An Isolated Existence: A Reader’s Response to Sputnik Sweetheart

We are all sputniks – we are all satellites. Among many other themes and symbols Murakami uses in his novel, “Sputnik Sweetheart,” the satellite is one of the most predominant ones used in the book and one of the clearest to decipher. Throughout the book, Murakami continues to reference back to the idea of a sputnik and often reminds us that we are all sputniks. What does that mean though?

Near the beginning of the book, a character looks up the word sputnik and finds that it means “traveling companion” in Russian. It is ironic that after this original definition, the book always references back to sputnik as a metaphor for life. Murakami compares us to satellites since we are always alone in life. We are locked inside our bodies, or our sputniks, and cannot escape our sputniks. We will orbit the planet in an orbit that we have no control over and can only await our inevitable end. Every now and then, another sputnik might cross paths with us. And yet we cannot stop to spend more time with the other sputnik. We are immediately taken away from the other sputnik and may never see it again.

Indeed, sputnik is a metaphor for life in Murakami’s book. Like the sputnik, we are stuck in our bodies and in our destiny, our fate. We will never be able to get out of our bodies to know someone else – we can only observe from afar.

The novel as a whole, as well as several specific details, expands on this theme after it is established in the beginning. First, the two main characters, are like sputniks for each other – they are travelling companions, or sputniks. In the novel, they travel from Japan to Italy and then France, ending up on a small island in the Aegean Sea. They get to know each other fairly well, but there is always some distance between the two – they are stuck in their own viewpoint, their own set of experiences. They each have their own reasons for the trip – one for business and the other for pleasure ­– and even the ways in which they are bonded together are different for each: one is sexually attracted to the other, while the opposite is not true.

One way in which the novel seems to breach the concept of the sputnik is that one of the main characters somehow goes to the “other” side, which I interpret as leaving one’s sputnik. The novel is very unclear as to what she does when this happens since she disappears from the world while she visits the “other side.” Emphasis, however, is placed on the fact that the very ordinary narrator is unable to leave his sputnik, implying that only people with very special qualities can leave their sputniks.

So my question to you guys is this: have any of you ever left your sputnik, or have you always felt bound to an existence in a separated, orbiting satellite? What do you think it takes to leave your sputnik and what does it really mean to do so?

 

Is Imperialism Savagery?: A Reader’s Response to Heart of Darkness

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness tells a tale of the ideas of imperialism: the ins and outs of what makes the idea imaginative, and what makes it pure evil in nature. The story is told by a seaman, Marlow, who recounts his adventures at sea and on land when all those around him seem to be working with the idea of imperialism in mind. Right from the beginning of the novel Marlow shares his ideas about imperialism, saying, “What saves us is efficiency – the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account… They were no colonists… They were conquers, and for that you want only brute force…” (Conrad 8). Marlow’s quote begins to tell his perspective on imperialism, how there can be some good through “devotion” and “efficiency,” but that all he saw in person was violent overtaking and “conquering.” Now, Marlow gave many more quotes to explain his take on imperialism, but even this vague quote alone can give the reader a sense of how he feels on the subject. He explains, “It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind – as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness” (Conrad 8). Marlow continuously associates these acts of imperialism that he has observed with “darkness and “savagery.” He sees the destruction – the evil – the “conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves” (Conrad 8). Conrad’s character Marlow talks of how the so-called-colonists take advantage of a weaker people. He explains the evils of theses acts that have a core of “the fascination of the abomination… regrets, the longing to escape, the powerless disgust, the surrender, the hate” (Conrad 7). Marlow the seaman sees the enslaving of indigenous peoples, the death through foreign exploration, and ignorance of those in power, and does not see any beauty in it.

In fact, the only beauty the seaman sees in imperialism is the idea itself. He explains to the other seamen on the Nellie (the boat in which the party of men are sailing the Thames sea in), “What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretense but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea – something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to…” (Conrad 8). Marlow believes in the idea of imperialism; something that is much bigger than one people, where man is looked at as just one wave in the current. He sees the beauty in what imperialism could bring, in what it offers, but is brought to think of savagery when he sees how imperialism is utilized in a materialistic world. Marlow preaches on the idea of man giving oneself, individually, to the innovations of the world to come, but does not see the idea being put to proper use in the world that he lives in.

So, what do you believe of imperialism, whether you have read Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness or not? Do you believe in the idea but do not see it being put to justice, like Marlow does. Or, instead, do you think that imperialism is winsome in all accounts of concept? It is even possible that you disagree with the ideas of imperialism all together! Marlow spends the entire novel explaining his views on, and experiences with, imperialism. He makes his opinions very clear… now what are yours?

 

The World We Live In: A Reader’s Response to Brave New World

Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is perhaps one of the most well-known works of dystopian literature, only behind George Orwell’s 1984. Although Huxley’s work was published almost two decades before Orwell’s, it is perhaps even more relevant today than Orwell’s. While Orwell’s deals more with a distorted political order, accurately predicting the totalitarian future of the Soviet Union (and perhaps the United States in light of recent expansions of the NRA?), Huxley’s vision is one of a distorted social order where humans seem to lose everything that makes them human from their individuality to their freedom: in the world of Brave New World, people are forced to accept the norms of society that are built for the sole purpose of maintaining its own stability, many of which are dehumanizing such as cloning embryos. Perhaps worst of all, according to the book, is that the humans of this seemingly distant future, with a few exceptions, accept wholeheartedly these measures because they are brainwashed to do so. However unrealistic it may seem on the surface, with reflection, I found a strikingly large number of connections and comparisons to the world in which we live.

The first aspect of the novel’s world that it draws our attention to is that people are indoctrinated from the start of their existence to follow the rules society gives them and accept their place in society. Although we do not (yet) use technology to clone zygotes and construct entire fetuses in factories, as in Brave New World, it is notable that the recent past has seen a drastic decrease in the time between a child’s birth and their entry into the educational system. While many years ago children would stay at home until kindergarten or the first grade and enter at the age of six or seven, now children go to daycares and all sorts of other educational institutions well before that age – possibly even three or four. Brave New World also speaks to a lack of and shunning of motherhood in its fictitious world, which may be compared to the lack of interaction between parents and children in our own world as well as a stigma against being a homemaker and a conjugate norm of being an active part of the workforce. And while we do not have children listen to voice recordings of phrases being spoken repeatedly during their sleep to hypnotize them as a part of the educative process, it is noteworthy that education in the earliest stages often takes the shape of repeated words and phrases. We all learn very early in our lives the days of the week and the names of the months, for example, by repetition, along with the pledge of allegiance and a school song. I can still remember the full pledge of allegiance and even though I may almost never think about it, I have learned to associate my country, the United States, with phrases such as “liberty and justice for all” and “one nation indivisible,” however true those may be. From the beginning we learn to accept society and what is given to us first. Later on, we MIGHT learn to be critical of it as well.

And that’s not guaranteed either. In Brave New World, very few people are critical of the norms of society and most have been brainwashed to accept it. While it is not nearly as robust here, there is certainly a large population of people that believe that the United States is the best nation in the world. While some come to this conclusion after a good deal of critical and comparative analysis of the United States and other similar nations, many seem to give in to an irrational, nationalistic pride. And those that are the most harshly critical are typically marginalized. In Brave New World, the characters that criticize society are asked to be moved to small islands where they will not influence and disrupt society. Here criticism, especially larger, more insinuating criticisms, are generally constrained to academic journals while most of the population continues to listen to the media and politicians who only seem to entrench the current social structures and convince us to accept them. While is it not geographically removed, it is still more difficult to access. Philosophers such as Michel Foucault and Slavoj Žižek have already made significant progress in building criticisms of our society, but we don’t seem to be reading much of Foucault and Žižek, especially in comparison to news networks (though that is also an issue of the difficult of reading philosophers like Foucault and Žižek).

Perhaps the most important point is unfortunately only tacitly implied in Brave New World. Because we live entirely within our society and only have access to knowledge generated by its institutions, namely education and the media, many of us cannot take a perspective entirely divorced of it and entirely unbiased. We are probably doing a lot of things that are like Brave New World, but because we have been conditioned, like the people of Brave New World, to accept it, we will have at least a far more difficult time accepting that our world is like Brave New World. And however much I liken our world to Brave New World and however much you believe in what I have said in this post, our world is probably more like Brave New World than however much you think it is or this post purports it to be.

 

The Irrelevance of Death: A Reader’s Response to Slaughterhouse-Five

Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim and his experience as a weak, cowardly soldier during World War Two, his life following the war as an optometrist, and his trip to Tralfamadore, an alien-inhabited planet far away from Earth. Throughout the book, Slaughterhouse-Five seems to be making the argument that death is not a significant event – it is not something that is truly “bad.” Death is an event that ends one’s life and what seems to matter in Slaughterhouse-Five is not that people have died but that they have lived at some point in time.

To begin, the book constantly refers death in a very neutral, unaffected tone. In fact, with many characters, Vonnegut will introduce them and tell us immediately how they die later on. When Edgar Derby, just one example of this patter, is introduced in the book, Vonnegut almost immediately tells us that he was later shot by a firing squad in Dresden soon after it was destroyed because he stole a teapot and was tried and found guilty for plundering. The paragraph, like every other that describes death, ends with “so it goes,” showing the abject lack of emotional response to death. To add to the effect, plenty of other soldiers obtained spoils of war, such as the diamond Billy found in the pocket of the coat he was given at the prison camp he was taken to, and they were not killed. Even when describing the deaths of more than 300,000 people in the firebombing of Dresden, Vonnegut remains entirely neutral and disinterested. Thus, it seems that death shouldn’t be a large concern, according to Vonnegut.

The book also features several scenes of when Billy lives on Tralfamadore, which seem to show that we cannot change our fate. On Tralfamadore, Billy lives in a cage at a zoo where Tralfamadorians can come observe him. He goes about his regular, day-to-day activities with the Tralfamadorians watching him. In addition, the Tralfamadorians kidnap Montana Wildhack, a very sexually attractive celebrity, and bring her to live with Billy on Tralfamadore. Tralfamadore here seems to be representing what we most desire – attention from others, sexually pleasing partners, etc. In addition, Tralfamadorians are capable of seeing in four dimensions, allowing them to ignore timelines that are violent and unattractive and only “see” timelines that are pleasing and desirable. Vonnegut seems to be saying with this that humans want to be able to ignore suffering and only experience pleasurable scenes, but cannot and are “stuck” (as Vonnegut refers to people other than Billy) in their timelines and forced to go through the predetermined life they are destined to live. Since we cannot change our fate, when we die seems to matter even less because we seem to not have much control over it. Death will come at some point and so we should focus on how we live our lives until then.

Finally, to hit the point home, Vonnegut refers to people constantly living forever in their timelines. Since Tralfamadorians can see in four dimensions, they can see people who are already dead living their lives in the past. They are confused when Billy talks of how unfortunate death is because to them, everyone who is living, has lived, or will live in the future has always been living, just in different four-dimensional spaces. The only thing that separates different people’s lives is the gaps in time-space, which suggests that nothing distinguishes a living from a dead person. We are all people that will live our lives at some point, so death shouldn’t matter. All that we should be concerned about it how people lived their lives, how we will live now and how people will live in the future.

 

They Just Don’t Get “Planning Ahead”: A Reader’s Response to Beowulf

In Europe, it would be hard to argue that Roman culture has not been a large force in shaping Western culture. Indeed, especially after the Renaissance, much of European culture has been greatly influenced, at least, by Roman culture, and one could say that it has largely defined what we consider “Western culture” which is shared by Europeans and Americans to some extent, especially with the values and concepts of imperialism, growth, domination, etc. The northern Germanic tribes that we sometimes group together as “Vikings,” however were very different, and Beowulf provides some perspective on those differences. Perhaps the largest difference between the Romans and the Vikings was that the Vikings lacked long-term vision and focused most of their values on individuals’ lives rather than the tribe’s long-term prosperity.

Beowulf, the character, is described many times throughout the book as an incredible warrior. He defeats Grendel, his mother, and a dragon within his lifetime, each seen as an incredible feat. He is so renowned by his strength that many neighboring tribes fear him. However, as soon as he dies by a poisoned wound from the dragon, his tribe is found suddenly extremely vulnerable because all the other warriors there are cowards. Most Western cultures and modes of thought would judge Beowulf as a massive failure because, while he was able to prove himself as an incredible individual, he was unable to sustain long-term security for his tribe even after his death. However, the narrator is still convinced that Beowulf was a great warrior. Thus, we are led to conclude that Viking culture simply doesn’t have a concept of long-term prosperity or security and only values the individual achievements of a man in his lifetime.

And the book has plenty of other examples showing this emphasis of one’s accomplishments pre-mortem. Each of the previous Danish kings, Shield Sheafson, Beow, and Hrothgar, were renowned mainly for their individual accomplishments and reputations. The narrator does discuss the continuous line of good kings, but does not directly emphasize that the prosperity of the next king would make the previous any better. So, the longevity of the line did not have any effect on how any single king was regarded. In fact, Hrothgar had already declined in his lifetime as a result of Grendel’s rise to power, but his previous accomplishments are still seen as praised and he is still seen as a good king. He was not able to achieve long-term prosperity, but that doesn’t matter to the narrator or to the culture. All it is concerned with is the man’s individual accomplishments that he brought about with his own strength in his own lifetime.

I wonder what influence you all believe Viking culture has had on today’s culture in comparison with Roman/Western culture? I would see some of both – some valuation of long-term prosperity and domination from Roman culture and some emphasis on one’s individual achievements from Viking culture. I’m curious, though as to what you guys think.