Blog Post #4

 Murakami’s Sleep is a subtle portrayal of a woman reclaiming her autonomy and defying the norms constraining women and mothers. While sharing a similar overall theme and imagery to Chopin’s Awakening, I felt that the protagonist in Sleep was less self-aware of her plight and indifference towards her husband and child than Edna. With the onset of her sleeplessness, she finally begins living life for her own enjoyment, or at the very least she becomes aware of the life she’s been living and the robotic routines she has fallen into. In this sleepless world, she is able to read without being concerned with thoughts about others and she can swim as long as she pleases without restricting her leisure time. Even a pleasure as simple as chocolate is again savored. In fact, after her night paralysis, it appears that the protagonist has entered the “other” world– a world where medicine and physics do not apply and she is able to go on living in a paradise without rest. In fact, she worries that this restlessness is an abysmal, eternal death that she may be experiencing. 

Both characters’ fates are sealed for them, as marked by an inability to recognize one's self and body. In The Awakening, after storming out of church, Edna lays down on Madame Antoine’s bed and begins looking at, as if noticing her own body for the first time, her own arms. In Sleep, the protagonist looks in the mirror and barely recognizes herself in the reflection because she looks so youthful and alive despite having not rested in 17 days. They both then die in similar ways. Edna describes the ocean as a wandering abyss that invites the soul, while Sleep’s protagonist is enveloped in a dark abyss before being confronted by the two attackers. Despite their attempts to free themselves from their domestic cages, they must come to terms with the fact that they will never be able to escape and cannot go on living like that– when Edna throws her wedding ring to the ground, ironically the servant appears and tells her to put it back on, this small display of free-will is immediately shut down and she is reminded of her responsibilities. Unable to handle the notion that they no longer belong only to themselves, they enter the abyss. The contrast, however, is that Edna goes willingly, almost peacefully, while at the last moment, the woman is frightened in her car at the proximity of death.

- Sarah