Ian Coleman
Kazushi Nathan Rickert
Ms. Cornelius
AP English Language and Composition
23 March 2009
An Archetypal Analysis of Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
The two interconnected narratives, the detective story, “Hard Boiled Wonderland” and the metaphysical, mythological melodrama, “The End of the World”, as they are structured and composed in Haruki Murakami’s Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, correspond to Carl Jung’s theory of The Archetype of Transformation. This theory involves “the Process of Individualization or the Integration of the Personality… the experience of detachment from the world of objective reality… and the finding of a new dimension in which it can be contemplated and lived… a death of the old life and the birth of a new” (Drew 18). The protagonist’s excursion into his own subconscious, a journey characterizing the “End of the World” segment of the story, is constituted of a series of archetypes, or “primordial images” that exist in the collective unconscious. The sequence and role of these archetypes, personified as individuals and animals within the narrator’s subconscious, form a pattern in his mind that instigates the evolution of his sense of self within it. This allows him, by the novel’s denouement, to transcend the limitations placed upon him culturally, as well as the shortcomings of the personality and moral ethics of his previous self as it existed in the realm of reality.
The two stories, told in alternating chapters composing Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World initially present themselves as separate narratives. Hard Boiled Wonderland plays out in a manner similar to a detective thriller, with its unnamed protagonist dragged into an information war between two warring factions of humans with brains modified to process information through a method similar to a computer. These groups are the Calutecs, a faction to which the narrator belongs, and the Semiotecs. The Semiotecs pursue the protagonist at various points, seeking the information he obtained from decoding experimental data. The End of the World, a story of another unnamed narrator who arrives in a town populated with strangely complacent human beings called The End of the World through unknown means. Midway through the novel, it is revealed the two stories are interconnected and that the two narrators are actually the same person. The End of the World is in fact, a realm created in his own mind by an experiment involving creating a
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Lol, hey Ian, its me Nathan. I just randomly typed in my name on google and came across this. Rofl, never expected to find this essay here. Made this account just so I could comment on this ;D.
In the case of Africa and several Asian countries, these rural woes are rooted in a tradition that function counter to efficient economic and agricultural management. In these suffereing countries, land is a communal property, rather than the sole possession of a landholder. For poor villagers, this tradition holds an image of fairness, but it also renders the property suseptable to the Tragedy of the Commons. Each attempt at darming the land diminishes another's use of it. Every inhabitant farms as they please, rotating the crops in a manner that drains the soil's nutrients dry and does not provide the necessary rejuvnation. In Africa, this soil is often damaged by violent weather, augmenting the problem. Mismanaged herds also trample many growing crops due to mismanagement, starving themselves in the process.. This dying land is a causulty of the Free Rider problem. Because the land is a common resource, no person has any incentive to improve it. This improvement can only be carried out by government. Proper management of land and livestock must be enforced if the land is to survive. In addition to this, proper crop rotation and the application of rejuvinating plants to the land must also be emphasized. These villages in dire need of help suffer from dwindling human resources as their denizens migrate toward the facade of the urban city.
allows the communication of more abstract concepts, i.e: company values and homoginizes the philopophies and practices of global corporations.
This phenomenoa can only take place in an urban enviornment where a developed corporate system can thrive, and in the case of Friedman's favored models of globalization, India and China, these enviornments, are skewed within their respective countries. The parts of these foreign countries not urbanized are home to suffering workers unable to take part in the flattening of the world. They often lack even the most basic commodoties and are deprived of education. In the case of India, transcending this social status is a near impossibility due to a ruthless caste system. This social structure is touched upon, but its nature as an anti-flattener is not discussed. Even within the urban areas hosting new technology, the practice of international communication is not widespread. In fact, 90% of internet usage in a given country is domestic.
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