Dream and Reality: From Temporal Narrative View to Explore the Subjectivity of the Female Figure in Murakami’s “Sleep”

Haruki Murakami's "Sleep" intricately blends the elements of time and subjectivity, creating a narrative that blurs the lines between reality and dream. At its heart is a female character whose subjectivity offers a unique lens to explore identity, perception, and the elusive nature of existence. The story unfolds through first-person narration, immersing readers in the protagonist's personal world. Time in the narrative emerges as a vital and inseparable component, transcending mere numerical digits. It takes on a multifaceted role, shaping the story's structural foundation and serving as a medium for the protagonist's self-perception and contemplation of daily life. Furthermore, time serves as a transformative portal, facilitating the dynamic interchange between the dreamworld and reality. This essay embarks on a journey to explore the awareness of the woman's subjectivity in society, as intricately structured within Haruki Murakami's temporal narrative. The exploration unfolds mainly across different stages: "before insomnia," "nightmare night," "after insomnia," and reveals the connections among them. 

From the very first line in this story, "It's the seventeenth day since I couldn't sleep"(Murakami, 75), the narrative plunges us into the subjective consciousness of the protagonist. From this beginning sentence to "One time, I stood and stared at my sleeping husband’s face"(Murakami, 102), all are the protagonist’s experiences and memories during the 17 days. This temporal marker signifies not only the passage of time but also the torment of her insomnia. As a full-time housewife, she revolves around a routine governed by the schedules of her husband and children. Day after day, year after year, her existence has settled into a monotonous and cyclical rhythm. Beneath this facade lies a suppressed emotion, a lingering dissatisfaction that has festered in silence for an extended period with no outlet for expression. This enduring dissatisfaction, stemming from a profound sense of losing herself, has accumulated over time, finding its release on one fateful night, catalyzed by a haunting "nightmare." 

During the nightmare night, she dreamt of an old man pouring water on her feet, symbolizing the beginning of the awareness of subjectivity. This dream imagery symbolizes the commencement of her awareness of subjectivity. The act of "pouring water" serves as a metaphor for her realization that a life devoid of self-identity will eventually become inundated and lost. Only then did she see the time clearly: "The clock by my pillow said 12:30. I had been sleeping for only an hour and a half"(Murakami, 84). These explicit numerical references serve as concrete evidence that she has been pulled back from the dream world to reality. They act as vital symbols, confirming her own existence and grounding her in the tangible realm of the waking life.

After insomnia, the protagonist does the housework as usual during the day. At night, after the woman’s husband and children are asleep, she begins to live as what she enjoys doing. Then again, Haruki Murakami used the time expression to remind the woman’s responsibilities of the family. "I noticed how late it was. Three in the morning! … But I have to sleep. ... I am a wife and a mother. I have responsibilities."(Murakami, 88) Time, in this context, takes on the role of the moral precept, which governs the woman’s responsibilities as both a wife and a mother.

In the wake of persistent insomnia, the demarcation between day and night begins to blur, culminating in the emergence of a "new" repetitive routine. Within this cycle, the protagonist finds herself perpetually trapped in a state of both physical and psychological separation. While she agonizes over this self-division, she remains unable to break free from it. This post-insomnia period is marked by the protagonist's heavy reliance on solitude as the primary mechanism for asserting and expanding her sense of self. She mechanically fulfills her roles as a wife and mother but concurrently isolates herself from family and friends, seeking refuge in the realm of extensive Russian novels. Her approach to self-assertion revolves around a dualistic division between "body" and "spirit," resulting in a detachment from the "other." This ultimately leads her to withdraw into the confines of her personal consciousness. Yet, the extensive self-expansion she undertakes inevitably culminates in isolation from others, detachment from the mundane aspects of daily life, and a forfeiture of mutual love. This self-imposed isolation not only obstructs their potential for mental self-reliance but also places them at risk of emotional collapse. This dualistic mode of thinking becomes the internal impediment that ensnares the protagonist in an unyielding dream-like state, portrayed vividly throughout the story. Within this state, her profound loneliness and desperation come to the forefront, shaping her experience of a world that is both isolated and fraught with despair. 

As the novel reaches its end, late-night time narrative transcends precise measurement and descends into uncertainty. When the protagonist parks her car in a dimly lit lot, she encounters two shadows. This fluid sense of time symbolizes the impossibility of determining the "I" in the obscurity. These two shadows act as a catalyst, guiding the protagonist, who was “lost” in the night, back into the realm of consciousness. This indeterminacy in time seamlessly aligns with the earlier discussion of temporal expression during the nightmare.

It is worth noting that the "dream" and "nightmare" in the novel are separated into two parts in the protagonist's consciousness. The first is an unlucky and terrifying dream, in which she says: "I was having a repulsive dream— a dark, slimy dream. I don’t remember what it was about"(Murakami, 82). The protagonist woke up at the climax of the dream. The content of the dream here may be imagined as the attack scene at the end of the novel, when she feels that “all I can do is crying”(Murakami, 109), which is consistent with the protagonist's "dark and slimy"(Murakami, 82) feeling. Perhaps what dragged her back from the peak of the dream were the two black figures shaking the car at the end. When the protagonist thought she woke up from her dream, and wanted to check the clock to confirm the time, she couldn't move her neck and suddenly saw a blurry black shadow at feet. From that time, she was haunted by the black shadow, and began to have insomnia problems. The nightmare of the old man occurs at a time that the protagonist’s consciousness cannot be determined, which is the same as the one at the end of the novel. Judging from the temporal narrative analyzed above, the structure of the novel shows that the time of the nightmare becomes both the beginning and end of the story. In the middle, the protagonist experienced 17 days and nights under a unique “sleepless counting method”, mixed with memories which existed before the insomnia, and formed by the accumulation of new daily routines after the insomnia. 

The originally most "realistic" specific daily time is embedded in a subjective framework in which dreams and reality are indistinguishable; These realms defy distinction, and the protagonist's specific actions, molded by the intensely subjective consciousness, are the narrative's focal point. By utilizing precise numerical values to establish a connection between the protagonist's first-person "I" and others, the narrative seeks to confirm her "existence" within the context of time and subjectivity. The narrator's personal flow of consciousness is highlighted and becomes the core theme of the novel's expression.

The story masterfully intertwines the "daily" time of the woman as a housewife within the overarching framework of insomnia. The climax of the black shadow attack at the end cleverly intertwines with the nightmare at the beginning, skillfully constructing a narrative chain that unites the story's outset and its resolution. This circular time structure creates a narrative landscape where despair and hope coexist in the dynamic interplay between dreams and reality. What initially appears as a straightforward chronological order undergoes a complex temporal narrative, akin to the ancient philosopher Zhuangzi's contemplations. He questioned the nature of reality through the story of the butterfly dream and posited that the boundaries between our dream experiences and our waking life are not fixed and that our perception of reality is inherently subjective. This concept resonates with the blurred boundaries between dream and reality in "Sleep." Just as Zhuangzi suggested that what we perceive as real may be a construct of our consciousness, Murakami's narrative underscores the idea that our understanding of reality is malleable and highly influenced by individual subjectivity. The housewife's subjectivity becomes a lens through which we explore the shifting and elusive nature of her reality, making her journey a poignant reflection of the human experience and the intricate relationship between time, dreams, and subjectivity.