The End of the World and a Cold Wonderland

In 1985, Haruki Murakami wrote a novel that he saw as a breakthrough. The novel has a strange name, "The End of the World and Cold Wonderland". The publisher's editors had disputed the name, arguing that it could be called The End of the World, or Cold Wonderland. But Murakami insisted on adopting the name, and it is also true that this book originally had two worlds, two nearly opposite worlds.

The novel adopts a parallel two-line structure, Murakami writes two completely parallel stories, and the stories seem to have no connection between them, even if they are taken out separately, there is no sense of violation. The odd chapters of the novel are cold wonderland, and the even chapters are the end of the world, and the two go hand in hand. The novel structure brings people a completely different reading experience.

At the beginning of the story, Murakami paints us with an almost absurd scene: an elevator without buttons, a young girl who can't speak, a laboratory underground, a night ghost, a doctor who can eliminate sounds, a symbolist, a calculator. One concept after another is constantly unfolding, bringing the impact of reconstructing people's world view. The protagonist of the story, "I", a capable calculator, comes to the underground laboratory to help the doctor calculate data, and the invisible struggle between the symbolist and the night ghost begins.

On the other hand, the town at the end of the world shows a different style. Almost medieval painting-style scenery, silent towns, crystal clear rivers, dense woods, and unicorns. Everything is reminiscent of the fabled medieval magical age. "I", a man who came here for some reason, abandoned his shadow and name in order to enter the end of the world and became a dream reader in the library.

The parallel two-line structure makes it seem that there is no connection between the stories, but in fact, the clues about the other world are more or less mentioned in both stories. In Cold Wonderland, the unicorn skull given by the Doctor is ambiguously calculated as "The End of the World". At the end of the world, "my" memories of "the world before" all foreshadow the inextricable relationship between the two worlds.

The stories of both worlds reflect Murakami's reflections on the world in which he lived at the time. Cold Wonderland is a highly developed capitalist society, which is full of money and materials, and the development of science and technology has greatly changed people's lives. The protagonist, "I", undergoes fuzzy operations and implants a chip in his brain. And for some reason, the line goes wrong, and the consciousness of "me" will sink into the "end of the world" forever. It was only at this moment that Murakami wrote about the relationship between the two worlds, a material world and a pure spiritual world.

Murakami expressed his concerns about society through the story of cold wonderland, the development of science and technology is getting faster and faster, and a series of products such as computers are constantly being updated. But these tools, in turn, control ourselves. Similar to the protagonist being borrowed by a computer chip to manage consciousness, aren't we also addicted to all kinds of electronic products? In such an era, when the relationship between people is becoming more and more superficial, and the operation of society is becoming more and more stylized, where will we go?

And at the end of the world, a closed, self-running town. The relationship inside is simple, but it is also dead. The reason for this is that no one inside has a "heart." Unicorns take people's hearts out of the city and remain in their skulls. As a dream reader, the protagonist wants to read out the "heart" in the skull and let it dissipate in the air. After reading the dream, the dreamer's own heart will disappear. Without the heart, there is no emotion, so although there is perfect order in it, there is no vitality. There, people with hearts are considered aliens and are banished into the forest, enduring harsh conditions.

The end of the world paints a closed world for us, giving us a choice, whether to stay in a stable town and give up our hearts, or to choose to go to the forest and keep our emotions. In fact, it is like our own lives, choosing to be stable but to give up some things, or to fight and keep them.

The names of the two stories themselves are a kind of irony, the real existence of Tokyo, under the author's deliberately virtual depiction, there is no way to have a specific grasp, just as it does not exist in the world, so it is a cold wonderland. On the contrary, the end of the world, which is only imagined by people, is depicted in great detail, and there is even a map, which is more like a real world than the cold wonderland. I think this also includes Murakami's attitude towards two worlds. He panicked about the problems caused by the rapid development of technology, and hoped to inspire people through the end of the world.

At the end of the story, my consciousness in the cold wonderland gradually disappears, and at the end of the world, I find a way to escape from here, and I can leave the end of the world. But I gave up, and I couldn't give up this world created by myself, and the people I loved who had been found in my heart.

If I had to choose, I would probably choose to stay at the end of the world.