Often, Haruki Marukami’s short stories are one-sided and only demonstrate one side to gender representations. Most of Marukami’s fictional stories exemplify patriarchy in Japan, during which his female characters are positioned as objects for the subjectivity of males. The women used in Murakami ‘sworks are not empowered by feministic views; thus, the female subjects do not stand up for their own well-being. Throughout Haruki Marukami’s stories, female characters are used to represent the realities that several females faced in contemporary Japan, such as: isolation and seclusion, contradictive feminism, and fierce violence. This is evident in Marukami’s “The Little Green Monster,” where a nameless woman sits isolated in her house staring
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In a sense, the female in this story is trapped inside the house. She sits “behind a window” and glares at the garden outside instead of physically going outdoors. The vision of the garden captures her mind and she sits there until it was “dark before I knew it: I must have been there quite a while” (Murakami, 152). The woman often looks at the oak tree, which she considers her friend when she states, “I thought of it as an old friend. I talked to it all the time in my head” (Murakami, 152). Without anyone else’s’ comfort, the woman starts to imagine the tree as her friend. She is also isolated with their house “is the only house in the area… my house has only the one door” (Murakami, 153). Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” also uses the idea of “behind a window” to display the woman’s confinement. The woman lives in a room with “the windows (which) are barred…there are rings and things in the walls” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”). Similar to the woman in “The Little Green Monster,” the woman also starts to hallucinate and see things within the wallpaper: “It is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”). The imagery with “behind the window” illustrates the woman as detached and isolated from …show more content…
In this story, the little green monster represents a portion of the female and her life. Through the stabbing, ripping, and torturing of the little green monster, the female is causing herself harm. This is obvious when Murakami writes, “I painted pictures of all the cruel things I wanted to do to it… I tied it down to a heavy chair… I stabbed a hot soldering iron into …his eyes…” (Harukami,155). However, the most distinctive act of self-harm is portrayed when the female states, “I cut and tormented its flesh with every machine and tool I could think of” (Murakami, 156); considering she used the term flesh instead of scales, this makes the incident more relevant to herself as a human. With the ideas of fragmentation and feminism, females are motivated to perform self-violence in ways such as self-harm and eating
In a sense, the female in this story is trapped inside the house. She sits “behind a window” and glares at the garden outside instead of physically going outdoors. The vision of the garden captures her mind and she sits there until it was “dark before I knew it: I must have been there quite a while” (Murakami, 152). The woman often looks at the oak tree, which she considers her friend when she states, “I thought of it as an old friend. I talked to it all the time in my head” (Murakami, 152). Without anyone else’s’ comfort, the woman starts to imagine the tree as her friend. She is also isolated with their house “is the only house in the area… my house has only the one door” (Murakami, 153). Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s story “The Yellow Wallpaper” also uses the idea of “behind a window” to display the woman’s confinement. The woman lives in a room with “the windows (which) are barred…there are rings and things in the walls” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”). Similar to the woman in “The Little Green Monster,” the woman also starts to hallucinate and see things within the wallpaper: “It is like a woman stooping down and creeping about behind that pattern” (Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”). The imagery with “behind the window” illustrates the woman as detached and isolated from …show more content…
In this story, the little green monster represents a portion of the female and her life. Through the stabbing, ripping, and torturing of the little green monster, the female is causing herself harm. This is obvious when Murakami writes, “I painted pictures of all the cruel things I wanted to do to it… I tied it down to a heavy chair… I stabbed a hot soldering iron into …his eyes…” (Harukami,155). However, the most distinctive act of self-harm is portrayed when the female states, “I cut and tormented its flesh with every machine and tool I could think of” (Murakami, 156); considering she used the term flesh instead of scales, this makes the incident more relevant to herself as a human. With the ideas of fragmentation and feminism, females are motivated to perform self-violence in ways such as self-harm and eating