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Book 2, Chapter 9
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Reality and Subjective Experience
Free Will
Desire and Irrationality
The Personal Impact of War
Social Alienation
Summary
Analysis
In the dark, Toru begins meditating on his life and situation. As he does so, his mind and body begin to separate. His body stays in the well, but his mind enters the consciousness of the wind-up bird. As the wind-up bird, he flies around and influences the actions of those in the world around him. Despite his feeling that he is the wind-up bird, Toru cannot picture himself. In his normal reality, Toru has never caught a glimpse of the bird and his mind cannot image what it looks like.
If the wind-up bird is a symbol of control, then this split in Toru’s consciousness suggests that he has a newfound control over his life. Powerful outside forces are no longer influencing him because he is the one doing the influencing. However, Toru’s inability to picture himself as the wind-up bird suggests that his powers are limited.
Themes
Toru comes out of his meditative state because he hears the sound of May’s voice. May tells Toru she has been thinking about him a lot since he went down in the well. She has been spending her time researching how long he could survive. May warns Toru that he could die in the well if something happened to her. Essentially, she warns him that his life is in her hands and is entirely contingent on what happens to her. In response, Toru tells May she is probably right about everything she is saying.
Again, May’s words sound more like a threat than everything else. While Toru is doing thought experiments down in the well, May is doing some experiments of her own, using Toru as her subject. Ironically, although Toru’s vision of the wind-up bird makes him feel like he is in control of his life, he has less control than ever. As May implies, she could end his life if she wanted to.
Themes
May begins to philosophize about humankind’s relationship to death. She posits that death is necessary for evolution to take place. Then, May asks Toru if he has thought about death since going down in the well. Toru admits that he has not. May is shocked. She cannot believe, given Toru’s circumstances, that death is not at the forefront of his mind.
May’s shock demonstrates how a person’s subjective experience of the world influences their reality. In Toru’s situation, May knows that all she would think about is death, and she can’t fathom that the thought hasn’t crossed his mind.
Themes
Toru says that he has other matters that are more pressing for him at the moment. He tells May about Kumiko’s affair and how he does not understand how it took place right under his nose. He always thought he knew Kumiko on a deep level but now he wonders if he only ever scratched the surface. Toru explains to May that going down in the well was his attempt to meditate on the nature of reality and his relationship. Although May is sympathetic to Toru’s situation, she is skeptical of his plan. May thinks Toru went down in the well to reshape himself and his reality, which is impossible for someone to do. Then, she puts the lid back on the well, plunging Toru into darkness once again.
Although May’s response is honest, it is also rather callous. Essentially, she tells Toru that he is deluding himself and then leaves him to die again. May’s observation raises one of the novel’s fundamental questions: how much of Toru’s objective reality can he expect to change? And it raises a secondary question: how much of Toru’s subjective reality can he expect to change? Although he went down into the well to work toward changing both his subjective reality and objective reality, May is skeptical that he can do much to change his objective reality.
Themes
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