The Second Bakery Attack Notes

The Second Bakery Attack – Notes 1. Summary 2. Characterisation 3. Symbolism 4. Cinematic Image 5. Narrative Technique (inc. Voice and Style) 6. Theme Haruki Murakami’s writing employs a stark and plaintive style which stands in contrast with the surrealism of his stories’ plots. His prose is often very basic, which allows the depth and scope of his ideas room to flourish in the reader’s imagination. 1. Summary

The Second Bakery Attack opens with a newlywed couple waking simultaneously in the night in the grip of a ravenous hunger. They decide to get up and look for food to satisfy this yearning, whereupon the distinction in their personalities becomes evident. The wife is revealed to be a highly motivated individual who is both determined and resourceful, while the husband is directionless, distracted and unable to assist in the search for nourishment. His only significant contribution to the situation is in remarking that the last time he felt such a hunger was “the time of the bakery attack”.

It intrigues his wife to discover that he believes he was cursed for carrying out a minor heist in the search for food and she insists they attack another bakery in an attempt to “finish what you left unfinished.” She leads the way as the couple hold up a McDonalds (“sometimes you have to compromise”) and is satisfied in the end as she falls asleep in the car as the sun rises. However, the husband appears only to be content that he is “alone now”, suggesting that the compromise in their action failed to effect real change in their relationship and that they will again wake up hungry before long. 2. Characterisation Both characters are left unnamed, which may be intended to imply the lack of true knowledge they have of each other, despite the fact that they are married. The Husband (the narrator):  His first words (“I’m still not sure I made the right choice”) immediately give the impression that our narrator’s uncertainty will be his overriding characteristic.  The Husband withholds the truth where it has the potential to threaten him and chooses not to divulge information about his past. (“I hadn't been planning to bring it up I had forgotten all about it - but it wasn't one of those now-that-you-mention-it kind of things, either.”)  He makes oblique references to issues within his relationship but also denies the reader the honesty we would usually expect from a 1st person narrator. (“we had yet to establish a precise conjugal understanding with regard to the rules of dietary behavior. Let alone anything else.”)

 The narrator is intimidated by his wife and sees her as the boss in their relationship. (“Whenever my wife expressed such an opinion (or thesis) back then, it reverberated in my ears with the authority of a revelation.”) There is a lack of equilibrium in their marriage and he tends not to air his opinions as he is afraid of her derision.  At four points in the story, he describes his feelings through a dreamlike image of himself in a boat. He has a tendency to withdraw from stressful situations into his own thoughts, meaning that he becomes absorbed in himself and resolves nothing. The Wife:  She repeatedly rejects her husband’s suggestions and appears to have little time for his conversation. It is difficult to see how they have found themselves married to each other, so disparate are their personalities.  Her interest in her husband is piqued when he accidentally mentions the bakery attack. In spite of her “old-fashioned” attitudes towards such things as eating out after midnight, at this point she appears to be intrigued by the concealed, unpredictable side of him.  The Wife’s control over him is evidently something which she has developed throughout their relationship and she appears to see her superiority over him as a victory. (“Well, you're working now, aren't you?")  The “practiced efficiency of her movements” in carrying out the second bakery attack suggests that she is either simply equipped to deal with any situation she finds herself in, or that she has pulled off a similar operation in her own secret past...

 At the end of the story, The Wife finally falls asleep and The Husband describes her as feeling “as soft and as light as a kitten” – ironic given that she has just taken charge of an armed robbery.  It is significant that only The Wife sleeps as this implies that the contentment they sought to earn is hers alone and will ultimately not be enough to satisfy the “special kind of hunger” felt by both partners at the beginning. 3. Symbolism Food:  The couple’s hunger which wakes them up simultaneously in the night represents the lack of substantial love between them.  Their empty refrigerator suggests that their relationship has been built on things which will not last.  Comparison between the hunger and “the force of the tornado in The Wizard of Oz” implies that this craving will result in a massive upheaval for the couple, albeit one which may satisfy their desires.  The food stolen in the first attack has been made personally by the baker who also runs the shop himself and closes up when he runs out; on the other hand, when the couple rob McDonalds, they steal from a multinational chain restaurant and the food is mass-produced and no one person has invested any care in its manufacture.  The bread from the first bakery attack kept The Husband and his friend fed for four or five days, whereas twenty of the thirty Big Macs stolen from McDonalds are left to waste on the car’s back seat, which hints towards the temporariness of the satisfaction which they can provide.

The Gun:  (“long and stiff as a dead fish, was a Remington automatic shotgun.”) Dead fish have symbolic significance in dreams and are seen to represent life in the unconscious mind. Given The Husband’s tendency to drift into daydreams, it is relevant to apply dream symbols to his descriptions of waking situations. The gun appears to be awakening The Husband to the reality that his marriage is not working. Fish also represent attempts to motivate oneself, so it is possible that he is looking upon this uncomfortable circumstance as one which he feels he must motivate himself to avoid in the future.  The blanket that the shotgun is wrapped in is symbolic of the sleep which could be due to the couple if the attack successfully reverses the curse (“She handed me the blanket-wrapped shotgun.”)  Despite the fact that a gun has obviously masculine symbolic significance, The Husband’s command of it is threatened by his inability to carry its weight. (“The gun was so heavy I had to rest the barrel on top of the cash register, my finger on the trigger.”) However, his wife is well aware of his lack of manly qualities and simply requires him to look as if he is in control for the purposes of carrying out the raid on the McDonalds. The Sleeping Couple:  The sleeping couple are intended to stand in contrast with the main characters, both in terms of their restfulness and the contentment which lets them sleep. This may be due to their youth (“…a young couple--students, probably”) as they are not yet shackled to the responsibilities which come with marriage and adulthood in general. Most importantly, the alignment of their heads suggests that

they share opinions and beliefs. (“Their two heads and two strawberry-milk-shake cups were aligned on the table like an avant-garde sculpture. They slept the sleep of the dead.”) There is no mention of food, only milkshakes, which may also imply that they do not need to eat to sleep and that each other’s company is enough to put them at ease. Through comparing them to an “avant-garde sculpture”, Murakami suggests that The Husband sees such satisfaction as both perfect like a work of art, and also extraordinary or unique (avant-garde def: “those artists, writers, musicians, etc., whose techniques and ideas are markedly experimental or in advance of those generally accepted”) as they are so far from his experience.  It appears that nothing is capable of disturbing their rest, even violence or danger (“The front shutter made a huge racket when it closed, like an empty bucket being smashed with a baseball bat, but the couple sleeping at their table was still out cold.”)  Reference to fish links with the boat/undersea volcano image. Many deep ocean fishes live nearly motionless lives and can blank their minds to do what we may call daydreaming. (“The customers at the table were still asleep, like a couple of deep-sea fish. “)

4. Cinematic Image

1st: One, I am in a little boat, floating on a quiet sea. Two, I look down, and in the water, I see the peak of a volcano thrusting up from the ocean floor. Three, the peak seems pretty close to the water's surface, but just how close I cannot tell. Four, this is because the hypertransparency of the water interferes with the perception of distance.

The boat represents The Husband in his contentment to drift through life without direction, while the undersea volcano symbolises his wife. She encroaches on his space and menaces him with expectations. The word choice of “thrusting” creates the sense that she intimidates and even frightens him. He is unsure how close the volcano is to his boat, which further emphasises the terror he feels regarding his wife.

2nd: While she hunted for more fragments of food, I leaned over the edge of my boat and looked down at the peak of the underwater volcano. The clarity of the ocean water all around the boat gave me an unsettled feeling, as if a hollow had opened somewhere behind my solar plexus--a hermetically sealed cavern that had neither entrance nor exit. His wife’s practicality is contrasted with his habit of daydreaming: she looks for food, while he withdraws into reverie. Clarity would ordinarily be reassuring but The Husband is “unsettled” as he is more content when things are uncertain. He likens this feeling to emptiness, which links with the hunger he and his wife are feeling. At this moment, he feels as if he is stuck in an airtight cave with “neither entrance nor exit”, suggesting that he can only feel free as long as he is oblivious to his responsibilities.

3rd: I took another look at my undersea volcano. The water was clearer than before--much clearer. Unless you looked closely, you might not even notice it was there. It felt as though the boat were floating in midair, with absolutely nothing to support it. I could see every little pebble on the bottom. All I had to do was reach out and touch them. The Husband’s image now has him “floating in midair”, which suggests he feels helpless and that his situation is out of his

control. Pebbles can be seen to represent all living things as whilst in motion, they can spread ripples across the water, itself symbolic of life. The Husband is aware that he will not always be in motion and that the decisions he makes (or fails to make) will decide how he feels as he finally comes to rest. The final sentence tells us that despite his reticence, he is at least conscious of the prospect that he could “reach out” and bring substantial change to his existence.

4rd: Alone now, I leaned over the edge of my boat and looked down to the bottom of the sea. The volcano was gone. The water's calm surface reflected the blue of the sky. Little waves--like silk pajamas fluttering in a breeze--lapped against the side of the boat. There was nothing else. I stretched out in the bottom of the boat and closed my eyes, waiting for the rising tide to carry me where I belonged. Crucially, the narrator’s peace only comes when he is finally alone and the volcano has disappeared in synchronisation with his wife falling asleep. Where the hyper-transparent surface of the water previously exposed the dangers beneath him, it now points towards the serenity and sense of possibility brought by a “blue sky” above him. The water, once threatening, is now a comfort and the “little waves” depict his life as imbued with activity, albeit gentle and subtle. The waves’ comparison to “silk pajamas” creates a lazy image of luxury, implying that with the threat of his wife’s expectations currently diffused, he can return once again to his preferred mode of languid coasting. The story concludes with the narrator lost in his daydream, “stretched out” (a phrase used earlier to describe the shotgun) awaiting the “rising tide”. This could either represent the superior power of nature and his trust in it to direct him to his rightful place, or a potentially ominous symbol of pending danger.

5. Narrative Technique (inc. Voice and Style) Murakami’s choice of 1st person narrative is interesting as he employs the perspective of a character who is unable (or unwilling) to give an honest account of his thoughts and feelings. He is an unreliable narrator, in that where one would ordinarily expect a 1st person narrative to convey the true view of that character on the events they convey, The Husband shares little more with us than he does with his wife. His character is left deliberately vague and he only refers in depth to his feelings about his marriage in a detached way, using the recurring cinematic image. The perpetually distant narrator’s tone of uncertainty is frustrating to the reader and successfully reflects the aggravation which his wife would feel towards him. It is also relevant to point out the use of flashback, as what appears to be a fairly happy ending is not truly the conclusion of the story. “I'm still not sure I made the right choice when I told my wife about the bakery attack.” The opening sentence of the story hints that the bakery attack has not successfully lifted the curse or helped the couple’s marriage to function better. If it had, surely we would expect him to be definite that he “made the right choice”. 6. Theme Destiny: “I myself have adopted the position that, in fact, we never choose anything at all. Things happen. Or not.” The Husband claims to believe it is impossible to direct yourself away from the path which is mapped out of ahead of you.

However, this could also simply be an excuse for his inaction and lack of motivation. This hypothesis seems especially likely given that, in his own words, he has “adopted the position” rather than necessarily believing that it is true. In contrast, his wife believes that one’s destiny can be shaped, and indeed, that it is also possible for others to shape it for you. There is a clear sense at various points in the story that she is even satisfied by the knowledge that she moulds him: “"Well, you're working now, aren't you?" Karma: “...we had this feeling that we had made a terrible mistake. And somehow, this mistake has just stayed there, unresolved, casting a dark shadow on our lives.” The narrator and his erstwhile friend took the baker up on his deal and benefitted in the short term, but the sense that he has cursed them has outlasted the temporary satisfaction of the free bread. Murakami’s implication is that nothing is free insofar as nothing is without consequence and that our actions towards others ultimately ricochet back towards us, Commitment: “You have to finish what you left unfinished." Just as she is committed to sourcing food to satisfy their hunger, she is dedicated to extinguishing her husband’s curse. Where he would be inclined to leave the “heavy, dusty curtain” hanging over them for the rest of their lives, she becomes overtaken by the necessity to attempt to lift it immediately. Of course, one of the fatal flaws in her attempt to lift the curse is that she takes control, which means that is she and not her husband who is finishing what he “left unfinished.”