The Story Archive

The Elephant Vanishes

Haruki Murakami · 1993 CE · Short Story · Japanese · Contemporary

Seventeen pieces written across the 1980s and gathered for English-language publication: a young couple hold up a McDonald's at dawn to lift a curse, a woman stops sleeping altogether and reads Anna Karenina through the night, small men climb out of the television, and an old elephant walks out of a suburban enclosure with its keeper and is never found. The register stays deadpan and domestic until it is not. Several of these supplied openings Murakami later expanded into full-length works.

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Attributes

Genre
PsychologicalFantasySatire
Theme
Isolation & AlienationIdentity & SelfMemory & TimeExistential Absurdity
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanWanderer
Plot structure
EpisodicIceberg / EllipsisOpen Ending
Symbol / motif
The BeastThe CityThe Screen
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
Magical RealistIronicAbsurdist
Culture / tradition
Japanese

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