Murakami Salutes Orwell: How "1Q84" Pays Homage to "1984" (Part 3)

When a totalitarian regime or a theocracy imposes its narrow rules on the written word, dramatic things can happen to a people’s history. This point is touched upon early on – in Book 1, Chapter 20 – by Tengo when he is introducing Orwell’s 1984 to a clueless Fuka-Eri. He tells her how in the novel the regime is constantly rewriting history, distorting it to the extent where no-one can remember the actual past. He tells her that “robbing people of their actual history is the same as robbing them of part of themselves,” and labels the act a “crime.” “Our memory,” he says, “is made up of our individual memories and our collective memories. The two are intimately linked. And history is our collective memory. If our collective memory is taken from us – is rewritten – we lose the ability to sustain our true selves” (257).

Simply put, individuals who live under a totalitarian regime will always have to suppress their true selves – if they do not want to suffer punishment. What follows next is a long section on the Russian writer Chekhov and his book Sakhalin Island (an account of an exiled people called the Gilyaks), further illustrating the powerlessness of imaginative minds that live under such a regime. (By the time Chekhov visited Sakhalin in 1890, the reactionary and orthodox Alexander the Third had ruled Russia for almost ten years.) Tengo identifies with Chekhov’s “inconsolable melancholy”:

What Chekhov must have felt there at the end of the earth was an overwhelming sense of powerlessness. To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to flee from Russia, the more deeply Russia swallowed them (281).

Tengo’s mental state can be said to be comparable to that of Chekhov living at the end of the nineteenth century. Like Chekhov, he is restricted by a larger-than-life dogmatic force. His freedom as an individual is severely curbed, since ghost-writing Air Chrysalis has already “sealed his fate.” However, the endeavour, as I have previously mentioned, has also caused a monumental shift in him. He now realises that there is no point in rewriting the past. That will not change the present circumstances. What he needs to do is to “take a hard, honest look at the past while standing at the crossroads of the present” (386, Book 2). Only then could he create a future, one that he is free to shape with words of his choice.  

The role of words (or Literature) should never be underestimated. In Book 3, Chapter 17, Aomame, in a telephone conversation with Tamaru, tells him of her experience of reading Proust’s In Search of Lost Time. Even though she admits that she cannot fully grasp Proust’s world and that there is “a considerable gap” between her and the book, she says: “It feels like I’m experiencing someone else’s dream. Like we’re simultaneously sharing feelings” (204).

The process of reading, then, is depicted as a communal albeit abstract act. It unites the reader and the writer, even though there is an unbridgeable gap between them. It is a sharing of personal feelings and private dreams. Literature is also what brings Tengo and Fuka-Eri together, making an unlikely pair out of them, and it is through Fuka-Eri that Tengo and Aomame consummate their love for each other.

In Book 2, Chapter 17, it is Tamaru who underlines the significance of the creative process when he speaks of a genius orphan he used to know. The boy, a victim of the Savant Syndrome, could carve out life-like rats out of blocks of wood, and he would do so with total concentration. Tamaru’s encounter with the boy had a deep impact on him:

It’s just that I still have this vivid image of him “pulling rats out” of blocks of woof with total concentration, and that has remained an important mental landscape for me, a reference point. It teaches me something – or tries to. People need things like that to go on living – mental landscapes that have meaning for them… (547)

These lines further prove that the creative process (or “mental landscape”) is a crucial element in the thinking man’s make-up. Without it, he would have no self, no independence of mind, no meaningful existence. For such a man to live under the iron rules of a dictator would mean a certain spiritual death.

1Q84 ends ambiguously. Tengo and Aomame return to 1984, the world from which they originally came. But even so, Aomame cannot be certain it is the same old 1984. She suspects that whatever this world is, it must have “its own threats, its own dangers, must be filled with its own type of riddles and contradictions” (363, Book 3). This tells the reader that the world, whether it is real or fictional, will always be rife with perils, and there will always be obstacles to overcome.

Hope is introduced in the final paragraphs, where Aomame reflects that she is willing to face any dangers waiting for her as long as she, Tengo, and the baby she is carrying are together. This is where 1Q84 goes down a different route from Orwell’s 1984. Whereas in Orwell’s work, we witness that even Love is not strong enough to withstand tyranny (Winston caves in eventually and betrays Julia), 1Q84 presents the opposite view. Tyranny may break bones and spirits, but Unity will for ever remain its worthy counterforce.

All page numbers refer to the 2011 Harvill Secker edition (published in two volumes).