"The Second Bakery Attack"

This short story revolves around a newlywed couple who has been married for only two weeks and is still getting adjusted with living together. One night, they both awoke at the same moment in the middle of the night with stomachs filled with hunger. The wife told the husband that ever since they got married, she has had this hunger in the pit of her stomach, like never before. The husband then began to tell his wife a story of an adventure he took part in ten years prior with his then-best friend: the attack of the bakery. At the time, they were poor kids who just wanted some food, but wouldn't get a job; so they "robbed" the bakery. It wasn't a robbery, though, because their minds were on the bread, not the money. They just wanted some fresh, warm homemade bread to fill their stomachs for a little while. It lasted them a week. While telling his story, the husband kept some significant, but private, facts from his wife, and claimed that the adventure became a curse, and that's why he'd had a deep hunger feeling ever since. The wife believed that she caught the curse from her husband, and the only way to abandon it was to commit a second bakery attack. They got in the car at two-thirty in the morning and drove around the entire city of Tokyo in search of an all-night bakery. They ended up only finding a McDonald's, so instead of "robbing" loaves of bread, they stole thirty Big Macs, drove to an empty parking lot, and devoured the burgers.

Throughout the story, the protagonist included inner-thought metaphors about him on a little boat in the ocean, and how he sees a volcano peeking out of the ocean floor. The first time that he mentioned this metaphor, he was describing his hunger: the water was deflecting the perception of distance, so he didn't have a clue as to how far away he was from the volcano. This described his hunger because his stomach felt like a black hole, an indescribable hunger that would never be satisfied. When his wife was looking for any possibility of food in their home, he felt unsettled by the clarity of the ocean water and he experienced an odd sense of emptiness. Later on, he was trying not to feel jarred by his excruciating hunger, and he noticed that the water was even clearer than before, and that it was almost invisible, as if the boat was floating in air, without any support. Finally, after the husband and wife had finished eating, he took a last glance at his underwater life, and the volcano was gone. All that was left were small, rippling waves at the surface of the ocean. This metaphor was really successful in capturing the protagonist's emotions through the whole story, and provided much more meaning to the story. The metaphor was a huge, untold thought in the main character's mind, and he purposely didn't tell his wife about it, just like the secrets of the first bakery attack story.

I enjoyed this story because it was a nice, simple scene with a very significant metaphor throughout. The extended metaphor brought feeling and meaning to the story and let the readers step into the protagonist's mind.

"The Little Green Monster"

In this collection of short stories, Haruki Murakami tends to write mostly in first person, which, in my opinion, makes the story more believable, even the stories that are not realistic at all, like "The Little Green Monster." This story opens with a scene of the main character, who was never given a name, sitting in her home looking out to her garden with a large oak tree because she had nothing else to do. Suddenly, she heard a loud, constant rumbling brewing from the roots of the tree. A little green, scaly monster poked its head out of the hole that it formed, and began to make its way to the main character's front door. It was able to figure out how to unlock the door, so it snuck in and finally reached the woman. It professed its love and said that it was going to propose to her. The monster was able to read her mind, so she began to torture it with her great imagination in every possible punishment she could think of. The monster became so upset it turned a deep shade of purple and started to diminish. The woman continued harming it, and it kept shrinking and becoming more invisible. At the end of the story, the monster was nothing more than a shadow on the floor, and the woman felt a sense of accomplishment. Even though this story was only five pages long, it was filled with great detail and description of every aspect of the plot.

I liked the way that Murakami described the monster as it was coming out of the Earth, especially when he said that "the beast's eyes were exactly like a human's" and how they showed the it's feelings. The monster's mannerisms seemed very humanlike as well, such as its ability to knock on the main character's door and unlock it, the smirk smile on its face, and its way of speaking. It also had superhuman qualities, like the ability to read the main character's mind.

I feel as though the little green monster was a metaphor for the main character's life, how it was somehow holding her hostage in her own house. She mentioned that her house was the only one in the area, which implied that she lived in either a rural or a wooded place that suffocated her and didn't allow her to have the freedom that she wished for. When the monster was outside of her house, she felt trapped because she had no way of escaping, which was probably how she felt about her life. She could have been having struggles with her husband, which would be why the monster was introduced as a love interest. When the main character finally caused the monster to disappear, that might have been symbolic to her breaking free from her trapped lifestyle. I think that if the story would have continued, the main character would have stood up to her husband and moved out to the city, fiinally making her life the way she wanted it to be.