Lydia+Kim

POINT OF VIEW

The book, After Dark by Haruki Murakami gives us a sense of eerie mysteriousness. While reading the book, I felt as if I am watching everything that is going on, sort of like a movie. I get this feeling because the author uses the second person point of view. "Through the eyes of a high flyig night bird, we take in the scene from midair" (Murakami 3). Midair which indicates that we are merely watching what is going on and not involved in what is going on. This is important because then the meaning of the story changes. If the author used we, us, I or any other words, then we get see only what we are doing and feel everything that the character is supposed to feel. With the first person narrative we won't be able to see Eri and Takahashi in a neutral way. This is important because the author allows us to judge the characters. It is the author who is narrating and showing us how the character looks like. We would have read the emotions and personal comments about the specific person. By using the second person narrative we are told that Mari looks at [Takahashi] with eyes that could be looking at an overgrown bush in the corner of a garden" (Murakami 7). If the author was to write in first person narrative then the book would loose it's sense of mysteriousness. Like I said before, the book would include the emotion of Mari which would make the mysteriousness disappear. For example, in the scene where Eri is seen sleeping, we wouldn't have all the camera angles or description of the place. We also would not have the access to the room. I thought that the room is a representative of Eri's mind. With Mari as the person narrating we would not have access into the mind set of Eri. The camera angles mentioned in parts of the story can happen because it was in the second point of view. The camera angles allow us to see the whole setting without thinking "this book is dragging and the character is dragging on".