Postmodernism and Identity in Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

n the book Milkweed, written by Jerry Spinelli, identity plays a large role. Before Uri found him, Misha’s only identity was one given to him by the merchants he stole from- a no-good, petty thief. He did not even know his own name. The English Oxford Dictionary defines identity as one, the fact of being who or what a person is, or two, the characteristics that determine who or what a person or thing is. “In a cellar beneath a barbershop somewhere in Warsaw, Poland, in autumn of the year 1939,” (Spinelli 30) Uri gave Misha a new identity. This made up, make believe, imaginary story became not only Misha’s past, but his present. Misha “became [his] story,” (p. 31). He was thrilled to have a name, a background, an identity, and it was the first thing he told anyone.

Jung agrees with Freud that personal conscious is a repository of content previously conscious, even though they may have been forgotten. For example; collective unconscious can be hereditary and transferred to another, which is why Jung agreed with Freud’s argument that Anna transferred her affect to Breuer. Both Jung and Freud agree that a human’s unconsciousness is buried deep and few are able to reach it on a psychoanalysis level. However, Jung disagreed with Freud’s claims that sexuality is the basis of unconscious

Freud strategized that the personality was composed of three elements; the id, ego, and superego. The id is the component of personality that is present from birth, and is exclusively unconscious. “According to Freud, the id is the source of all psychic energy, making it the primary component of personality” (Cherry,1). On the other hand, the ego is the element of the personality that is responsible with reality. “According to Freud, the ego develops from the id and ensures that the impulses of the id can be expressed in a manner acceptable in the real world” (Cherry, 1). It

Good morning/Afternoon, I’m Tarryn and today I’m going to talk to you about personal identity. Identity is what makes us who we are, everyone has a different identity. Without identity we wouldn’t be human because everyone needs one to exist. Our identity is changing as we progress through life and as we experience new and different things. The texts that I’ve looked at are “Frankenstein”, the graphic novel by Gris Grimly, published in 2013, is an adaptation of Mary Shelley’s original text, about a scientist who creates a ‘monster’ who he’s ashamed of and leaves the ‘monster’ with no knowledge of anything about himself or the world. My second text is “Edward Scissorhands”, a film directed by Tim Burton and released in 1990, which is about a man created by a scientist who dies before he can entirely finish his creation and must live his life with scissors as hands. From these texts, I am going to be talking about how our journey through life changes our identity and how others can affect our identity.

Despite being a very diverse literature genre in terms of influence and inspiration, North American literature encompasses many works that share some very common thematic elements. Though there are several themes shared, one in particular can be found in most any work – the importance of identity. Particularly in some selected pieces yet to be named, identity is a very important element, not only because it is a necessity for a main character in any work of literature, but because these works express ideas about identity as being very individualistic – as opposed to being a mere result of cultural surroundings. Zora Neal Hurtson’s Their

Freud believed our behavior is already determined by our experiences we had from childhood through the unconscious mind and that the occurrences we had in our childhood can have such an impact on our behavior as we grow into adulthood. Psychodynamic theory is often referred to as psychoanalytical therapy which describes the terms of personality through psychological process which includes our dreams, fears and wishes we are not fully aware of through psychotherapy explores the clients unconscious thoughts and emotions. He suggested that our personalities are formed by three reasons: the ego, id, and superego the Intrapsychic elements. A supporter of Sigmund Freud early on was Carl Jung, a member of Vienna Psychoanalytic Society. They shared interest of the unconscious. Jung anticipated that the unconscious mind consisted of two layers which emphasized the importance of the unconscious in relation to personality. Personal unconscious is the first layer and this layer is basically the same version of the unconscious as Freud’s. This part of the unconscious contains information that is temporarily forgotten and becomes a part of your repressed memories. The Collective Unconscious known as the second layer is considered the most important and significant difference between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. This is said to be Jung’s most original workings and that it is very controversial to the personality theory. (McLeod, S. A. (2014). Carl Jung.

Identity is one’s perception that shapes one’s mind. It reflects the outer aspect of personality and the life choices we make as an individual. In Anthem by Ayn Rand, a dystopian futuristic novelfuture, Equality talks about how society is integrated to try to control his mind, body, and spirit. In “Don’t. The secret of self control” by Jonah Lehrer, a nonfiction article, Lehrer explains an experiment where children are determined to be a high or low delayers. Furthermore, In “Who Holds The Clicker” by Lauren Slater, a nonfiction article, Slater explains analyzes the fear of how brain implants can treat intractable mental illness. The formation of identity is created when a person is tied to the choices he makes,

“In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity” (Erik Erikson). In literature, identity is used to establish who a character is and what they believe in. In historical fiction, identity functions as a device utilized to give a character more depth and give the reader more of an idea of what the character stands for and the decisions they might make. In Night, despite being a very devout man, after having his faith taken away from him, Elie Wiesel loses his individual identity proving that, when man loses his most important belief, he loses himself and becomes “a corpse” (Wiesel 115).

Identity plays an important role in a person’s life. It determines how a person lives, acts, communicates, and defines themselves in the world around them. During this semester, we have read a handful of short stories that have to do with an individual’s identity. Three of those stories include, “The Metamorphosis,” by Franz Kafka; “Bartleby, the Scrivener,” by Herman Melville; and “Orientation,” by Daniel Orozco. Each of these short stories gives examples of how your work can influence a person’s identity and attempt to remove the personal factor from everyday life.

Within dystopian literature, identity is something that can be seen as an individual’s most core and precious element. Exposed against a scarcity of freedom in self-expression, we can begin to fully appreciate and understand the importance in the role of identity as well as its robustness. The role of identity and its manipulation is often explored within dystopian literature to exemplify weaknesses in human psychology as well as to destroy false images of strength and superiority that we apply to ourselves. In both The Road and

To believe or not to believe that is the question. Robertson Davies’ depicts a novel in which two opposing characters strive for self-completion. The journey of completing one’s self is one of Jung’s archetypes. According to Jung, completing both the body and soul lies within the characteristics of the psyche. The psyche is composed of three parts: the collective unconscious, ego and the personal unconscious. The collective unconscious is what people come into this world knowing, how children are shaped as adults through their childhood experiences and parental influences. The ego is the image people believe they are. It is this image which people pursue through the rest of their lives until they achieve self-completion. Lastly, the

Identity can be different for everyone because of everyone’s individuality, how they were raised, and what they believe and know. To me, identity is an aspect of yourself that can change any day because of your environment and the people and culture you choose to surround yourself with. Some of the most important factors that contribute to one’s identity include their environment and their mindset, or mainly the way they choose to view things. These factors are prominent in Pan’s Labyrinth and Simple Arithmetic. Put together, the two texts explore and communicate the theme that you cannot force a person’s identity to change, and that you have to let people grow on their own.

As humans, do we consciously form our own identities? After all, one is rarely who they aspire to be. Take, for example, John Gardner’s character Grendel. Although Grendel seems to intentionally perpetuate his wretched state of being, it is also clear that this process creates, or is the product of some sort of internal struggle between what he considers to be the “two dark realities, the self and the world” (Gardner 47). For many individuals, including Grendel, existence appears to be nothing more than a never-ending series of conflicts, mostly between the actual state of things and our idealistic perception of what they should be. These conflicts, whether realized or not, generate a great deal of emotional and psychological turmoil. This idea is present in nearly every religion and school of philosophy and has been given many names throughout history, but the more recent technical term for this flaw in human thought is “cognitive dissonance”.

Freud believed that the human personality consisted of three interworking parts: the id, the ego, and the superego. The id, the largest part of the mind, is related to desires and impulses and is the main source of basic biological needs. The ego is related to reasoning and is the conscious, rational part of the personality; it monitors behavior in order to satisfy basic desires without suffering negative consequences (Boundless.com). The superego, or conscience, develops through interactions with others (mainly parents) who want the child to conform to the norms of society (Boundless.com). Freud believed that our adult lives were shaped by childhood experiences, meaning that if children did not receive the proper nurturing, that the child would be stuck in that stage or behaviors

Although wildly different in subject matter and style, Kawabata’s Beauty and Sadness and Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World both show how Japan has been internationalized as well as how it has remained traditional. Kawabata’s novel is traditional and acceptable, much like the haiku poetry he imitates, but has a thread of rebelliousness and modernity running through the web that binds the characters together. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is devastatingly modern, and yet has a similar but opposite undertone of old Japan, or at least a nostalgia for old Japan. In both novels a more international culture