56 pages • 1 hour read
Haruki MurakamiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
“The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women”
“The Second Bakery Attack”
“The Kangaroo Communiqué”
“On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning”
“Sleep”
“The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds”
“Lederhosen”
“Barn Burning”
“The Little Green Monster”
“Family Affair”
“A Window”
“TV People”
“A Slow Boat to China”
“The Dancing Dwarf”
“The Last Lawn of the Afternoon”
“The Silence”
“The Elephant Vanishes”
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
Existential anxiety colors the worlds of the short stories collected in The Elephant Vanishes, touching the lives of each narrator regardless of age or background, suggesting that the experience of such anxiety is simultaneously universal and highly individual. The narrator of “The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women” in particular goes through life in a kind of existential haze, noting that “[s]omewhere, in my head, in my body, in my very existence, it’s as if there were some long-lost subterranean element that’s been skewing my life ever so slightly off” (14). The narrator of “The Elephant Vanishes,” similarly, claims to feel that “things around [him] have lost their proper balance” (327) after the disappearance (or vanishing) of the elephant and his keeper.
In other stories, the dissatisfaction with existence runs deeper, as in “The Kangaroo Communiqué,” where the narrator wants only “to be able to be in two places at once” (64). Even the younger characters of Murakami’s stories are plagued by anxieties about their existence and mortality. The teenage girl the narrator meets in “The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women” cannot stop thinking about death, indicating that there is a fine line between anxiety and dread in a modern world where even children cannot escape the subject of death.
By Haruki Murakami
1Q84
1Q84
Haruki Murakami
After Dark
After Dark
Haruki Murakami
A Wild Sheep Chase
A Wild Sheep Chase
Haruki Murakami
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman
Haruki Murakami
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
Haruki Murakami
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
Haruki Murakami
Kafka on the Shore
Kafka on the Shore
Haruki Murakami
Killing Commendatore
Killing Commendatore
Haruki Murakami
Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood
Haruki Murakami
South of the Border, West of the Sun
South of the Border, West of the Sun
Haruki Murakami
Sputnik Sweetheart
Sputnik Sweetheart
Haruki Murakami
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle
Haruki Murakami, Transl. Jay Rubin
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
What I Talk About When I Talk About Running
Haruki Murakami