Hard Boiled Wonderland and The End of The World: Things of Note

Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World: Things of Note

Enter my Hard Boiled Wonderland And The End Of The World: Things of Note, through page 65 of Murakami's novel, where I will be categorizing quotes that support my interpretation of Hard Boiled Wonderland’s themes on conformity/societal manipulation along with some vocab.

If you’d like to go in blind/spoiler free I’d recommend looking away, but you’re welcome to come along if you’d like.

Conformity/The Status Quo

“We do it that way,” he says, “and that is how it is. The same as the sun rising in the east and setting in the west,” (Murakami, 15).

“You just got here though. You get used to living here and things fall into place. You lose interest in them. Everybody does. Except for one week at the beginning of spring, (Murakami, 16).”

Murakami’s text in Hard Boiled Wonderland starts in the POV The End of the World with general and nonchalant statements that may go under the nose at first, but begins to pick up speed in more noticeable and peculiar ways in the second split/POV Hard Boiled Wonderland on pages 19 and 21, in which the main character procedes to interlude with “but no one was asking me” followed by a text in which the man accounts that, upon entering this world, he cannot hear the woman he meets:

“But no one was asking me ” (Murakami, 19)

“The woman said something but her lips moved too fast for me to make out” (Murakami, 19)

These themes are then interwoven into the setting of the Hard Boiled Wonderland, in which the narrator plunges deeper and deeper into the unknown with a professor and the man records himself becoming more and more helpless and without agency and the dangers, or one of them, of inklings (also meaning and linked to thought and perhaps even alludes to the ‘danger’ of free thinking in a world in which controllable bone languages (see quote from page 28 ) are on the brink):

“All at once I was plunged into darkness, literally, without a single pinprick of light. I couldn’t even make out my hand raised up to my face. I stood there dumbfounded, as if I’d been hit by a blunt object, overcome by the chilling realization of utter helplessness,” (Murakami, 21)

“Yessir and those inklings, in case you were wondering, aren’t the only ones,” (Murakami, 26)

Slipping into Societal Manipulation

Here, after dipping the reader’s toes into the water, the text begins to slowly introduce the reader to the deeper, darker side of conformity and, in the case of the following, borderline if not complete societal manipulation and brainwashing in which, after being introduced to a professor looking to control bone languages, the skull/bone structure (jaw) of interest is noted “as if suddenly frozen when about to speak” on page 59, looping us back to the unmute/mute woman and a recurring theme/usage of the inability to express and/or speak ones mind and the overarching reign for a wish for control by both the world and the professor with a conforming viewpoint from the main character perspective.

“Bones literally speak. Research I’m engaged in proposes t’decode that language. Then, to render it artificially controllable,” (Murakami, 28)

“An ordinary wall- until it opened. Tricks within tricks. The old man took out another folder and closed the wall. Resealed it looked like any other plain white wall. No distinguishing features or seams, nothing.” (Murakami, 30)

“The jutting jaw is left slightly open, as if suddenly frozen when about to speak” (Murakami, 59)

After the preceding, Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland POV delves deeper into these themes, going as far as to have the main character conclude that the mind is “nothing you use…you simply feel its movements,”, that he does “not know this thing called “mind” what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard”, and the minimization of new/different speech on page 64.

“To tell the truth, I do not know this thing called “mind” what it does or how to use it. It is only a word I have heard, (Murakami, 60)”

“The mind is nothing you use, the mind is just there. It is like wind. You simply feel its movements,” (Murakami, 60)

“’…are you also speaking of something in you?’… ‘Simple statement” not used to your way of speaking” (Murakami, 64)

Vocab

Pg. 27

Gumption

gump-tion / noun / “Shrewd or spirited initiative and resourcefulness” (Oxford Languages Definitions)

Pg. 33

Conglomerate

con-glom-er-ate / noun / “a number of different things or parts that are put or grouped together to form a whole but remain distinct entities”

geological: “a coarse-grained sedimentary rock composed of rounded fragments (>2mm) within a matrix of finer grained material,” (Oxford Language Definitions)

Pg. 52

Caliper

Cal-i-per / noun / “an instrument for measuring external or internal dimensions, having two hinged legs resembling a pair of compasses and in-turned or out-turned points” (Oxford Language Definitions)

Pg. 58

Amorphous

a-mor-phous / adjective / “Without a clearly defined shape or form” (Oxford Definitions)

Pg. 65

Nexus

Nex-us / noun / “A connection or series of connections between two or more things,” (Oxford Definitions)

Quoted text from Hard Boiled Wonderland by Haruki Murakami and Oxford Language Definitions, others as noted otherwise.

Flourishes (not including definitions or the sort) and add-ons are my interpretations and creativity with the text at hand.