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Satire
Definition of Setting
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or it can be an imagined... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the city of New York, or... read full definition
Setting is where and when a story or scene takes place. The where can be a real place like the... read full definition
Chapter 32
Explanation and Analysis:
The novel takes place largely in Takamatsu, a coastal city located in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It is characterized in the novel as a mundane urban space where nothing remarkable happens, where Kafka goes about his daily routines and where Hoshino and Nakata wait for something supernatural to occur:
A shabby, miserable sort of building. The kind where shabby people spend one shabby day after another doing their shabby work. The kind of fallen-from-grace sort of building you find in any city, the kind Charles Dickens could spend ten pages describing. The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condensed and set afloat in the sky. Regardless, it was going to rain soon.
Another significant location is a forest located in an unspecified location in the mountains and Oshima's cabin within, around which he and his brother Sada inherited an entire mountain's worth of property. It is characterized as a uniquely isolated place, far from civilization or society, where characters go to contemplate their lives and discover things about themselves. This is the case for Oshima, Sada, and Kafka himself:
“When the mood hits us, we sometimes come here and spend a few days alone.” He mulls this over for a while, then goes on. “This was always an important place for the two of us, and still is. It’s like there’s a power here that recharges us. A quiet sort of power. You know what I mean?”
“I think so,” I tell him.
“My brother said you would,” Sada says. “People that don’t get it never will.”
The other important location is the Komura Memorial Library, Kafka's found home in Takamatsu. It is a private library established by the wealthy Komura family, patrons of the arts, that was opened to the public. It serves as a sanctuary, a special space for the exclusive purpose of learning. It encapsulates the joy of the pursuit of knowledge, one of the novel's central ideas, as it makes the pursuit of knowledge that was once reserved for the wealthy open to anyone who wishes to seek it out. For that reason, it is also a haven for people who are slightly apart from society like Kafka, Oshima, and Miss Saeki.
Related Themes:
Chapter 49
Explanation and Analysis:
The novel takes place largely in Takamatsu, a coastal city located in Kagawa Prefecture on the island of Shikoku. It is characterized in the novel as a mundane urban space where nothing remarkable happens, where Kafka goes about his daily routines and where Hoshino and Nakata wait for something supernatural to occur:
A shabby, miserable sort of building. The kind where shabby people spend one shabby day after another doing their shabby work. The kind of fallen-from-grace sort of building you find in any city, the kind Charles Dickens could spend ten pages describing. The clouds floating above the building were like hard clumps of dirt from a vacuum cleaner no one ever cleaned. Or maybe more like all the contradictions of the Third Industrial Revolution condensed and set afloat in the sky. Regardless, it was going to rain soon.
Another significant location is a forest located in an unspecified location in the mountains and Oshima's cabin within, around which he and his brother Sada inherited an entire mountain's worth of property. It is characterized as a uniquely isolated place, far from civilization or society, where characters go to contemplate their lives and discover things about themselves. This is the case for Oshima, Sada, and Kafka himself:
“When the mood hits us, we sometimes come here and spend a few days alone.” He mulls this over for a while, then goes on. “This was always an important place for the two of us, and still is. It’s like there’s a power here that recharges us. A quiet sort of power. You know what I mean?”
“I think so,” I tell him.
“My brother said you would,” Sada says. “People that don’t get it never will.”
The other important location is the Komura Memorial Library, Kafka's found home in Takamatsu. It is a private library established by the wealthy Komura family, patrons of the arts, that was opened to the public. It serves as a sanctuary, a special space for the exclusive purpose of learning. It encapsulates the joy of the pursuit of knowledge, one of the novel's central ideas, as it makes the pursuit of knowledge that was once reserved for the wealthy open to anyone who wishes to seek it out. For that reason, it is also a haven for people who are slightly apart from society like Kafka, Oshima, and Miss Saeki.
Related Themes:
