Question

THE ELEPHANT VANISHES怎么样

Answer 1

In his anthology The Elephant Vanishes, Haruki Murakami creates a series of short stories with bizarre plots and perplexing logic. By analyzing Murakami’s whimsical, obscure metaphors such like Sandman, Kangaroos and separate identities along with other images and details in The Kangaroo Communiqué, this paper is going to explore the non-linear and unconventional style of Murakami’s narrative and show how he expresses the ubiquitous and everlasting theme-loneliness in his writing, based on my own interpretation of The Kangaroo Communiqué. The Kangaroo Communiqué is a department store clerk’s personal reply in voice record to an unnamed female customer’s letter of complaint. The reason why he decides to reply to her personally is because “thirty-six intricate procedural steps, followed one by one in just the right order, led me from the kangaroos to you.” (Haruki Murakami, 53) The reason sounds strange and he does not explain the thirty-six procedural steps in any detail. However, what is more strange is that his thought wanders from kangaroos to thirty-six procedural steps to his job details to his impulse of writing a personal letter to the Nobility of Imperfection to sexual excitement and finally to a wish for separate existence, which specifically means “exist in two places simultaneously.” (Murakami, 64) With tons of seemingly irrelevant details interposing upon each other, the clerk talks about himself as his imagination roams and raises up unique perspectives, such like comparing the differences between people to “the curvature of the semicircular canals of your ears having the edge over somebody else’s.” (Murakami, 58). In fact, the clerk names the letter “kangaroo communiqué” simply because it is a “catchy name” and it “makes you think of kangaroos bounding off across the vast plains, pouches stuffed full of mail.” (Murakami, 57) The name, without any clear rational connection to the rest of the story, merely comes from a whimsical image that appeals to him. Therefore, the clerk’s narrative in this short novel is random and seemingly illogical, wandering around with the currents of imagination. What stand out from this “nonsensical” narrative style are two major effects. First, this creative form of narration represents the clerk’s exploration for a new way of living. By combining and piling up a series of images and details randomly, like an impromptu artwork, the clerk intends to breaks all social norms through his narration in which he seeks for a final solution to his irreconcilable reality, namely his incapability of transcending mundane routines and trivialities. Second, the content of his narration is like a jigsaw puzzle, and readers need to pick up the scattered pictures each serving as a symbol for his inner feelings like loneliness and isolation. These two effects are evident in his use of some metaphors such like “Sandman”, “kangaroos” and intention to “sleep with the female customer”. The clerk makes up a bizarre Sandman story because whenever he tells someone something funny and it falls flat, he feels himself like the Egyptian Sandman. “Now, this Sandman, everything he touches turns into sand. Breezes turn into sandstorms, babbling brooks turn into dunes, grassy plains turn into deserts. Anyway, talking to you like this, I get the feeling I’ve become the Egyptian Sandman myself. And whatever I touch, it’s sand sand sand.” (Murakami, 59) On the one hand, realizing that his sense of humor and dramatic imagination futile and incomprehensible to other people, he compares himself to the Sandman whose rambling talking is like the sand that never stays on people’s heart or forms solid entity. He is like the Sandman who was “sent off into the deepest jungle” and got raised by “wolves or monkeys” (Murakami, 59), lonely and isolated in the world in which no one understands the other. The clerk also uses the image of kangaroos to express a weariness and dissatisfaction of his tedious, repetitive life. “The whole lot of them, jumping around in their cage all day long, digging holes now and again. And then what do they do with these holes? Nothing. They dig them and that’s it.”“If she’s not pregnant, she’s nursing babies; if she’s not nursing babies, she’s pregnant. You could say she exists just to ensure the continuance of the species.” (Murakami, 64) Though the clerk does not explicitly link this metaphor of kangaroos to himself, it is easy to tell that his monotonous life at the department store is like that of the kangaroos who repetitively dig holes, because he directs to his own problem immediately after presenting the kangaroo story: “Actually, I’m extremely dissatisfied with being who I am. It’s nothing to do with my looks or abilities or status or any of that. It simply has to do with being me.” (Murakami, 64) In this way the clerk throws a philosophical problem that challenges his assumed identity. He is tired of this dutiful form of existence and implicitly longs for a new way of living rather than conform to the mechanical life routines like those of the female kangaroos whose meaning of existence is solely to multiply and sustain the continuation of species. These symbols, along with the clerk’s verbosity in first person, serve as the language tool for him to question the purpose of mechanical existence and express an overwhelming loneliness lives as he keeps ranting to himself. Therefore, sleeping with the woman serves as a symbol of transcending social norms and gaining separate entities that exist simultaneously. “I want to sleep with you and be sleeping with my girlfriend all the while. I want to lead a general existence and yet be a distinct, separate entity.” (Murakami, 65) This simultaneity symbolizes emancipation and transcendence of the perceived reality of tediousness and conventionality, yet a reservation of his original everyday identity. Finally, though it’s worthwhile to analyze the metaphors and techniques of Murakami’s short story, his writing more or less leaves the reader a subtle, vague impression of his idea that is better to experience with heart than to dissect explicitly, because his witty monologue, implicit narrative and imaginative metaphors are all working to create an abstract world with ineffable beauty that might be destroyed by linear analytical dissection. Therefore, rather than a careful, noncreative way to express his questioning of human existence and exploration of the loneliness of modern humans, Murakami employs this unique and puzzling narrative to represent his own way of confronting the deadpan and routinistic world with vigorous imagination. His writing presents him as both a sophisticated thinker and a creative child craving surrealism, who playfully carves his artwork of language with whimsical design and throw out thought-provoking challenges to social norms and stereotypical lifestyle that are probably ignored by busy people immersing in their endless daily tasks.