Misnomers in Murakami

 The signifier, the signified, their relationship, and their arbitrariness are four things that Murakami is known to play with in his writing. The most common way this is realized is through names of characters and places—some of Murakami's most postmodernist thoughts and musings are even revealed in dialogue between characters. One effect of this distortion is to dehumanize what is misnamed, to purposefully mischaracterize its essence, producing the jarring effect. This effect is delivered in two parts: the first is the shock caused by calling something the wrong name. the second is looking at that deeper. I applied this line of thinking to two stories where people and things are misnamed, "The Second Bakery Attack" and "Barn Burning".

In "The Second Bakery Attack", what they attack is not a bakery at all it is a McDonald's. First, the reader experiences the shock from hearing that a McDonald's is apparently close enough. Surprisingly, the reader accepts this explanation because when considered alongside the hysteria and ridiculousness of the situation, this does not seem completely out of line. The second part of the effect is far more interesting. What does it do to this McDonald's to call it close to a bakery? My first impression is that, if anything, a McDonald's is a soulless corporate version of a bakery. This means that the couple is attempting to relive an experience of the past, but are doing so in a completely inauthentic way. This misnaming initiates the comparison in the reader's mind, allowing the conclusion that the couple is definitely fanatic but there is something inauthentic or unreachable about their frenzy, stopped by modernity or corporatism. 

In "Barn Burning", "barn"/"greenhouse" is a stand-in for women. Burning barns means killing women. This distortion has more reasons behind it, particularly to obscure the crime being committed when it is discussed openly, which the narrator does not investigate until it is too late. Before making the connection, the barns are described as run-down places that no one would miss if they disappeared. Even without knowing this is actually a description of people, this description serves as his reason to burn them down and he feels justified in this, yet still covers up what he is actually doing. In this story, the consequence of referring to women as barns is the fact that people then feel entitled to burn them as they please. Here, the misnaming and shock are not the only factors driving the plot. The act of burning solely because of the way they were able to be characterized is used as an argument against this haphazard naming or misnaming because of the negative result (death) obtained by its full application.

Tim