Sometimes, I just want to abandon number9dream and read something else. But I had made a promise to myself and despite my past, I will keep it.
During the course of my reading, I had sometimes regret starting the book because even though it's only 399 pages, it has a lot packed into it so it takes awhile to get through it all. I just want to be done with this book.
If any of you had bothered to read my other posts, you would know that I have a habit of reading while I blog so the two paragraphs that is above this one? They are from hours ago. I am finally done with reading the book.
For the last post, I talked about a theme in number9dream, about how you're not cool as you think you are. Well, obviously that's not a central theme of the book but it certainly has some part in it.
We are aware about the differences between fantasy and reality but in this book, David Mitchell likes to toy with the audience by blending Eiji Miyake's daydreams with reality. Getting through this book was difficult because as soon as I familiarize myself with Eiji's everyday life in Tokyo to his mission impossible-esque antics in his dreams, Mitchell threw me off again. There were plot twists, new characters to get used and I am getting off topic, whoops.
Well never mind that.
So anyway, fantasy and reality. In this book, those two elements has an effect on the characters' identities and how they see themselves versus how others see them.
From the last post, you know that reality!Eiji and fantasy!Eiji are two different people. The Eiji of his dreams was a guy with a plan, who tricked his way into the "lair of Akiko Kato" and completed his mission of getting his father's file. The real Eiji couldn't bluff his way into speaking with Akiko Kato without hanging up because he couldn't come up with a plausible lie.
And reality!Eiji just wants to know who his father is, he doesn't care about money or any favors and such. He just wants to meet his father. The entire novel is about him looking for his father. But his stepmother and half-sisters thought differently.
"Eiji Miyake,
I am your father's wife. His first wife, his real wife, his only wife. Well, well. My informant at Osugi & Bosugi tells me you have been trying to contact my husband. How dare you? Was your upbringing so primitive you were never taught shame? Yet somehow I always suspected this day would come. So, you have learned of your father's influential status and are seeking quick cash. Blackmail is an ugly word, done by ugly people. But blackmail demands panache and pliable victims. You processed neither. Presumably, you believe you are clever, but in Tokyo you are a greedy boy from the countryside with a mind mired in manure. I will protect my daughters and my husband. We have paid enough, more than enough, for what your mother did. Perhaps this is her idea? She is a leech. You are a boil. My message to you is simple. If you dare to attempt to intimidate my husband, to show your face to any of our family, or to request a single yen: then, as a boil, you will be lanced." (Mitchell 100-101).
This was before she had any contact with Eiji Miyake. She had no idea what his character was like while writing this. She had just assumed that he was after her family so she went and wrote a scathing letter to him, warning him away. That was her fantasy!Eiji.
The audience knows that's not true. Eiji knows that's not true so at the meeting, when he had (ugh, how do you do past/present/future tense, i've been speaking english for nine to ten years) enough, he went into a mini rant powered by anger and self-righteousness.
"'Shut up and listen to me! I do not want your money! I do not want favors! And blackmail! How did you come up with the theory I wanted to blackmail you? I am so, so, so tired of scrubbing around this city trying to find my own father! You want to despise me, fine, I can live with that. Just let me meet him-just once-and if he tells me himself that he never wants to see me again, okay, I will vanish from your lives and start my own, properly. That is it. That is all. Is this too much to ask?'" (Mitchell 302).
You tell them Eiji.
And as for Eiji's father . . . In one of Eiji's daydreams, he had pictured his father as a politician. He was a minister with an election twenty-two days away. I think that maybe fantasy!Eiji's Father cares for Eiji just a bit since he was the son that he fathered.
"'I refuse to believe,' insists my father, 'that any son I fathered could commit murder, however unfortunate his upbringing may have been. When your agent met Eiji, my son must have been provoked into saying the things you claim he did. Or you are imagining the worst-'
'I am a lawyer,' says Akiko Kato. 'I am not paid to imagine.'
'I cannot rubber-stamp the death of my own son!'" (Mitchell 36).
Fantasy!Eiji's Father doesn't know what Eiji's like. He can't be sure that Eiji's a crack addict with a sack of hatred instead of a heart that wants to kill him. But he's willing to give him the benefit of the doubt because Eiji's his son. (SPOILER ALERT: LINLY LOOK AWAY) In actuality, the guy's a jerk. I'm not giving you anymore than that, sorry. I've said enough.
And now for his mom. This quote says it all.
"'I realized she is a real person. Mom, I mean.'
'I could have told you that.'
'I always though of her as a magazine cutout who did this and did this but who never actually felt anything. Today, I saw her as a woman in her forties who has not had as easy a life as the rumor life on Yakushima reckons. When she talks, she is sort of in her words. She told me about alcoholism, about what it does to you. Not blaming it or anything, just like a scientist analyzing a disease. An alcoholic, she says, is three things: a wounded person who desperately needs love and support; a person controlled by a parasite that lives in that person but is not that person; and a wounded person who will devour love and support until nobody and nothing remain. I am talking a lot.'
'Talk, Miyake, talk.'
'And guess what-my guitar? It turns out it was my mother's-all these years, my guitar was her guitar, and I never even knew she could play.'" (Mitchell 381).
Throughout the book, Eiji's mother had been contacting him through letters. Throughout the book, Eiji had not responded, not until that visit to Miyazaki Mountain Clinic where they had their first real conversation in years.
Eiji's mother was angry at her situation, she was trapped in a cage with two children she did not care for, did not want to care for. Eiji had always felt that she had neglected/abandoned him and his sister.
They were disconnected (they weren't even connected in the first place). She didn't know him at all, I don't think and he didn't know her at all.
And because of those years of no communication, Eiji had developed this negative view of her. He didn't view her as an actual person with her own problems and demons to deal with.
So to conclude this blog post, I believe the theme of this book is people are not who you think they are. Well, not at first. Once you get to know them, then maybe.
And fantasy is totally different from reality and you should not confuse these two.
(A/N: Hey, sorry about the poor quality of the last post. I can do so much better than that. But hey, I did tell you that I didn't know what to write, that I was in a funk. Mrs. Bowman picked the wrong week to grant me that prestigious title. And your comments were so niiiiicee, thank you. OwO)
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