The Elephant Vanishes: Stories

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 1993

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“The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds” Summary

One Sunday, the narrator notices the wind is blowing very strongly while recording the events of the past week in his diary. He is surprised by how suddenly the wind began when the morning had been so calm and when the probability of rainfall should have been 0%—a day he describes as “a peaceful Sunday afternoon like the heyday of the Roman Empire” (113). In the afternoon, the narrator’s phone rings. He is expecting a call from his girlfriend, but when he picks up, he can hear only the sound of the wind, which sounds to him like “A rummmmmble full of fury, like the Indians all rising on the warpath in 1881” (114).

The man returns to his diary and thinks of Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939, which reminds him to record that he had seen Sophie’s Choice on Saturday. A little later, once the narrator finishes updating his diary, he receives a phone call from his girlfriend, who suggests coming over to fix dinner. The narrator asks her if she called him earlier, and she confirms that she did, but that the wind was too loud in Nakano, so he could not hear her. She says the wind has died down in Nakano now, and the narrator notices that it soon dies down near him as well. The narrator’s girlfriend comes over, and the narrator jots down three phrases to help him write up the day’s events in his diary next week:

Fall of Roman Empire

1881 Indian Uprising

Hitler’s Invasion of Poland (118).

“The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds” Analysis

In this story, Murakami turns to some of his favorite motifs—music and cooking—to highlight how mundane the narrator’s existence is. But this does not mean that the narrator’s life is meaningless. Indeed, the mundane nature of the events the narrator records in his diary is belied by the mnemonic phrases he uses to construct his diary entries—allusions to key historical events such as the fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, and Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Evoking significant—even world-altering—events from history, the narrator invests the details of his own life with an inflated sense of significance.

Throughout the story, Murakami presents the narrator’s relationship with his own internal thoughts (as recorded in the diary) as much more committed and meaningful to him than his relationship with his girlfriend, emphasizing the collection’s discussion of Internality and Social Relationships—in this case, placing higher value on the former than the latter. The narrator takes pride and extreme care in his careful record keeping, which he describes as “a meaningful act” that has enabled him “to keep a diary for twenty-two years without missing a day” (118). The meaning the narrator finds in his daily record, despite its relatively mundane content, suggests that it’s the act of record-keeping itself that the narrator finds meaningful. The narrator’s personality and meticulousness are reflected in his diary entries (he’s obsessive about recording the time that things happen), suggesting that writing down the mundane details of his life helps him legitimize their value and imbues them with meaning. In contrast, his attitude toward his relationship with his girlfriend appears distracted and disconnected—initially even drowned out by the sounds of wind.