Risk and Home:After Darkby Murakami Haruki

Abstract

This essay proposes a critical reading of After Dark by Murakami Haruki, published in 2004. I primarily focus on the ways in which this text attributes safety and danger, home and risk, or the quotidian and the extraordinary. I argue that the narrative style that Murakami employs here evokes in readers a longing for being safe at home and a sense of being content with the way things are. It presents the nature of space as heterogeneous, hence with a potential danger constantly lurking over it. Women are placed at the heart of such a heterotopic enclosure, projecting the clichéd desire of the male gaze, which is represented by the voice of the narrator. Jean-Luc Godard's 1965 film Alphaville is one of the key references Murakami makes in this text. In this film misogyny and self-reference are strategically employed to perform a critique of history. Reading After Dark in the light of Alphaville, I question the value of Murakami's narrative strategy.

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