The Second Bakery Attack

1. The Second Bakery Attack By Haruki Murakami

2. Haruki Murakami • Born in post-war Japan on Jan 12th, 1949. • Heavily influenced by Western culture, particularly Western music and literature. • His first job was working in a record store and he later opened a coffeehouse which hosted jazz musicians in the evenings. • Murakami is a keen marathon runner and triathlete.

3. Landmarks of murakami’s style • Dream-like and surreal ideas and images. • Largely rather stark and straightforward prose. • Often uses references to ‘pop-culture’. • Common themes in his writing are alienation and loneliness.

4. The Second Bakery Attack:Basic Summary • A newlywed couple wake up in the middle of the night sharing an unbearable hunger. • The wife attempts to procure food; the husband daydreams and arranges beercan ringpulls. • The husband tells his wife about the other time he experienced such a hunger, when he attacked a bakery with his friend. • Convinced he is cursed, the wife insists they attack another bakery to undo the hex. • Failing to find a bakery at 2.30am, they settle for a McDonalds and take their fill of burgers. • The wife sleeps.

5. The Husband • Secretive – “It wasn’t true that nothing happened… I didn’t want to talk to talk about them with her.” • Immature – “While I was drinking… she searched the kitchen shelves like a squirrel in November.” • Daydreamer – (Cinematic image) • Lazy – “We didn’t want to work. We were absolutely clear on that.” • Reluctant/Nervous/Scared – “Do we really have to do this?”/ “My ears always get itchy when I’m nervous… making gun barrel wobble up and down, which seemed to bother them.”/ “You’d better do what she says.”

6. The Wife • Dominant – “Whenever my wife expressed such an opinion (or thesis) back then, it reverberated in my ears with the authority of a revelation.” • Stiff/Humourless – “I expected her to ignore my attempt at humor, and she did.” • Dedicated – “You have to finish what you left unfinished.” • Inquisitive – “Once she gets interested in a story, she has to hear it all the way through.” • Mysterious - “Why my wife owned a shotgun, I had no idea. Or ski masks. Neither of us had ever skied. But she didn't explain and I didn't ask. Married life is weird, I felt.” • Organised – “My wife then pulled a ball of twine from her pocket - she came equipped - and tied the three to a post as expertly as if she were sewing on buttons.”

7. SETTING – NEWLYWEDS’ HOME “With only two weeks of married life behind us, we had yet to establish a precise conjugal understanding with regard to the rules of dietary behavior. Let alone anything else.” “We've only been living together for two weeks,” she said, "but all this time I've been feeling some kind of weird presence… Like there's this heavy, dusty curtain that hasn't been washed for years, hanging down from the ceiling.”

8. SETTING - BAKERY “One of those ordinary little neighbourhood bakeries right in the middle of a block of shops. Some old guy ran it who did everything himself. Baked in the morning, and when he sold out, he closed up for the day.” The baker ran his shop alone signifying his dedication. Having employees would make his work easier, but he refuses to compromise. When he runs out of bread, his work is done for the day: the baker’s interests are not purely centred around money.

9. SETTING – MCDONALD’S "McDonald's is not a bakery," I pointed out to her. "It's like a bakery," she said. "Sometimes you have to compromise.” McDonald’s itself is a compromise, in that they produce fast food which will satisfy in the short term but is not nourishing or substantial. Wearing a McDonald's hat, the girl behind the counter flashed me a McDonald's smile and said, “Welcome to McDonald's.” Staff are trained to use token congenial phrases which are artificial and lack humanity. McDonald’s never closes – it is a business first and foremost and their interests are mostly commercial.

10. SYMBOLISM - SLEEP “For some reason, we woke up at exactly the same moment.” “…the only customers there were a young couple - students, probably - and they were facedown on the plastic table, sound asleep. Their two heads and two strawberry-milk-shake cups were aligned on the table like an avant-garde sculpture. They slept the sleep of the dead.” “The front shutter made a huge racket when it closed, like an empty bucket being smashed with a baseball bat, but the couple sleeping at their table was still out cold. Talk about a sound sleep: I hadn't seen anything like that in years.”

11. SYMBOLISM - HUNGER “an unbearable hunger… the pangs struck with the force of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz. These were tremendous, overpowering hunger pangs.” “Onions are meant to be eaten with other things. They are not the kind of food you use to satisfy an appetite.” “I began to think that this was a special hunger, not one that could be satisfied through the mere expedient of taking it to an all-night restaurant on the highway.” “I've never been this hungry in my whole life,” she said. “I wonder if it has anything to do with being married.” “Something about this weird sense of absence - this sense of the existential reality of non-existence - resembled the paralyzing fear you might feel when you climb to the very top of a high steeple.” “I sent six Big Macs down to the cavern of my stomach, and she ate four. That left twenty Big Macs in the back seat. Our hunger - that hunger that had felt as if it could go on forever - vanished as the dawn was breaking.”

12. THE “CINEMATIC” IMAGE On several occasions, the narrator withdraws into a “cinematic image” to reflect his feelings of anxiety and fear of losing control. The image is of him alone “in a little boat”, a space too small to accommodate anyone else – this is indicative of his reluctance to commit fully to his marriage. The volcano is a clear symbol of danger and suggests the narrator feels threatened by the bond he has sealed with his wife. At the end of the story, his volcano has disappeared. This could be read as a happy ending, although the fact of the man’s lack of involvement in the attempt to reverse the curse could also signal that he has merely escaped the first challenge to his marriage. “The volcano was gone. The water's calm surface reflected the blue of the sky. Little waves - like silk pyjamas fluttering in a breeze - lapped against the side of the boat. There was nothing else. I stretched out in the bottom of the boat and closed my eyes, waiting for the rising tide to carry me where I belonged.”

13. WAGNER Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer primarily known for his operas. Wagner accused Jews of being a harmful and alien element in German culture. “With all our speaking and writing in favour of the Jews' emancipation, we always felt instinctively repelled by any actual, operative contact with them." He argued that Jewish musicians were only capable of producing shallow and artificial music. They therefore composed music to achieve popularity and, thereby, financial success, as opposed to creating genuine works of art.

14. WAGNER Adolf Hitler was an admirer of Wagner's music and saw in his operas an embodiment of his own vision of the German nation. There continues to be debate about the extent to which Wagner's views might have influenced Nazi thinking. As with the works of Friedrich Nietzsche, the Nazis used those parts of Wagner's thought that were useful for propaganda and ignored or suppressed the rest.

15. THEME Some themes of The Second Bakery Attack include: Destiny Karma Commitment Fortune For each of these themes, choose a quote from the story and provide analysis and evaluation to explain Murakami’s messages.