56 pages • 1 hour read
Haruki MurakamiA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
“The Wind-Up Bird and Tuesday’s Women”
“The Second Bakery Attack”
“The Kangaroo Communiqué”
“On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning”
“Sleep”
“The Fall of the Roman Empire, the 1881 Indian Uprising, Hitler’s Invasion of Poland, and the Realm of Raging Winds”
“Lederhosen”
“Barn Burning”
“The Little Green Monster”
“Family Affair”
“A Window”
“TV People”
“A Slow Boat to China”
“The Dancing Dwarf”
“The Last Lawn of the Afternoon”
“The Silence”
“The Elephant Vanishes”
Character Analysis
Themes
Symbols & Motifs
Important Quotes
Essay Topics
A university student in his early twenties works for a year at the “The Pen Society,” a company that helps members improve their letter-writing skills. As a “Pen Master,” the narrator responds to letters from members, providing corrections and comments to help them improve. After leaving the company, the student accepts an invitation from one of his correspondents, a 32-year-old woman with no children. The woman promises to cook the narrator a hamburger steak (the subject of their last correspondence, quoted at the beginning of the story).
The narrator enjoys his dinner with the woman as the two discuss literature and writing. The narrator praises the strengths of the woman’s writing, telling her he enjoyed her letters, even though he “could hardly remember anything she had written” (194). Years later, the narrator continues to think of the woman when he passes by her neighborhood and looks up at the windows of her apartment building, trying to remember which one is hers. He says that “the central question” (194) of the piece is whether he should have slept with her, a question he still debates.
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1Q84
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