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Town Of Cats Metamorphosis

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The short story Town of Cats by Haruki Murakami is quite an interesting turn of events. The story starts with a man, named Tengo, deciding where to travel on his day off. He thinks to himself that he could go anywhere he pleases. He decides to go to the beach area of Japan, Chikura, however, subconsciously this choice was made because that is where his father resides in a sanitarium. As Tengo proceeds on his journey to his father’s residence of the last few years, he contemplates on his early life. He tells many stories of how his father was not the best, never allowing Tengo to have a Sunday off, forcing him to go to his work with him, which was going door to door asking for the payment of radio subscriptions. This was a major factor as to why Tengo resented his father, yet he lived most of his life not knowing many clear answers about his mother and father, which in turn was the reason he decided to visit his father on this day. …show more content…

At first glance, this is a story about an estranged father and son and their own individual stories but it is also so much more. It is really about the “mysteries” of families, the dysfunction of family relationships and about a family that is shrouded by secrecy and withheld information, that it damages them and causes profound heartbreak. It is about the conundrum of families – on one hand they inform, teach and influence us and on the other hand we seek to escape and recover from its’ influences. We see how both father and son struggle to fill the void in their lives, the father runs to fill the vacuum of his life by keeping himself constantly and singularly busy with work while his son looks towards fantasy to fill in the gaps of his own

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