or Yoshimoto Banana's Kitchen and Moonlight Shadow. You do not necessarily have to focus on all of these characters or texts; you can focus on one and perhaps use another to highlight differences or similarities.

How did these characters try to resolve their issues or to reconcile themselves to their situation?   What did they learn? In what was their new understanding rooted? Bird realized at a turning point in the novel that everything he was so eager to defend amounted to a big zero, nothing, which seems to free him up, while Kafka experienced a void in himself that seems to be expanding, devouring what is left of his self. Mikage seeks comfort and solace, to be sure, but also wants to learn how to be productive and happy, to be able to work and love. Maybe.

So, do these characters find meaning in their lives or experiences?   What lessons about life do the various characters learn in the course of these narratives? For example, what sort of process of self-reflection and self-discovery does Bird undergo before he is able to take responsibility for his son?   What has become his desire to escape to Africa? What role do the ideas like Hope and Forbearance ( nintai ) play in this text? How does Mikage come to terms with her Grandmother's and later Eriko's death? In what ways does Kafka Tamura grow and change in the course of Murakami's novel?   What lessons has he learned?   Or is this even the right question? Maybe we should ask what kind of reality have Murakami's characters experienced? Does Murakami's fiction open any doors for you? What, if any, are the lessons we can take from these works of fiction?