Possible 'Other World' in Murakami's "Sleep"

 As we have previously discussed in class, the presence of an 'other world' is very common in Murakami's work. In Norwegian Wood the 'other world' is the facility that Naoko lives in and in A Wild Sheep Chase it is the rural village in Hokkaido. Obviously these places have large significance to the narrative of both works and are also a place where the protagonist undergoes some significant psychological change. This led me to wonder if there is an 'other world' in Murakami's short story "Sleep." 

There clearly isn't a physically distinct 'other world' in this text, as the narrator doesn't go on a journey of any sorts, but I think that the 'other world' in this work could be the world that the narrator enters into while she is reading. Reading becomes something that the narrator does instead of sleeping in this work. An essential biological need (sleep) is substituted with reading, something that is typically thought of as non-essential/for pleasure, yet the narrator does not seem to suffer any adverse reactions due to this switch. Reading then seems to be almost an essential biological process for the narrator, something she must do in order to function. Sleep, and dreaming, is also often thought of as entering a different world, the realm of the subconscious or some other plane of existence. In replacing reading for sleep, I think Murakami is saying that reading has a similar function: it has the ability to transport the reader into a world that is not their own, thus an 'other world'. 

I think this is quite clear from the way the narrator describes her reading experience. She says, "I found myself capable of reading Anna Karenina with unbroken concentration" and then a bit later, "I plunged into Anna Karenina and kept reading until the sun came up" (Murakami 88, 89). We see that while the narrator is reading her concentration is completely focused on the story, so much so that she forgets the world around her and time seems to function differently while she is reading. She does not recognize the typical processes of the world around her because she is engrossed in another world. This is evident in the way she almost forgets to make lunch for her husband, even though this is a task she does every day. It is clear that her experience in the world of the book she is reading fundamentally alters her internally, thus aligning it with characters' experiences with the 'other world' in other Murakami texts. 

-Maggie Farren