Anecdotes on The Elephant Vanishes by Murakami

Aspects of montage and collage

The use of montage and collage in the short story are immediately apparent in the disjuncted plot. The plot is interspersed with tangential reflections and details from the narrator's life. It is also told out of order, such as when the protagonist goes on at great length about the town meeting. Additionally, the story breaks at one point and jumps to a radical, new setting, the narrator's workplace. It is only after some time that the reader is able to create the necessary link that makes sense of the deviation in terms of the larger montage.

Also, the use of collage becomes relevant to subtexts and values of the story. It contributes to metaphorical aspects of the work. A very clear example is found in the notion of the scrap book that the narrator maintains to collect thoughts on the dissapearance of the elephant. The book is full of newspaper clippings about the elephant dramatizing both the narratological method of the short story as well as the way life actually accretes and unfolds, that is, in a non-linear manner. The scrap book, like life itself, is a series of clippings and fragments that it is up to the narrator and readers to gather and organize. The scenes in which the narrator reads the newspaper also conveys this synthetic assemblage of realty. In short, the world must be assembled, cobbled together by the scraps of information that present themselves to us. Drawing on another image in the story, we would like to think that the world is a sparkling a kitchen, designed and organized for precise purposes, full of elements that have set functions working in harmony: toasters and ovens and such. However, even the most pristine kitchen is at root a collage of appliances synthetically gathered to convey a sense of organic, holistic meaning. This, of coure, Murakami refuses to provide in his short story.

Thoughts on social relationships

At hide-and-seek

World after the destruction of meaning

Sleuthing

Parade of objects