44 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.
Dreams play a crucial role in this novel. Murakami explores how dreams can affect our conscious behavior and moods. Tsukuru has several striking dreams, each so vivid and intense that they linger in his mind for days, or sometimes years to come. Typically, these dreams have a sexual component: A dream in which a woman demanded that Tsukuru choose either her body or her heart stirred him out of his despondency after his high school friends abandoned him. The passionate feelings he still had the morning after the dream so severely contrasted with his waking apathy that his psyche was jolted out of its depression.
At the same time, the novel deliberately obscures the line between dreams and reality. Often, Tsukuru has dreams so realistic—or so wish-fulfilling—that he cannot tell the difference between wakefulness and sleep. The most significant of these happens when Tsukuru has what reads almost like a lucid dreaming experience: Tsukuru thinks he wakes and sees his college friend Haida in his room. However, the novel never quite confirms whether Tsukuru is actually seeing Haida: “how much of this is real? he wondered. That wasn’t a dream or an illusion. It had to be real.
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
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
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Killing Commendatore
Killing Commendatore
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Norwegian Wood
Norwegian Wood
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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 Elephant Vanishes
The Elephant Vanishes: Stories
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
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