Blind Willow Sleeping Woman Essay

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Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman Murakami makes use of isolation as a satire of the decay of Japanese individual identity after World War II. His characters are emotionally isolated and feelings of unfulfillment in their lives cause them to search for a reason for their lives. After World War II, the idea of individualism was counteracted with fascism, which places a race, ethnic group, or state before the individual, and communism, which places economic class first and advocates the supremacy of the working class. Instead of advocating the idea of individuality, conformity was promoted. Murakami argues against this idea of conformity through Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman. He shows this post-WWII generation as alone and troubled. In response, he promotes individualism by showing what is possible when individuality and life thrives in a person. The characters in Murakami’s Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman are often isolated and driven by their loneliness to find a purpose in their lives. For example, …show more content…

After World War II, individualism began to die down and societal norm became more important. For example, in Man Eating Cats when the narrator lived a mundane day to day life in which he was not particularly happy or sad about. When he met Izumi, “something clicked” (117) and he no longer felt alone and began to look optimistically about life. However, his relationship with Izumi had destroyed his connection to his family and society because “nothing left to link me to my own life- just Izumi” (121). He depended on her to give him meaning which eventually kills him mentally when Izumi had left him, leaving him with nothing left in his life. Ultimately, the narrator lost himself in the process of finding meaning in his life, which then became his downfall in the end. Although he did not physically die, there are ways of dying that “don't end in funerals, types of death you can’t smell”

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