The Elephant Vanishes Water Analysis

The motif of water is used as a symbol in the novel, The Elephant Vanishes, which is crucial to this work. Water symbolises different ideas in the stories Sleep and The Elephant Vanishes. In Sleep, water symbolises the fear of the protagonist and has caused effects on the protagonist. However, in the story - The Elephant Vanishes, water is used to reinforce the idea that people in the town are aware of the disappearance of the elephant and express the sense of desolation.

In Sleep, water represents the fear of the protagonist. In the story, the protagonist is a housewife who spends seventeen days without sleep. In these seventeen days, she has a nightmare continuously where an old man pours water on her feet. Murakami starts the story with

After waking up, she goes to the living room to drink a cup of brandy and read Anna Karenina until late morning. Murakami suggests that she does this because “I wanted to warm my body more, to calm my nerves down more” . Unfortunately, it has the opposite effect, which she stays up all night without feeling tired. She also has more energy than before. This continues for seventeen days. Later, Murakami states “Though the terror was leaving me, the trembling of my body would not stop” . Murakami states that the protagonist swims longer than usual, “I…swam my usual thirty minutes…I swam another fifteen minutes, ending with a crawl at maximum speed for two full lengths” . The protagonist does not feel tired, “I was out of breath, but still felt nothing but energy welling up inside my body” . Murakami here suggests that this is bizarre because usually she would not swim for this long and would feel tired after swimming. Later, “I ran the house without a thought in my head, feeding snacks to my son, chatting with my husband” . The protagonist would usually not talk to her husband because she does not like him. Later in the story, the protagonist gives up on sleep, “it occurred to me what a simple thing reality is, how easy it is to make it work” . This also shows that she has gone a significant change. Water in this story represents the fear of the protagonist, which causes trauma but eventually results in

The empty elephant house is described as having “an air of doom and desolation that hung there like a huge, oppressive rain cloud” . Murakami uses the image of rain to express the sense of sadness. Later, Murakami states “A soundless rain went on falling outside the lounge’s panoramic window, the lights of the city sending blurry messages through the mist” . This description represents how the protagonist is putting force on the existence of a thing that is ruthless and corrosive. The author states that the protagonist starts their conversation with the missing elephant. However, Murakami states “I could see that the ice had melted and that the water was working its way through the cocktail like a tiny ocean current” . Murakami here is comparing the melting ice in the editor’s drink to the ocean to create an image of an atmosphere which dissolves in a force that is both insidious and veiled. In this story, water is a reflection of the vanishing and the idea of impermanence. It suggests the narrator’s sense of being unsettled by the world out of balance. Water is also a depiction of an action just like time wiping the memories as it passes and the sense of