Blog Post 1 - Maya Thiart

 I have really enjoyed my time reading through Haruki Murakami’s works, both that of A Wild Sheep Chase and in the short stories linked in Blackboard. He seems to be quite skilled in his specific style and detailing interesting observations about the world around him. Now having read some of his work, I’ve noticed running themes and motifs — as we discussed in class, mirrors is definitely one of them. Again, this idea of seeing the self but different comes up in “Where I’m Likely To Find It” when the unnamed protagonist finds a mirror in the landing between the twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth floors. The little girl he meets comments that the mirror there “reflects the best. It’s not at all like the mirror in our apartment”. When the protagonist moves closer he remarks that the person in the mirror “looked plumper and happier”. In this way, his mirror-self is different from the other stories we’ve read (like “William Wilson” and “The Mirror”), in that there isn’t a sense of rivalry or uneasiness when viewing it. The concept of being in two different worlds still exists but the protagonist seems not particularly interested in this sense of other. Contrasting this scene to the one in A Wild Sheep Chase, in chapter 37, when Boku looks into the mirror in the Rat’s house— “The me through the looking glass went through the same motions. But maybe it was only me copying what the me in the mirror had done. I couldn’t be certain I’d wiped my mouth out of my own free will.” Again, the encounter in the mirror makes the protagonist question his own reality, but in a way that positions him, and his mirror-self, against one another, as if one being real means that the other is fake.

“Stockings” was a rather confusing read. It felt almost like a simulated memory test, showing how tough it can be to answer questions under duress. Many studies show how memory can be unreliable, so testifying for a crime can lead to people misremembering key details — this feels like it was attempting to get the audience to feel similarly, like they were being interrogated but unsure what the “right” answer was. As creative a story as it was, there could be any number of things that the man said, and a lot of the story trails off in uncertain ways.

-Maya Thiart