If cultures are seen as unifiable through shared stories, it is not inconceivable that cultures can be connected through distinct but ultimately similar stories of shame . Whether or not these stories impose on cultures the role of "persecutors" or "victims", it is more than possible that these societies become attached to others through such shared stories and stories of guilt, infamy and remorse. Such a traumatic story becomes an essential part of Haruki Murakami's 1995 novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which explores Japan's lingering but ignored sense of guilt over war atrocities committed before and during World War II. Likewise, the story becomes equally important in Australian writer David Malouf's short story collection, Dream Stuff, which quietly illuminates Australia's culpability for participating in or enabling the persecution of Aboriginal people. Using a range of postmodern literary techniques, Murakami and Malouf each seek to unearth the sense of shame buried within their respective societies. This essay will first explore the postmodern and historical references of each text before continuing a shared discussion of the novels as examples of international literature. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Of the two works examined in this essay, Murakami's work is considered the more "classical" postmodern and global text. While The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is known for its considerably scandalous condemnation of Japan's whitewashing of its history, it is equally renowned for its unique literary style and frequent references to Western (particularly American) culture. The story follows a slacker, Toru Okada, who (repeatedly and through various means) manages to travel through time and bear witness to the atrocities committed by the Japanese before and during World War II. The content of Murakami's novel is notable in that it directly contradicts Japan's "famous codes of cultural concealment" (Wood), referring to Japan's deliberately revisionist mentality towards this period of history. By graphically reimagining the reality of Japanese brutality through fiction, Murakami makes a highly controversial statement about the need for Japan to confront its shameful past. The novel is further characterized by a persistent sense of time distortion, a classic feature of postmodern writing that challenges the narrative's sense of reality and further blurs the lines between dreams, memory, history and present time. These parts of the novel recur in descriptions both succinct and elaborate, and an example from the first perhaps best illustrates the sense of temporal confusion in the novel: "In bed that night, I kept thinking to Mr. Honda. He and Malta Kano had spoken to me about water. Mr. Honda warned me to be careful. Malte Kano had undergone austerities on the island of Malta in connection with his water research. Perhaps it was a coincidence, but both of them were deeply concerned. about water. Now it was starting to worry me. I turned my thoughts to the images of the Nomonhan battlefield: the Soviet tanks and machine gun emplacements, and the river flowing beyond them. In the darkness, I heard the noise. the sound of the river flowing beyond them. Unbearable thirst. In the darkness I could hear the sound of the river, Kumiko said to me in a small voice, youare you awake? (54) This moment shows Toru actually slipping into the past, and it is unclear whether he is simply lying in the dark, staring in deep contemplation, or dreaming while asleep. Although we can hail this moment as exemplary. An example of a postmodern literary technique, the temporal distortion that occurs at this point (and throughout the novel) is critical because it helps illustrate the sense of cultural memory that permeates these characters. Even though Toru himself has had no experience in Manchuria and (at this point) has not yet heard of this period, he seems to simply "know" what happened there. As the memory resurfaces in the character's subconscious, Toru's sense of time begins to slip and his reality becomes imbued with an unknowable yet strangely familiar sense of the past. In this way, Murakami seeks to illustrate how history keeps its hand on an individual's shoulder, even if that history was never experienced firsthand. Another postmodern characteristic of this novel is that it operates through the use of a metanarrative. Although the novel faithfully illustrates Toru's experiences and development, Murakami is equally (if not more) interested in stories related to Toru through conversations or written documents. For example, the first time Toru is brought back through the story is when he asks Lieutenant Mamiya to tell him about his experiences with Mr. Honda as a soldier in Manchuria in 1937. Although the novel continues in this section as a first-person narrative, it immediately stands out because the “I” no longer refers to Toru, but to Mamiya, who is brought in to effectively take over the story for a time (135). The story that the novel seeks to explore ultimately manifests itself through testimonies created by other characters, and it is only through Toru's listening that we (the audience) can bear witness to these moments of the 'history. The metanarrative structure of the story is useful in that it leads the protagonist to imitate the position of the modern reader, who too can only experience the story by experiencing the stories and testimonies of others. Murakami's novel emphasizes the multitude of ways in which history is communicated to an individual, the temporal distortion created by cultural memory being one way and the necessity of testimony within a cultural metanarrative being another one. What Murakami's style ultimately allows for is a sense of the story as a haunting, relentless entity, as Toru is continually made to experience these slip-ups in his subconscious and is also seemingly incapable of escaping the testimonies and stories of others. Whether or not Toru is content with these shifts in the story is debatable; what is undeniable, however, is the fact that Murakami deliberately creates a character who is (at least in part) defined by his inability to avoid the past. This phenomenon mimics the way emotions such as guilt and shame can prey on individuals who have made mistakes in the past, where memories of shameful or deplorable actions remain with the perpetrator long after those acts have occurred. was actually committed. In this way, we can see how Toru illustrates the cultural memories that permeate the Japanese consciousness and subconscious even today. Indeed, parts of Toru's journey illustrate the disturbing extent of the immorality exhibited by the Japanese during the war, including the massacre of zoo animals (400) and the heinous, baseball-inspired murder of a Chinese prisoner of war (521). Murakami depicts atrocities ifso extravagant in their brutality that they are indeed unforgettable for Toru as well as the reader. This reflects the fact that although Japanese cultural codes may promote a whitewashing of cruelty within one's own history, the individual cannot escape that history. A few years after the publication of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, David Malouf would cover similar ground of shameful history in a collection of short stories called Dream Stuff, set entirely in Australia. In an interview conducted by Colm T?ib?n for Bomb Magazine, Malouf made the following statement: "If you come to Australia from outside you notice certain things, you notice how open and open it is. has friendly people, so much sunshine, so much open space, so much freedom, but there is also a darkness in the midst of it all, a continuing darkness that surrounds the Aboriginal population. . . many people feel some sort of shame, and almost everyone feels disturbed and uncomfortable about what our contact has done to them. "In the aforementioned quote, Malouf explicitly states that he believes his country is haunted by a sense of historical and cultural guilt, a feeling that is directly related to the specific content of Dream Stuff. What distinguishes the illustration from the story of Malouf from that of Murakami It is the fact that, although Japanese atrocities are physically confined to the past, Australia's shameful history continues to physically haunt the landscape through the surviving Aboriginal people who continue to live on the mainland In other words, there is no chance that Australian society is capable of imposing a "cultural code of concealment" similar to that of Japan, since the shameful history is a physical entity. within this society Ultimately, Malouf's work explores similar themes of guilt and shame in a very different national context than Murakami's, ultimately showing how different he is. societies are linked by shared stories of historical and cultural regret. The story "Blacksoil Country" is notable for this argument because it operates through a highly postmodern mode of storytelling in which a fictional account of reality is created. In this case, Malouf creates an "origin story" to explain how the violence against the Aborigines began, thus offering a fictional interpretation of Australian historical reality. Blacksoil Country” follows a failing farmer and father who randomly murders an Aboriginal man and ultimately finds his son's head smashed in in retaliation, setting off decades of violence. In describing the father after being reunited with his son, it says: "The whole country is his, to rage from top to bottom with the call of his sorrow." . . he speaks low. . . so that the earth is finally rid of the shadow of blood. . . and because he believes so completely in what he must do and is so filled with the ferocity of it, others also are convinced” (129). Malouf includes this illustration from a fictional Australian story because he attempts to show how the persecution of an entire group of people requires a deep-seated passion of hatred, as the father clearly possesses. Although we can find sympathy for the father, Malouf includes this description because it demonstrates the psychological mentality of those who start violent, even genocidal, conflicts. Ultimately, the father's grief cannot justify the violence and it is said that "the blacks are hunted and knocked down in every direction." They too have lost their protection – what little they had” (130). What is significant about this quote is the fact that it is definitely not afiction ; in other words, the factual and truly historical nature of this quote juxtaposes the story of the father and son, which is a fictional reality. In this way, “Blacksoil Country” descends from fictional reality to real reality, while blurring the lines between reality and fiction. Ultimately, the reader can understand how shameful the unjust and brutal scale of violence that blights Australian history is. In another story, "Lone Pine", two elderly Australians are victims of a random act of violence in which they are robbed and murdered by a young man and his family. Although this story illustrates the postmodern trope of unpredictable and inexplicable realities, it also echoes the random and brutal acts of violence committed against the Aborigines. This notion of a "memorized earth" is evident when Harry says of the stars: "If you looked closely enough, every event that took place anywhere on this side of the earth, even the smallest one, would be reflected there." Even this one, he thought” (112). Later, after the murders, the murderer looks at the stars and it is said that "their living but dead light beat him down and fell weakly on him" (115). Like “Blacksoil Country,” “Lone Pine” emphasizes the belief that the Australian landscape has its own memory and that all acts of violence committed on this land will be spiritually preserved there. The deaths of Harry and May, in this context, are part of a long history of random acts of violence that have occurred throughout history. In this way, the land becomes a symbolic vessel for Australia's guilt and shame. Dream Stuff's darkly humorous finale story, "Great Day", follows a family during the 200th anniversary of the founding of Australia and their eventual discovery that their town's history museum is being burned down in a sort of bonfire. The story is postmodern in that it is highly ironic; by celebrating the founding of the country, it is also by celebrating the death and the guilt that accompanied it. This guilt is highlighted when Clem, who plays the Shakespearean character of the "prophetic fool", thinks: "What we dare not ourselves, he found himself thinking, they do for us, the burglars, the aggressors, the smashers, the grab merchants. . When we punish them, it is to hide our guilt” (177). At this moment, Clem experiences a revelation about the nature of contemporary relations between whites and Aborigines. He realizes that the only reason for high crime rates within indigenous communities is the fact that they are forced into a dehumanizing existence of cultural exile and second-class citizenship. Clem's reflection is also a transparent statement on the pervasive sense of shame and guilt Australians feel over the treatment of Aboriginal people. Dream Stuff ultimately functions as a question of how Australians are supposed to make sense of a truly shameful past. Further complicating matters is the fact that this legacy of prejudice and violence is a legacy of contemporary Australians. Even though this violence has diminished considerably and ideologies have had time to change, there is a lingering sense of guilt over the actions of ancestors. . While Australia's demons remain out in the open, Malouf shows how there is an enduring sense of confusion about how to deal with these historical demons, especially when there is no real prospect of rectifying a past also traumatic. Although Malouf offers no definitive conclusions to these stories, nor suggests concrete answers to these questions, his novel is notable because itexists as an exploration of how the demons of the past are capable of creating and maintaining a culture's shame. Murakami's postmodernism in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is relatively simple due to the fact that Murakami uses traditional techniques of postmodern writing, such as metanarrative and time distortion. The argument for Malouf's postmodernism is considerably more difficult, given the fact that his writings generally escape these defining characteristics of the movement. As I have shown, the more postmodern aspects of his writing are obscured but ultimately evident in the way he illustrates fictional, unpredictable, and ironic realities. However, the different uses of postmodernism in these two novels ultimately help to show how each text actually requires different modes of this literary style in order to maintain the author's vision in discussing the past. For example, the nature of Japanese history is that there is no physical presence of historical atrocities, requiring Murakami to use a style that allows him to move fluidly between the past and the present, thus explaining his use of time warp. Furthermore, if Toru is used to keep the reader grounded in a sense of Japanese modernity, the past can only be experienced through the stories told by actual witnesses to that history, necessitating the use of a metanarrative. Furthermore, Malouf's work does not require such shifts in the past because he places the nine in different periods and throughout Australian history. Each story is therefore the portrait of a contained but complex reality which is offered to the reader for examination. Although there are varied meanings of postmodernism in these two texts, the way in which postmodernism operates in each ultimately reflects the demands of the authors as well as the cultures they intend to examine. In discussing the merits of these two novels as examples of world literature, let us remember that world literature is defined by the way in which it invites the reader into the world of another culture, while allowing them to interpret and imagine the world in a way that is meaningful to them (both as individuals and as individuals). as representatives of a different culture). Fundamentally, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle and Dream Stuff are undeniably local texts, since they deal exclusively with the history of the specific societies to which their respective authors belong. Indeed, these stories as specific historical experiences escape the privilege of translation, since an international audience will never know the experience of having ancestors who carried out the Rape of Nanjing or who went on seasonal hunting aborigines. However, a work of world literature is necessary to allow the reader to connect in some way to this foreign culture. Since there is no prospect of true translation of a specific cultural heritage, it is the essence or heart of these stories that must be translatable to a foreign audience. In the case of these works by Murakami and Malouf, what is translated is the shared experience of cultural and historical shame. Although it is a generalization to claim that all societies carry shameful histories within them, it is not wrong to assume that many (if not most) cultures experience historical incidents that arouse feelings of guilt in their respective citizens. So it seems natural to me that there is a possibility that international literature is based on shared stories of national and cultural guilt or historical guilt. For example, the..