Super Frog Saves Tokyo and Reality of Earthquakes - Essay Example

? Super Frog Saves Tokyo and Reality of Earthquakes The short story Super Frog Saves Tokyo takes you to the precipice of reason and then suddenly shoves you over to the edge. The most interesting thing about this story is that it is premised on realistic characterization-a mirror that holds more than mere reflection. Katagiri’s hallucination just only whets your interest as your draw towards the anticipation of what is going to happen next. For starters, a good short story may survive as classroom fodder, and be appreciated as interesting exercise, an etude- that is why I choose Murakami’s short story “Super Frog Saves Tokyo “because it passes the test of a good short story. Therefore a concise discussion of the things that I personally found interesting in the short story forms the bulk of this paper. No doubt the 1995 earthquake could not have been prevented or averted, just as it is presently normally impossible to evade and/ or prevent earthquakes; in the short story, Frog together with the chief character successful, notwithstanding at great cost, combat the Worm that has supposedly been responsible for the quake. At this point, this could have Murakami’s honest interpretation of human collective wish to be powerful enough to combat even against forces that amount to earth quakes, and clearly win. Virtually unerringly two months after the Kobe earthquake, members of Aum Shinriko unleashed sarin gas in the Tokyo subway, in estimation killing 13 and injuring numerous others. Since the story was published in 1992, this interpretation appears specifically tragic and ironic, since humans are not only too helpless to avert natural disasters, but human made ones as well. In Super-Frog Saves Tokyo, the pitiable bank officer Katagiri takes chunks of space in the story wondering whether he can believe his eyes and his senses which appear to tell him that a gigantic frog is talking to him and seeking his assistance in a battle against a gigantic worm. Katagiri’s triviality and the comparative poorness of his social emotional life make the difference between his preceding life and the magical incident he shares with Frog even more distinct. I loved the way, Murakami used magic in this story, for it displays to us that it was used as solely for its healing purpose. And if we select to acknowledge Frog’s arguments at face value-that Tokyo is being predisposed to impending destruction-conversely the magic, as personified by Frog , has come as redeemer to heal the city’s supernatural damage by destroying Worm. The interesting part of it is that this surreal ground makes us presuppose that Katagiri has imagined or hallucinated about Frog-at this point we still can say that magic has healed him completely- although the magic lives in Katagiri’s mind. Katagiri for many reasons is a lonely, friendless man with no actual link to the world he lives in. at this point I find the way Murakami brilliantly connects. A lot is created in the story about the luckless life of the central character. In his forties, he’s gradually balding, adding wait, has no kith and kin to speak of, no friends, and no career and does not give a damn if he dies or not- this in fact is something that helps him in his work by instilling fear in criminals for his presumed cold-bloodedness. I loved this point because it somehow whetted my interest to continue reading the story as the suspense began to build. In the story, a pyscho-pompous acts as a guide to Katagiri’s journey, also called Frog, who assists Katagari to comprehend the threat Tokyo is predisposed to, and no doubt requires help. Frog quips “What I want from you, Mr. Katagari, is for you to share your simple courage with me, to support me with your whole heart as a true friend” (Murakami 2000). For this matter, Frog symbolizes something greater in the story, he symbolizes our human struggles against things that are so large that appear almost impossible to overcome. The most interesting thing about it is that Murakami makes us recognize that the only way to overcome them is to act, in spite of how insignificant our actions may seem in comparison, as any action could help anyway, as the Frog states above. The Worm’s abode is located underground and Frog and Katagari have to skulk through the bank in order to get there. The monster for this case is hidden away from life that goes on above the ground-for this matter Murakami makes us literally visualize the plan they plan to take into action. This is an interesting part because it engages the reader as if it’s a real life situation. “Behind a section of the wall was a vertical shaft and they would find Worm at the bottom by climbing down a 150-foot rope ladder” (Murakami 2000). The other thing I liked about this story is Murakami’s brilliant use of allegory. “The Kabuchiko neighborhood of Shinjuku was a labyrinth of violence: old time-gangsters, Korean mobsters, Chines Mafia, guns and drugs, money flowing beneath the surface from one murky den to another, people vanishing every now and then like puffs smoke. Plunging into Kabuchiko to collect a bad debt, Katagri had been surrounded more than once by mobsters threatening to kill him” (Murakami 2000). Then Frog seems and tells him that he himself is required to protect the lives of 150, 000 folk-in the actual earthquake, about 65,000 people lost their lives. Frog goes ahead to explicitly tell him, no one will ever have faith in him, but by annihilating Worm he becomes an instant hero. Although at the end of the story is not concise how much of it occurred in the mind of the central characters-who, by and large, curiously also doesn’t recall the fight against Worm-Fro has to explicitly tell him right in the face about it- alongside with an abstract assassination attempt on him momentarily before joining Frog underneath Tokyo, offers this one explanation as well as the first one weight. In essence, “Super Frog Saves Tokyo” speaks about a frog that is determined to help a Japanese citizen comprehend why he must protect Tokyo against big Worm that stays underground and we will cause an earthquake. At this point, I’ll consider picking up on a distinctive archetypal subject, the descent into the underworld-this is a subject that is seen in many literary texts. What is so interesting about is the way Murakami compares the Underworld Tokyo to the presumed underworld in Katagiri’s working life- it symbolizes his disheartening life that he leads above the ground. In the same light, Murakami also achieves this by drawing a parallelism between the huge sleeping Worm and the criminal underworld that is a skulking threat to Japan’s community. What makes this story a lot more interesting is Murakami’s use of real characters that the reader can identify with. This without a shade of doubt makes the story a great read. On the surface, there doesn’t appear much to Katagari. In his forty and socially weird, with a receding hairline, Katagari has no family he can speak of, or friends to interact with. In our everyday, we have naturally met such persons who are socially handicapped and with wife and kids. Katagiri fits the bill of a person we can easily identify with. But beneath his typical veneer, Katagiri harbors truly remarkable traits. Frog reveres him for his wisdom and courage as well as for the quiet, steady manner he handles challenges without ever seeking any token. Katagiri’ isolation may be seen as an exhibition of modesty. I also loved the way the story reveals Frog to us. He is an assortment of contradiction and a lighthearted pacifist who loves art and nature. This all right sounds familiar, right? We have all, in way or another, come across people who really art and nature. I could easily identify with Frog because he speaks courteously and respectfully to Katagiri. The character traits of Frog realty intrigued me. He is bookish and more often quotes Western thinker, including Friedrich Nietzsche, and great writer such like Joseph Conrad, Leo Tolstoy and Fyodor Dostoevsky. No doubt the use of such characters gives this story life, and made me identify with the life of the characters like if in real life situation. References Murakami, H. (2000). After the Earthquake. New York, NY. Basic Books. Read More