Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

“I close my eyes and let the gentle tones spread through me. They are like none other. Navigating the darkling streets like a pale transparent fish.”

Here, the narrator describes the sound of the Gatekeeper’s horn that calls the beasts at the end of the world. The sensory details are almost synesthesia, or a crossing of senses. In other words, sound is described using another sense: the imagery of a swimming fish. This imagery also foreshadows the fish god of the INKlings, which is artistically rendered around the underground sanctuary where the Professor is aided by his granddaughter and the narrator. 

“Everyone may be ordinary, but they’re not normal.”

This is a piece of dialogue from the Professor’s granddaughter to the narrator, after he asserts that Calcutecs are “normal ordinary people” (54). This foreshadows the difference between how the narrator views himself and how other people view him. While he considers himself normal and ordinary, other people—like the Professor and his granddaughter—know that the narrator is unique in that he is the only Calcutec to survive the shuffling surgery. Also, this statement questions the concept of normalcy in general.

“The mind is nothing you use [...] The mind is just there. It is like the wind. You simply feel its movement.”

Here, the narrator at the end of the world tries to explain what it is like to have a mind to the Librarian. She thinks the mind is something that you use sometimes, like exercising a muscle, but the narrator explains that the mind works without you being aware of all its operations. Later in the novel, this concept is referred to as the elephant factory.

“Having a drink in bed while listening to music and reading a book. As precious to me as a beautiful sunset or good clean air.”

This is an example of what the hard-boiled narrator values before his life is in jeopardy. After talking with the Professor and learning that he only has hours to live, the narrator has to decide what about life is most important—what he wants to do with the time he has remaining. What he returns to are the simple pleasures discussed in this early chapter: reading, drinking, and listening to music.

“I was just your practical-minded, lone-wolf Calcutec. I wasn’t overly ambitious, wasn’t greedy. Didn’t have family, friends, or lovers. I saved my money.”

This description of the hard-boiled narrator categorizes him as part of the detective fiction and film noir genres. Most protagonists in these genres lack strong interpersonal connections and work on the fringes of government organizations.

“Despite the meddling and the raised eyebrows at the System, I know of no line of work that allows the individual as much freedom to exercise his abilities as being a Calcutec.”

The concept of freedom comes up many times in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Generally, birds are used to symbolize freedom, but in this passage, the hard-boiled narrator explains that he chose his profession because it seemed to offer the most freedom. However, the shuffling surgery that was part of his employment ends up trapping the narrator in his mind rather than giving him the kind of freedom (retirement) he originally desired.

“‘If Grandfather’s research got out now, it’d be the end of the world.’ ‘The end of the world?’”

In this passage, the Professor’s granddaughter uses the titular phrase “end of the world” in an ambiguous way, and the narrator repeats the phrase. Before this moment, the hard-boiled narrator has referred to this phrase as his shuffling password, and the narrator in the even numbered chapters had been informed that “the end of the world” is where he is located. While the Professor left the System because he feared his research falling into the wrong hands, the “end of the world” here refers to the program he inserted into the narrator’s mind that will cause him to be trapped in his unconscious forever.

“Looking around at the assortment of debris around me, I was reminded of a near-future world turned wasteland buried deep in its own garbage. A science fiction novel I’d read.”

Murakami’s novel contains a motif of referencing other books, including many specific authors and titles. This is a more vague allusion that could reference Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick. In that science fiction novel, kipple is the debris that buries the inhabitants of the remains of the San Francisco Bay Area. The narrator often understands himself and his world through the books he reads.

“I have a mind and she does not. Love her as I might, the vessel will remain empty. Is that right?”

This passage is part of a discussion between the narrator and the Colonel about the Librarian at the end of the world. The narrator still retains some part of his mind while his shadow is still alive; however, the Librarian’s shadow is dead, and she believes she has no mind. This foreshadows how the narrator’s love for the Librarian causes him to seek out pieces of her mind and stay in the end of the world, even after helping his shadow escape.

“Kindness and a caring mind are two separate qualities. Kindness is manners. It is superficial custom, an acquired practice. Not so the mind. The mind is deeper, stronger, and, I believe, it is far more inconsistent.”

This is also part of the conversation between the narrator and the Colonel about love and the mind. The narrator notes that the people of the Town are kind to one another, but the Colonel clarifies that their behavior is learned social interaction rather than something that springs from love—a caring mind. Behavior, or customs, can be maintained without any emotion behind them.

“Why was I getting so excited over two lousy bracelets? Especially under this slicker, with the world about to end.”

In this passage, the hard-boiled narrator fantasizes about the bracelets worn by a woman he saw in a car while traversing the underground. His masculine identity was threatened by his inability to perform sexually with the librarian earlier in the novel, and the arousal he experiences during this fantasy foreshadows his ability to pleasure the librarian later in the novel. However, being aroused near INKlings while trying to save the Professor with his teenage granddaughter, is not ideal.

“Two fishes in a circle, each with the other’s tail in its mouth. Their heads swelled into aeroplane cowlings, and where their eyes should have been, two long tendril-like feelers sprouted out. Their mouths were much too large for the rest of their bodies, slit back almost to the gills, beneath which were fleshy organs resembling severed animal limbs. On each of these appendages were three claws. Claws? The dorsal fins were shaped like tongues of flames, the scales rasped out like thorns.”

In this passage, the narrator views a bas-relief depiction of the god of the INKlings. The bulbous head, wide mouth, and probing barbels (tendrils) evoke the image of a mythological Japanese catfish monster known as a Namazu, who causes earthquakes. Like the INKlings, the Namazu is only vaguely alluded to, contributing to the noir aesthetic of the dangerously unknown at the same time as it draws on traditional Japanese mythology.

“I look behind me to find the moon hovering half-obscured over the Clocktower, the heavens boiling thick with cloud matter. In the less than lunar light, the River recedes black as tar.”

This passage is one of the pastoral scenes (scenes that glorifies the rural) in the end of the world. While it is a space that only exists in the narrator’s unconscious, there are many natural elements present. Murakami also uses many metaphors and similes throughout the novel; this quote contains both types of literary device to create this scene of magical realism.

“My shadow stays on screen, a figure in the distance, unsteady through the shimmering heat. The shadow cannot speak, knows no sign language, is helpless, like me. The shadow knows I am sitting here, watching. The shadow is trying to tell me something.”

This is an example of the hard-boiled narrator’s brain trying to create connections between his lives in Tokyo and the end of the world (the odd and even numbered chapters). In the end of the world, the narrator is separated from his shadow by the Gatekeeper. In the underground, while searching for the Professor, the hard-boiled narrator has a false memory about his shadow on a movie theater screen. 

“‘You’ve read your Aristotle.’ ‘Almost not at all,’ I said. ‘I grant you your pure scientific motives. Please get to the point.’”

This is a section of dialogue between the Professor and the first-person narrator. While the hard-boiled narrator is familiar with and references many authors, Aristotle is not one of them. His snappy retort to the Professor’s rambling philosophy about the nature of scientists is an example of dialogue tropes from the genres of detective fiction and film noir.

“It seems you were operatin’ under multiple cognitive systems t’begin with. Not even you knew you were dividin’ your time between two identities.”

In this passage, the Professor attempts to explain why the narrator survived the shuffling operation while all the other Calcutecs died from it. The narrator’s multiple selves are represented narratively in the split between the hard-boiled (odd-numbered) chapters and the end of the world (even-numbered) chapters as well as the split between the narrator at the end of the world and his shadow. 

“There is a powerful cry in the earth here. We harness it to turn the works.” 

This is a quote from the Caretaker of the Power Station at the end of the world. It develops the motif of sound in its description of the wind power used by the Town. It also connects to the underground journey of the hard-boiled narrator.

“Third circuit, immortality—who’d believe that straight out, cold?”

Here, the narrator responds to the Professor’s granddaughter admitting that she knew about the splitting of his mind into three circuits. She correctly guessed that the narrator needed the Professor to explain the process and situation and needed to see the underground world of the INKlings, before he would accept the truth about his mind.

“All of us dig at our own pure holes. We have nothing to achieve by our activities, nowhere to get to. Is there not something marvelous about this? We hurt no one and no one gets hurt. No victory, no defeat.”

Here, the Colonel explains that the men outside his window dig a hole simply for the sake of digging a hole. This also represents a philosophy of existence, or a way of living. 

“Most human activities are predicated on the assumption that life goes on. If you take that premise away, what is there left?”

This passage is an examination of the nature of existence. When the narrator faces his death—being trapped in his unconscious mind—he questions the meaning of life. He is sometimes unsure of what to do knowing that the end is near, and this is a philosophical explanation for his uncertainty.

“I see birds flying. They strafe the white frozen slope of the Western Hill and vanish from my field of vision.”

Here, the narrator at the end of the world watches birds, as his shadow suggests. Freedom, here, is represented by being able to leave his field of vision, which connects with the idea that the narrator will be trapped in his own mind—his own field of vision—for eternity. The shadow wants to escape, but the narrator begins to love his solipsistic world (the world in his mind—his solitary vision).

“I have only to give myself to the wind as the birds do. No, I cannot relinquish my mind.”

In this passage, the narrator thinks about the Librarian’s description of music as sounds like wind. He tries to play a song in front of the stacks of skulls in the Library with the accordion the Power Station Caretaker gave him. Here, he is torn between staying in the Town because he loves it—and, most importantly, the Librarian—and escaping with his mind. The motif of birds is developed here, as being bird-like is compared to losing one’s mind rather than being free to leave the Town.

“The River was full of life. I could feel this. There is nothing bad about it. I believe that if we give ourselves over to the water, the flow of the River will lead us out. Out of the Town and back to a real world.”

Here, the narrator’s shadow tries to convince him that the only way to escape the Town is through the Southern Pool. The narrator thinks jumping in the Pool means death, which correlates with the Professor’s option for the hard-boiled narrator of dying before he is permanently stuck in the third circuit of his unconscious. However, the shadow believes the River is associated with real life rather than death.