Literature of Global Experience
Hollowness
Fate
Following the Script
To be hollow is to have one way thoughts, to refuse to open yourself up to change and to carry no imagination.
In Kafka By the Shore, Murakami delivers the concept of "hollow people" and the danger they carry. Johnnie Walker represents a hollow individual who truly believes his actions are normal. Johnnie Walker had no remorse and no emotion. He was the definition of pure evil.
In Swing Time, Aimee represents a hollow character because she is oblivious to the fact that her abundant wealth is the reason poverty exists. She is certain her self determination will promote change in West Africa rather then change at the government level. Aimee is too rich to realize people like her are the issue.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Tokarczuk invites readers to think about how we follow the script and normalize the destruction of the natural world. We normalize pollution, littering, and overconsumption and fail to understand how this diminishes our resources and negatively impacts our ecosystems and most importantly global warming.
Hollow people can demonstrate acts of ordinary violence and pure evil.
Ordinary Violence/Pure Evil
In The Vegetarian, Yeong-hye's husband is a hollow man who believes his wife exists to cook, clean, and make him look good. Viewing Yeong-hye as an object rather than a human being he begins to sexually abuse Yeong-hye.
In Go, Went, Gone Erpenbeck sheds light on hollow thoughts and misconceptions about refugees, especially Muslim refugees. Countries fear refugees because of the violent countries they come from even though they have not experienced a refugee crisis that has proven their assumptions. These countries can become hostile and violent towards refugees.
In Swing Time, instead of accepting poverty as human laziness, Smith invites the reader to think about how interconnected historical phenomena has had an effect on the creation of poverty in countries like West Africa. Slavery is an example where African Americans were placed in poverty from the very beginning.
In Go, Went, Gone the main character, Richard, follows the same script of life everyday. When he retires from his job, he feels lost. His job was his life and now he feels like his sense of purpose is gone. It wasn't until he met the refugees when he began to find a new purpose and identity within himself.
Change is inevitable
In Go, Went, Gone Richard recognizes areas are subject to change. A safe and comfortable place can instantly turn into a political war zone where you are forced to flee the country to survive like the refugees did.
In Go, Went, Gone Richard feared changed. It wasn't until he took a risk with the refugees that he started to feel a sense of purpose within himself. He had found something bigger and greater than himself.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead we see how people fail to accept that change is inevitable, especially if we normalize the destruction of the natural world, for example. Tokarczuk and Hamid both display the idea that the world is changing and we should work together as a country to accommodate to this change even if that means taking risks and making sacrifices.
Moral Codes
In The Vegetarian, Yeong-hye believes she has ascended into a plant. She wants to be a plant because unlike people, plants do not take, they just give. Morally, Yeong-hye believes there is nothing wrong with her actions. Society has been so cruel to her that this is the only way she can escape the cage of society.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Janina truly believes she has done nothing wrong by murdering her neighbors. She tried the "right" ways in society to seek justice for the natural world, but that only resulted in her being labeled as a crazy women. Though, Tokarczuk does not promote murder, he invites the reader to think about how we can promote life and how that may mean changing our moral codes as a result. Change will prosper if we begin to really think about the affect we have on the natural world.
In Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead, Tokarczuk promotes the idea that the stars set the foundation of the fate of the universe, however, we ultimately choose the path we take. We could follow the script of society and commit acts of ordinary violence or we could submit ourselves to change to preserve the natural world.
In Kafka on the Shore, main character, Kafka, believes his life has been decided for him in advance, so much so that he feels he has lost a sense of himself. Kafka tries to run away from the terrible predetermined fate he has established for himself. Murakami invites readers to understand how you can't run from your problems because fate will eventually catch up to you.
In Exit West, to refute readers hollow thoughts towards Muslims, in the beginning of the book, Hamid does not name the area the book is set in. Hamid does this to create humanization of the Muslim world rather than having the reader immediately think of violent and poor individuals if the place was rather identified.
In Exit West, the novel indicates how countries respond to change with hostility and fear. They become hostile when migrants come into their safe and comfortable space out of fear of change and the privilege they have of living in peace and comfort. The doors in Exit West represent change and Hamid develops the idea that change is unavoidable. Whether people want to live a more satisfactory life or they want to survive a war Hamid gives the readers a glimpse of how these doors can be used and the cost of using these doors; change.
By Autumn Ruskey