AbstractThis research focuses on Haruki Murakami's fantasy fiction, Kafka on the Shore, which chronicles the adventurous and metaphysical journey of a fifteen-year-old boy, Kafka Tamura, who leaves his home and his father behind in search of his identity which turned into a void when his mother and sister abandoned him in early childhood. Another key protagonist of the novel, Nakata, is a strange character with a forgetfulness and an uncanny ability to speak with cats. This exemplary and perhaps experimental tale takes us through two unique and strange characters through two parallel plot paths that eventually collide and gracefully conclude the journey of both. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why violent video games should not be banned"? Get an original essay This project explores Murakam's style of magical realism which is characterized by the conflation of temporal boundaries and dreams versus reality , in the context of Kafka and Nakata's search for individual identity amidst a consumerist crowd characterized by the imprints of rich folklore and culture. But at present, it mixes with the hustle and bustle of contemporary urban life imposing its own dimensions of loss of identity. This article dissects the elements of magical realism and Lacanian surrealism employed in the text, in relation to the fundamental theories of identity crisis and the Oedipal complex in the context of consumer society. The article further explores the areas of identity formation, as they relate to the two aforementioned major protagonists, and describes the turn of events that ultimately led them to rediscover their identities before returning to the real world that they had initially left behind.IntroductionThe term "magical realism" has been thrown around quite freely in recent times, especially since the publication of One Hundred Years of Solitude (1967). Many contemporary scholars have refused to use this term mainly because it was not well defined. Scholarly articles and collections such as Magical Realism: Theory, History, Community (1995) and Magic realism: Social Context and Discourse (1995) have successfully created a foundation for the next generation by establishing a thorough benchmark. Magical realism, although widely used in contemporary international literature, was believed to have its roots in Latin America, which was falsified by one of the basic tenets and claimed to have a rather universal scope. To define the concept, magical realism is a literary work or art form characterized by the inclusion of factual or a mythical element in seemingly realistic fiction. Matthew Strecher defines magical realism as "what happens when a highly detailed and realistic setting is invaded by something too strange to be believed." As Rogers proposes, magical realism has three main elements (or effects) that convey the different worldviews and these effects. relate to the ways in which this worldview is different from the “objective” view. In a text depicting magical realism: time is not linear, causality is subjective, and the magical and the ordinary are one. Some other perspectives on this style focus instead on the readers and their environment. As editors LP Zamora & W. B Faris write: “Magical realism often facilitates the fusion, or coexistence, of possible worlds, spaces, and systems that would be irreconcilable in other modes of fiction” (Lois Parkinson Zamora 5), ​​the basic principle This technique involves the assimilation of time differences, ambiguous boundariesbetween reality and dream, and magical appearances of strange characters and events, abundantly present in Kafka on the Shore. In one of the essays presented in the cited source, "reader textualization," a process according to Jon Thiem, by which the boundaries between the readers' world and that of the characters are magically erased. Most prominent writers in this genre have set their visionary tales in third world locations where myths and folklore feature prominently in the cultural landscape (Gioia np). In these tales, magical realism somehow blends into the literary landscape as its natural extension and thus dissolves. One of the first notable pieces of evidence seen in The Kingdom of This World is Carpentier's use of the literary form known as magical realism, which was in fact an adapted form of the European artistic aesthetic of Franz Roh (Lois Parkinson Zamora 19). In the prologue to his The Kingdom of this World, Alejo Carpentier says: “[T]he marvelous… does not depend on the idea that the marvelous is admirable because it is beautiful. Ugliness, deformity, everything terrible can be wonderful. Everything strange is wonderful. Now, I speak of the marvelous reality when I refer to certain things that have happened. This indicates that the coinage and origin of this style is not the exclusive work of Carpentier, but also of several of his contemporaries such as Gabriel Garcia Márquez. In Carpentier's work, we witness the juxtaposition of magical realism with a literary interpretation of Roh's magical realism, where he calls it "lo maravilloso real", meaning "the marvelous real". Surrealism began in the 20th century in France when rare writers Characters experimentally proposed the idea of ​​constructing reality from dreams. This notion is strongly influenced by Freudian psychoanalysis, where meaning exists beyond reality, more in the unconscious dimensions of reality. It is also considered an avant-garde movement in art and literature that hoped to unleash the creative potential of the unconscious, for example through the irrational juxtaposition of images. Intending to liberate thought, language, and human experience from the oppressive confines of rationalism, surrealism took over (Mann np). Founded by the poet André Breton in Paris in 1924, surrealism was intended to be a revolutionary movement capable of freeing the minds of the masses from the rational order of society. In this sense, the surrealist movement rhymes closely with magical realism where rational boundaries dissolve in a rather imperceptible way. In the construction of identity, the notion of I and self-awareness play a central role. According to Jacques Lacan, the child initially perceives himself as a partial organism unified with his mother. This consciousness is altered at the mirror stage when the child sees his reflection in his mother's eyes and recognizes himself as a whole being separate from her. Lacan suggested in his famous theory of the "mirror stage" that the structure of the Self itself was constituted by a disjointed montage composed of identifications of the child with seductive and threatening specular images of the totality which reflected but sharply contrasted with its fragmented and threatening environment. uncoordinated body. It is therefore useful to consider Lacanian psychoanalysis as an affirmation of many of the goals of surrealism. By affirming the lived realities of drives, Lacan affirms that life is lived through the structures and logics of montage. In other words, from a Lacanian point of view, reality is intrinsically surreal. Psychological realism being a branch of realism dealing with deeply related real-life experiences in the bedroomof human consciousness, surrealism goes far beyond and therefore sinks into the basin of the unconscious and the subconscious, thus increasing the hidden human territory. The Surrealists were particularly interested in the study and effects of dreams and hallucinations as well as the interpretation of sleeping and working conditions at the threshold of the conscious mind. This phenomenon is used beautifully in Murakami's Kafka on the Shore. Published in 2002, Kafka on the Shore written by novelist Haruki Murakami revolves around the story of Greek watching destiny and prophecy. Murakami primarily uses the techniques of magical realism to assert the importance of individual identity in the social flow of modern civilization. In doing so, it explores several dimensions of identity that have emerged and are cultivated in today's Japan, particularly in the aftermath of World War II. The novel, divided into forty-nine chapters, crosses two parallel plots from two different times and spaces which coincide magnificently towards the end. The odd chapters are narrated in the first person and tell the story of a fifteen-year-old boy named Kafka, who runs away from his hometown in order to avoid the Oedipal prophecy given by his father Koichi Tamura, a famous sculptor. Delivering the prophecy, the father says that Kafka would sleep with his mother and sister. Kafka himself appears as a determined boy of a peculiar nature, solitary and ready to distance himself from society, except with Crow's companion – who is nothing other than his imaginary friend or alter ego, who advises to become the toughest man. in the world. In a seemingly impossible mission, Kafka, a self-proclaimed toughest fifteen-year-old boy, decides to leave everything behind to search for his mother and sister, whom he remembers well but had no idea of ​​their fate. In a spontaneous move, he travels to a town named Takamatsu and along the way meets a young girl – Sakura, who he thinks is his sister. With a deep interest in reading and books, he ends up living in a library with the help of Oshima, a twenty-two-year-old gay librarian. Kafka also meets at the library Miss Saeki, the owner of the establishment, who lost her lover at the age of fifteen. Kafka assumes and believes that she could be his mother. Under mysterious circumstances, his father, who remained in his hometown, is murdered, triggering a series of search operations in search of him. He then moves to a remote cabin owned by Oshima where he explores the timeless jungle encountering strange soldiers lost since World War II. Even chapters, told in the third person, tell the story of Satoru Nakata, a boy injured in a mysterious accident during World War II. The accident had serious consequences on Nakata's health and well-being. He suffered from mental deficiency and also gave rise to strange characteristics where he is shown capable of speaking to cats but, strangely, unable to read or write. Nakata is introduced in the novel having made his living for fifty years as a cat catcher. Through mysterious channels he interacts with Kafka and even kills Kafka's father who kidnaps cats, cuts off their heads and takes their souls to create his divine flute. Once involved in this unusual twist, Nakata realizes that he has a mission to fulfill – one that requires exploration and numerous trips to a place he has no idea about. This mission leads him by chance to Takamatsu with the help of a truck driver, Hoshino. They work together to locate a mysterious object called the Entry Stone that transcends them all to a new world. In the end, Kafka is freed from the prophecy andreturns home to resume his life, albeit as a rejuvenated young man. Besides the elements of magical realism (which will be discussed in depth later), realistic elements are also used in the novel, although not in detail. A mysterious event of the appearance of a metallic body in the sky during the World War period is presented in Nakata's timeline where little children go hiking in the jungle in search of edible mushrooms. The appearance of the strange object causes sixteen of the students, including Nakata, to go into a coma. The war report says: “The following document, classified Top Secret by the United States Department of Defense, was made public in 1986 through the Freedom of Information Act. The document is now housed at the National Archives in Washington, D.C. and is accessible there. » Murakami plays it safe in detailing these situations and since no names or cities are mentioned realistically, it is simply a vague and frightening description of the war-engulfed scene. The scene is well explained in the words of Nakata's teacher when the study of mushrooms becomes a valuable lesson to teach children: "Children were therefore encouraged to hunt for food wherever they could find it. The country was at war, after all, and food took priority over studies. » As the novelist describes the scene of war, hunger, homelessness, depravity and starvation, he also indicates that Japan at the time was in a unique position to escape from the colonizers of Korea , China and others, while constantly advancing under the shadow of American supremacy. All the while, Japan persisted forcefully, without capitulating, and used all its might to transcend itself into the new era of industrialization while preserving its heritage and culture. Amidst this transformation from the historic cultural center to the industrialized power center, Kafka's story paints a portrait of contemporary society and its personality that is nothing short of a surreal dream. The society that has been pushed by effort into a new era while struggling and rediscovering itself in various forms inhibits the long rooted tradition of resilience and strength that is magically reflected in Kafka's characters and context on the shore. Kafka's main plot on the shore. the Shore, at least half of it, crosses the Oedipal complex and is often expressed in the form of dreams. The dream was used as a tool to represent the imaginary world which at times seamlessly and surrealistically merges with the realistic world throughout the novel. While the protagonist suffers from temporal memory loss, perhaps due to the traumatic experience he had earlier, Murakami uses this situation to inject dreamlike and magical sequences that take place in dream and imagination rather than in factual history or actual events. On the other hand, dreams tend to have an influence on real life. This creates a beautiful juxtaposition where dreams help to outline and build the plot of the novel and thus allow completely unrelated characters in different timelines to magically converse. This magical connection, along with the use of constructs of magical realism, explains how the story unfolds through dreams rather than planned actions. As Burroughs writes, magical thinking is "a schizotypal personality disorder in which one attributes something to one's actions that has nothing to do with oneself and thereby assumes that one has a greater influence over events than this." is really the case” (Burroughs xv). The aspect of thought..