A Study Of Haruki Murakami’s Animal Writing

Haruki Murakami is an animal lover,he has loved reading and watching animals from a young age,and after he became a writer,animals could often be found in his work,a phenomenon Lin Shaohua calls ’ Haruki Murakami’s Zoo’’.Animals play an important role in Haruki Murakami’s works,as evidenced by the titles of some of the works,such as his novels A Wild Sheep Case,The Wind-up Bird Chronicle,and his short stories The Disappearance of the Elephant,The Monkey in Shinagawa Ward,and The Green Beast.It can be said that animals are a pathway to understanding Haruki Murakami,this article takes Haruki Murakami’s animal writing as an object of study and interprets it from three aspects: sources and manifestations,types and characteristics,and comparative study.In the first chapter,the sources of Murakami’s animal writing are analysed from three perspectives: personal life experience,western literary influence,and Japanese literary tradition,and the specific representation and textual effects of animal writing are analysed from the perspectives of narrative structure and narrative perspective.In the second chapter,the various animal images in the work are divided into three categories from the perspective of construct generation: domestic animals,exhibition animals and deformed animals,and representative animals such as cats,elephants,monkeys and wind-up birds are selected to study their characteristics and symbolic meanings.In the third chapter,the method of comparative study is applied to compare the similarities and differences between the deformed animals in Haruki Murakami’s A Wild Sheep Case and Kafka’s The Metamorphoses,in order to gain new insights into Haruki Murakami’s animal writing.Through the study of Haruki Murakami’s animal writing,it can be found that,firstly,these animal images come from his accumulation of daily experiences and reading over the years,and secondly,Haruki Murakami is adept at starting from the characteristics of animals,creating images and organizing plots with animals as the center,no matter the domestic animals from the real world,the exhibition animals,or the deformed animals generated by alienation,all embody Haruki Murakami’s thinking and understanding of historical reality.Deformed animals are the common object of writing for both Haruki Murakami and Kafka,Haruki Murakami continued Kafka’s concern for individual survival and fate under the modern system.A Wild Sheep Case constructs a story similar to ’ The Metamorphosis’ ’ in which the oppression of external alien forces leads to the alienation an deformation of individuals.Unlike the utter loneliness and despair of Kafka’s alienation,Haruki Murakami’s alienated subjects can rely on a sense of "Connection" between them,clinging to each other and seeking healing.In addition,these alienated subjects are more like’ Fighters’ ’,defending their dignity as human beings by resisting in various ways.