An Indepndent Organ Haruki - Murakami GroupD

 

 AN INDEPENDENT INDEPENDENT OR ORGAN GAN BY HARUKI MURAKAMI

 

CHARACTERS OF THE STORY  DR. TOKAI  He

is the main protagonist in the story.

 He

is a cosmetic surgeon and the owner of Tokai Beauty Clinic.

 He

dates women just for the purpose of pleasure.

 He

is single and has no child.

GOTO  He

is the secretary of Dr. Tokai in the beauty clinic.

 He also a friend frien d of  He

Dr.. Tokai. Dr

has a gay personality 

 

CHARACTERS OF THE STORY  TANIMURA   He

narrates the life of Dr. Tokai.

 He

is a friend of Dr. Tokai from the squash club.

 He

is also a novelist.

 WOMAN  W OMAN (who was not named)  She is the t he woman who was adored

and loved by Dr. Dr. Tokai.

 She

is labeled outside the story as “the woman that got away” to Dr. Tokai

 She

abandoned both Dr. Tokai and her husband for a third lover.

 

SUMMARY 

 

INTRODUCTION

• The story is narrated by a novelist, Tanimura, Tanimura, who appears to be modeled after Murakami himself. This novelist begins the story by theorizing the existence of people who, “thanks to a lack of intellectual acuity—live a life that is surprisingly artificial” (77). The main character Tokai is one of these people. A friend of the narrator from his squash club, Tokai Tokai is a cosmetic plastic surgeon, one of the most excellent examples of a career whose role is dependent upon the consumer. His clients are primarily women who desire a change in appearance, and he discusses his female clients in detail with his friend Tanimura. It is represented by the life of Dr. Tokai became from a successful to a miserable life. • The life of his is flowing smoothly; he can do whatever he wants. He live as healthy man and his successful was going smoothly like a water in the river. river. He was never been married but so many girlfriends that he has neither it is married woman or a woman that have a children. children. He totally ignores what the other woman fells about their thing and the other. But when his great love comes, he became no other women.

 

RISING ACTION

• He meets now the woman that has husband and child. He fall in love with her and start seeing her every time her husband away to a business trip. When the cat is away the mouse will play. feels like thisexcept relationship for long lasting relationship for him. He can no longer see • He another woman to thatiswoman.

• The feelings that Dr. Tokai has for her makes him realize his own incompleteness. After reciting a Fujiwara no Atsutada poem:  “Having seen my love now/ and said farewell/ I know how very shallow my heart was of old/ as if had never before known love,” • He tells Tanimura that he now understands what the poet meant by the feelings invoked by the poem and that he wishes that he could have felt this way much earlier in his life, because now he is questioning everything and asking himself: who is he? He is only his career: a plastic surgeon, like his father before him. He is skilled in this work and was satisfied with his professional life and his personal life, but now something is missing for him.

 

CLIMAX 

• Dr. Tokai started his life became unusual thing the he do on the past. That is when the woman neither leaves him and starts to nor sees Dr. Tokai and his husband because she has another man too. His life became miserable, and he can’t work. • He a lunch andHe slowly hehimself doesn’tifdo that can do in he thehave past now, like going andcan’t beingeat healthy man. asked hethings take all thehe things that what to in gym the would he be.

• His crisis is clear. Love is not the real reason why he is hopelessly focused on this woman or why he rages when she is not around; it is because through her he has begun to question his very existence. Who is he? What has he to show from a life of consumption? What use are the skills of a consumer society in a crisis situation, like Auschwitz? This is a question that he cannot answer, and he seeks the answer from a girlfriend who cannot truly answer it for him either, as she is married with a child and cannot connect with him on the level he desires. • So, he comes to Tanimura, who advises him to think of himself as “just a human being, with no special qualities (95).” To which Tokai replies, “at my age the past weighs me down. It’s not so easy to start over It is clear response that he cannot give up his life of consumption, and(96).” this leads to hisfrom tragichis fate.

 

FALLING ACTION • The woman left behind everything and her husband and Dr. Tokai for the other man. Dr. Tokai feels that his world slowly falling cannot get up to make his become better. His love never been returned even if he dies.

• He cannot forget the woman even if the woman gives a little attention to Dr. Tokai. He takes the entire woman can only give and he waits until his last breath. He gives up all of the things that he has just because the one he love left him behind. What can he do in this world if the only one that he wants is not available? So, he slowly lost his interest to live and wake every morning. • So, he comes to Tanimura, who advises him to think of himself as “just a human being, with no special qualities (95).” To which Tokai replies, “at my age the past weighs me down. It’s not so easy to start over (96).” It is clear from his response that he cannot give up his life of consumption, and this leads to his tragic fate.

 

DENOUMENT

• Dr. Dr. Tokai Tokai fell in love to a woman that doesn’t love him back. He fell in love even he knows on what is going on their relationship is wrong. Those give him heart aches just because he only love and want to be loved. What it would be happen if the world takes the entire thing that you have now. You You give up or you fight for the things that you strive so you can take. What it would be if nothing at all. • Tokai is unable to break free from this trap. Instead, he spends almost all of his money, the only thing that connects him to his identity as a consumer, consumer, and she leaves him for a third man. This conclusion to their relationship breaks him, and his fate shares similarities with that of the Auschwitz victim’s fate he so feared. Tokai’s secretary relays to Tanimura that he found the plastic surgeon in his apartment, surrounded by the horrible stench of unwashed clothes and body, spoiled food, and grime. Tokai himself looked like a mummy, and he had completely separated emotionally from the world.

• He died of heart failure because he refused to eat, and in the end, he looked like a concentration camp victim, thus predicting his own end through his obsession with the Jewish doctor. Tokai’s refusal or inability to connect with his own sense of self was his downfall.

 

SYNOPSIS

 

SYNOPSIS • Tanimura tells of a time in his life when he regularly played squash with Dr. Tokai, a fifty-twoyear-old cosmetic surgeon and bachelor who has never lived long-term or fallen in love with a woman. Instead, he dates married or committed women as he does not want to enter into a serious relationship with anyone. However, for the past eighteen months, he has developed feelings for a thirty-six-year-old married mother and asks Tanimura for advice. During their conversation, Tokai mentions how he is struggling with the question, "Who in the world am I?" and retells a story of a Jewish doctor who lost everything but his life at Auschwitz and Auschwitz  and how that could have been him. Tokai also notes that for the first time in his life, he feels rage. • He finds common ground with a Jewish doctor in Auschwitz that he read about, and whose story he relates to Tanimura. It is worth quoting the passage in full: “When I read this, it shocked me. If the time and place had been different, I might very well have suffered the same terrible fate. If for some reason—I don’t know why—I was suddenly dragged away from my present life, deprived of all my rights, and reduced to living as a number, what in the world would I become? I shut the book and thought about this. Other than my skills as a plastic surgeon, and the trust I’ve earned from others, I have no other redeeming features, no other talents. I’m just a fifty-two-year-old man. I’m healthy, though I don’t have the stamina I had when I was young. I wouldn't be able to stand hard physical labor for long. The things I’m good at are selecting a nice Pinot Noir, frequenting some sushi restaurants...choosing stylish accessories as gifts for women, playing the piano a little...But that’s about the size of it. If I were thrown into a place like Auschwitz, none of that would help (94-5).”

 

SYNOPSIS

• Tokai suddenly stops coming to the gym soon after and it is not until two months later that Tanimura learns of his death from Tokai's office assistant Goto; they arrange to meet and discuss Tokai. Goto tells of how the doctor suddenly changed his habits at work: he gave off a different aura than before. After Tokai stopped showing up at work, Goto grows concerned and goes to Tokai's apartment and finds him bedridden and feeble. He learns that Tokai has givenlover. up onTokai, life after the woman Tokai loves abandoned both him her husband for a third lovesick and heartbroken, condemns himself to and a slow death by ANOREXIA. Goto concludes by giving Tanimura a squash racket Tokai wanted him to have and asks Tanimura to not forget Tokai.

• Dr. Tokai goes into a self-imposed exile when his heart is broken, and in isolation allows himself to fade away. Even in this story it could besecretary argued that it his heartbreak, not his isolation that finally finishes himthough, off. After all, the seems to have only the doctor in his life, yet he is finds purpose in the work that he adopts. The novelist does not mention anyone else in his life, yet he moves on. Just as in his novels, isolation is not a consequence of asserting an identity, but the cost of it.

 

GUIDE QUESTIONS

 

1. Explain the th e title. In what way is it suitable to the movie/ selection?

rom T Tanimura's animura's memory of Tokai's observation that • The title of the story comes ffrom women have "an independent organ" that allows them to lie with a clear conscience.

 

2. What is the th eExplain. predominant element in the movie- plot, plo t, theme, character, and setting?

predominant element in the story/movie “An Independent Organ” is its plot. The • The twists of event that happened to the main protagonist.

• Imagine, you have been dumped by the person you considered “The One” in your life and you chose to be defeated and consumed by fear—not moving on and start a new beginning. Plus, you have been diagnosed of they so called “lovesickness” and chose to to do nothing about it.  it.  are included. A primary objective for the formalist approach is to decide how those elements work along with the text's mate rial to create its impact upon readers.

 

 3. Who is tthe he single single main characte characterr about whom the story cent centers? ers? Explain.

abou t Dr Dr.. T Tokai, okai, thus, making mak ing the main character of the story. The • The story centers about story starts from his career-to-habits-to-plot-to-denouement—his life.

• Things get too close for Tokai, he withdraws; as a “veteran bachelor” he seems to have a knack for cutting things off with a woman before she gets too attached to him, or before her “real” partner finds out about her infidelity.

 

4.What sort of conict confronts the leading le ading character or characters? Explain.

of oneself. The fact that he questions and doubted about his true purpose • Conflict and existence is a proof that the argument only focuses only to himself. In addition, he even ask himself, “Who I am” (who am I?).

• From the rejection he received from the woman, whom he invested his love with, he began to question himself, what could it be that’s with him that made him unworthy not just for that woman but also to continue living.

 

5. Where does the primary action take place? Explain. Expl ain. • The primary action take place in Dr Dr.. T Tokai’s okai’s apartment where all the depriving scenes occur. He feared himself to be left situated about the Jewish Doctor who lost his life at Auschwitz. • Tokai also notes that for the first time in his life, he feels rage. And rage.  And ends up condemning himself for being heartbroken and left behind by someone he deeply adores and loved.

 

6. What is the time setting for the action? Period of history? Season? Time of the day?

• The time setting in this story was when Tokai told Tanimura in the gym that he had fallen in love with a married woman and when the secretary of Mr. Mr. Tokai Tokai go to the apartment of the surgeon and he found out that the surgeon had starved himself to death.

 

7. How does the story get started? What is the initial incident? inc ident?

w hen T Tanimura, animura, who is a novelist an and d a friend of Dr. Dr. T Tokai okai from the • The story started when Squash Club, narrated the life of Dr Dr.. T Tokai. okai. In addition, he also introduced Dr D r. Tokai Tokai by his character as a man of a consumer society and a man we can quote “happy golucky/man with no commitment”.

 

8. Briey describe the rising action of the movie/ selection?

rising action of o f the movie/selection took place Dr. T Tokai okai meet/dates the woman, • The which later found out that she has a husband and a child. He fell in love with her and start sneaking to see her when the woman’s husband was away to a business trip.

• Furthermore, he was subjected and deeply attached to this woman that he rejects other proposals of other women who wants to hung with him.

 

9. What is the high point or the climax of the movie/ selection? • The high point or the climax of the movie/selection is when Dr. Dr. T Tokai okai started his life became unusual thing the he do on the past. That is when the woman neither leaves him and starts start s to nor sees Dr. T Tokai okai and his husband because she has anoth another er man too. His life became miserable, and he can’t work. • He can’t eat a lunch and slowly he doesn’t do things that he can do in the past like going to gym and being healthy man. He asked himself if he take all the things that he have now, what in the would he be.

 

10. Discuss the falling action of the movie or the close of the movie/ selection. • The falling action of the selection or the close or of the movie/selection is when the woman, whom he greatly love, left everything behind … her child, her husband, and even Dr. Dr. T Tokai okai himself for the sake of the woman’s third lover. • He fell into deep anxiety and maybe depression, knowing that the woman she ever love will never going back. And that, his efforts and sacrifices lost in a gamble of desire and love.

 

11. Does this story create any special mood? Explain. • The story ends or leaves a melancholic mood to the audience. It is sad to say that the main protagonist fell into despair which overdrive him and caused his death. He does not get the “happy ending” or the “mutual ending” that we want him to deserve. • Unto other’s perspective, we can say that the story creates a mood of realization. That one’s fear and repulsiveness can destroy a whole life turning from something into nothing.

 

12. Is this thi s story realistic or true to life? Explain your answers by giving examples. • Yes, the story wa wass in fact happens h appens to th this is reality reality.. Feelings is driven b by y emotions … feelings greatly affects decisions … thus, emotions has a big impact to one’s life and decisions. The “independent Organ” was described as the ability of a person which enables them to lie with clear conscience. This factor can be beneficial and destructive in the later process. • For example; a) a lie, that was categorized to be a dark or sometimes a white lie. Y You ou are consciously capable of making those impurities without disturbing your conscience, if the results are cannot be know. b) love, when you are into your emotional drive and not focusing on logical thinking, thus, you are disturbed to evaluate pure and impure decisions.

 

13. Are the events or incidents of the plot presented in ashback as hback or in chronological order? Justify.

• The events or incidents of the plot is represented in a chronological order. It is in an ascending order that shows the shift of situations from melodramatic to tragic scene. We considered the ending to be tragical in a way that the main protagonist died melancholically. • The narrator explained the t he scenarios in a consecutive manner manner..

 

14. What is the general theme of the movie/ selection?

• The general theme of the movie/selection is focused on how “love” affects your perspective in life and how this inflicts/disrupt your lifestyle lifestyle you chose to end with. • Dr. Tokai was greatly affected when he met “the woman” that gave him the doubt of who he really is.

 

15. Identify yourself with any of the characters? Explain. • I can connect or o r relate myself to “the woman” that Dr Dr.. Tokai Tokai ever loved. We, people, do not sometimes understand the situations of others. We are only subjected to our own happiness neglecting the one true emotions and feeling of other people, especially the people that surrounds us. • This happens to us everyday—every single time. There is no decision that is not said to be self-benefited or self-involved. We always think about our self first before the other people. We decide what is always seems to be beneficial to us even others may call it a selfless act.

 

17. Can you nd any examples of gurative gu rative language? Cite them from the selection.

complete presence...all of her goo d qualities good areand tightly bound into what’s one core. Y ou • “a can’t separate each individual quality to measure analyze it...It’s in You her core that attracts me so strongly. Like a powerful magnet (91).”

• In that phrase, Murakami figuratively used SIMILE, a figure of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another thing of a different kind, used to make a description more emphatic or vivid.

 

18. Does the story contain a single eect or impression for the watcher? If so,  what?

• “Anyone who falls in love is searching for the missing pieces of themselves. So anyone who's in love gets sad when they think of their lover. It's like stepping back inside a room you have fond memories of, one you haven't seen in a long time.”― Murakami, Haruki. • Yes. In deeper analysis, the story shown the reality of life and not all people will end in success. Pain is inevitable, but it is up to you how to handle it. You give up, you fail. You survive, you grow.

 

19. Name one major personality trait of each leading character and tell how the director makes the watcher conscious of its trait.

Dr. Tokai Tokai as a hedonistic consumer; everyth everything ing that he does is focused on the goal g oal of • Dr. pleasure for himself.

• Tokai is a “confirmed bachelor” wh who o lives in a trendy part of Tokyo and is never emotionally connected with his many (as many as four at any given time) married or committed-to-another lovers. He uses these women only for intellectual and physical stimulation.

 

20. Give at least 5 moral/ lesson/ recommendation/ reaction/ commentary about the movie. • I would hate to learn that the poignancy of the original was lost in translation. When all his life Tokai has had affairs of convenience and moved on at will, to be  judgmental about an entire sex when the favor was returned seems ironic. • I felt the meaning of this story is brought down by some unimportant lines. • Maybe there was dissatisfaction prompting extraordinary discouragement. • Maybe the adoration, which had become the raison d'être of his life – presently denied – unfurled the topic of presence. • The whole story of o f Tokai Tokai is a narrative. From where T Tokai okai gets distan distantt to the th e storyteller and until his passing, this method of relating is totally reasonable in light of the fact that he, the hero, is in absentia.

 

21. What is the best literary approach in studying/ critiquing the movie/ selection?

t reats literature as a • Formalistic Approach, because the formalist approach treats particular source of human understanding that needs to be studied in its own words. Within the work itself, all the elements required to explain the job are included.

• A primary objective for the formalist approach is to decide how those elements work along with the text's material to create its impact upon readers which in the story “An Independent Organ” was shown. • Murakami arrange the language, rather than on the implications of the words, or on the biographical and historical relevance of the work in question.

 

REFERENCES THE INDEPENDENT ORGAN BY HARUKI MURAKAMI – A FEW MUSINGS UPON READING THE SHORT STORY . (2018, SEPTEMBER 19).

MINDOVERMEDICINE. HTTPS://MINDOVERMEDICINE.WORDPRESS.COM/2018/08/08/THE-INDEPENDENT-ORGAN-BY-HARUKIMURAKAMI-A-FEW-MUSINGS-UPON-READING-THE-SHORT-STORY/ SOCIETY . JACOB CLEMENTS. (2019). MURAKAMI HARUKI’S SHORT FICTION AND THE JAPANESE CONSUMER SOCIETY 

HTTPS://KUSCHOLARWORKS.KU.EDU/. HTTPS://KUSCHOLARWORKS.KU.EDU/BITSTREAM/HANDLE/1808/30078/CLEMENTS_KU_0099M_16621_DATA_1.PDF? SEQUENCE=1&ISALLOWED=Y (HARUKI MURAKAMI SHORT STORY STORY COLLECTION). WIKIPEDIA. WIKIPEDIA CONTRIBUTORS. (2020, NOVEMBER 28). MEN WITHOUT WOMEN (HARUKI

HTTPS://EN.WIKIPEDIA.ORG/WIKI/MEN_WITHOUT_WOMEN_(HARUKI_MURAKAMI_SHORT_STORY_COLLECTION) MUKHERJEE, S., & SWAMY, S. K. (2019). REDEFINING MASCULINITY IN HARUKI MURAKAMI’S MEN WITHOUT WOMEN. JOURNAL WOMEN. JOURNAL OF ENGLISH  ENGLISH , 8(1), 67-70.

 

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