Analysis of Haruki Murakani´s Town of Cats

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Town of Cats written by Haruki Murakami, is an exquisite short story about a young man named Tengo. The story describes one particular day in Tengo’s life while also reflecting on his unimaginable childhood. The story provides an immense amount of information on Tengo’s relationship with his father, especially at a younger age. The suffering relationship between father and son is very evident in the story.
The setting takes place in many different locations in the short. The author mastered creating a story within a story and magnificently mastered shift tenses. The story starts off with Tengo at a train station in Koenji. “He had nothing planned that day.”The story then stated that, “Wherever he went and whatever he did (or didn’t do) was entirely up to him.” (Town,1) It is important to the story because it shows a sense of power that was absent in Tengo’s childhood. After pondering on what he should do for the day, he decides to visit his father, who resided in a sanatorium in Chikura. The sanatorium is for people who suffer from cognitive disorders. After deciding to visit his father, the narrator describes Tengo’s relationship with his father. He stated that, “He had never much liked the man, and his father had no special love for him either.” (Town, 2) The reader then finds out that Tengo has only visited his father twice since he was put in the sanatorium, four years ago. The story then discusses why Tengo doesn’t like Sundays. We discover that as a child Tengo worked every Sunday for his father, who worked as a bill collector for the NHK, Japan’s quasi-governmental radio and television network. Tengo dreaded Sundays because he went door-to-door with his father and never had much time to be a kid on the weekends. Tengo w...

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...r stays in the town because he feels like it is where he is meant to be. It is crucial because Tengo wants to know where he belongs but he is so lost in his solitude. The character in the short, gave hope to Tengo that he too will also find where he belongs. Both themes were present in both “Town of Cats.”
Haruki Murakami really delivered an unforgettable story of a severe barrier between a father and a son. He shows that things aren’t always what they seem and that everyone deserves to be somewhere where they belong. Murakami provides an appreciation to literature in the short by showing how influential writing is to people. The author showed that not all relationships between people and family members are perfect. “Town of Cats,” showed both realism and fantasy, which was remarkable. The exposition shows how a boring day can be so literarily interesting.

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