Blind Willow Sleeping Woman

Haruki Murakami, a Japanese writer, creates a powerful book called Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman using 24 short stories. The characters all have an experience that shows that they need a change in life. Murakami uses a narrative writing style to tell these stories. His writing indicates that one does not know what is happening inside a person, “From the outside at least” (Murakami 17). This characters that are presented who are lingering between two worlds and want a change. Whether the two worlds be past or present, and internal or external, Murakami uses symbols that represent the fear of change. Fear is not only portrayed through emotions but objects and characters as well. Murakami constructs the theme of fear based on the symbols of the

The main character is having an affair with a married woman who is seven years older, mother of one and claims to be happy with nothing wrong at home. He asks himself many times, why is she sleeping with him if she is happy and claims “It was different from any sex he had experienced before” (Murakami 48). However, he is struggling with the experience of sleeping with a married woman and an experience of talking to himself. He says, “He couldn’t help thinking that this was an important key to unlocking the riddle of life” (Murakami 47). As he talks to himself about airplanes and doesn't even notice, she waits for the train to pass. Trains and airplanes are presented throughout this short story as objects showing fear. The trains are thought as empty, old tracks that can only go so far like a routine in life but airplanes are strong, new, fast and can go very far. The train represents the current experience of the man sleeping with the married woman, however, the airplane interprets a hope for change and a desire to travel. As they make love, the man thinks of a small room, “a nice, neat room that was a comfortable place to be. It has strings of many colors hanging from the ceiling... He wanted to pull one, and the strings wanted to be pulled by him. But he didn't know which one to pull” (Murakami 48). The strings are shown to wonder if the character would pull on one, for which he wants to pull but does not have the opportunity of seeing what it would bring. He is worried that if he pulls on one, it will fall apart and he will have to go out in the real world. He uses the woman as an obstacle to escape from life. It is shown that he has goals but is stuck and lacks self-confidence. At one point they were both thinking about airplanes, he says to himself, “The airplane that his heart was making deep in the