Possible Inspiration: Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried

    by Nobel

    Near the end of his non-fiction essay "Abandoning a Cat," Haruki Murakami writes that each raindrop has "its own emotions, its own history, its own duty to carry that history," likening the raindrop's duty to his own responsibility of telling his father's (and his nation's) history (11). The phrase "carry that history" paired with the wartime context suggests a link between Murakami's essay and Tim O'Brien's novel The Things They Carried, a seminal work chronicling O'Brien's experiences in the Vietnam War. Straddling the line between autobiography and fiction, The Things They Carried questions the boundary between truth and lie, exploring themes such as American colonialism, masculinity, memory, trauma, and storytelling. These themes crop up repeatedly in Murakami's works as well, albeit through a Japanese rather than American lens. Murakami actually translated The Things They Carried into Japanese, confirming that he knows the work and probably takes inspiration from how O'Brien tackles these issues. "Abandoning a Cat" seems particularly rife with comparisons to O'Brien's novel, particularly in the emphasis on storytelling, history, and war, but Murakami's other works also echo with O'Brien's influence.

    "Abandoning a Cat" centers around Murakami's memories of his father, with memory playing an important role throughout the essay. "Of course I have a lot of memories of my father," the essay begins, and Murakami clarifies that "the memories that remain most vividly in my mind[...] involve more ordinary events" (1). Murakami's memories of his father are mostly mundane, but it is their mundanity that gives them sincerity and importance. In The Things They Carried, O'Brien places similar emphasis on mundane memories, writing that the "war wasn't all terror and violence[...] I remember Norman Bowker and Henry Dobbins playing checkers every evening before dark" (20). Both texts value these seemingly insignificant remembrances, with Murakami describing the incident with the cat in much more detail than his reunion on his father's deathbed, which a traditional autobiographical work would deem 'more important'. O'Brien explains that "I write about these [memories], and remembering is turned into a kind of rehappening" (21). Perhaps this quote sheds more light on "Abandoning a Cat," with Murakami writing about his father to re-experience him, to let him live on in the work. "The thing about remembering is that you don't forget," O'Brien writes; Murakami agrees, the cat's return symbolizing the inability to abandon the past, with Murakami's father unable to abandon his wartime trauma and Murakami unable to abandon his father (22). 

    Both works also mediate on storytelling and truth. Murakami wonders why his father, usually reticent about the war, tells Murakami about a Chinese soldier's beheading, contemplating that "he must have felt a compelling need to relate the story to his son[...] even if this meant it would remain an open wound" (6). Storytelling becomes a need for Murakami's father (and possibly Murakami himself) even when the stories hurt, and his haikus show that this need for artistic creation never abates. O'Brien dives deeper into what stories can do: "a story[...] make[s] the dead talk" (149). O'Brien uses stories to resurrect the dead, even when they never really existed; nothing in The Things They Carried actually happened, and yet sometimes "story-truth is truer[...] than happening-truth" (115). Murakami's father's story about the Chinese soldier may be his way to 'make the dead talk', giving the Chinese soldier "respect" (6). In the same vein, "Abandoning a Cat" may be Murakami's way to make his father talk, to understand him in a way he never did alive. O'Brien's quote may also give insight into A Wild Sheep Chase, where the dead literally come back to life, and the truth and fiction get blurred in the other world. Sometimes the story truth is truer than the truth, and Murakami implies that whether or not the supernatural events in A Wild Sheep Chase actually happened, the effect on Boku is still real, still true. 

    "I'm skimming across the surface of my own history," O'Brien writes, "and when I[...] come down[...] I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life through a story" (158). "Com[ing] down" harkens to the last line in "Abandoning a Cat," where Murakami thinks about "how very difficult it is to climb straight down to the ground" (11). To 'come down' might represent going back to reality, getting your feet back on the ground. For O'Brien, though, coming back to reality does not stop storytelling; instead, he shows how reality is constructed through story, and how story, and history, can save lives. Reading Murakami's essay through this lens, "Abandoning a Cat" may represent an attempt to revive his father's and nation's history, to resurrect dead parents, kittens, soldiers, and memories. 

Tim O'Brien's The Things They Carried: https://lessonbank.kyae.ky.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/TTTC_Full_Text.pdf