43 pages • 1-hour read
Earthlings
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of physical abuse, emotional abuse, child abuse, child sexual abuse, and death.
The Destructive Nature of Societal Conformity
Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings portrays societal pressure to conform as a violent, dehumanizing force that pushes individuals toward extreme identities as a means of survival. The novel argues that the so-called “normalcy” of society is irrational and restrictive, compelling those who cannot comply into radical and often self-destructive acts of rebellion. The narrative filters this theme through the protagonist, Natsuki, who conceptualizes her town, which she calls the Baby Factory, as a microcosm of society at large, a relentless system designed for the sole purpose of human reproduction. Within this framework, individuals are not people but components, valued only for their ability to contribute to the assembly line of procreation. Natsuki, who feels alienated from this purpose, is treated as a defective part, enduring constant criticism from her family for failing to fulfill her perceived duty.
This intense pressure forces characters to mimic conformity while internally rejecting it. Natsuki and her husband, Tomoya, enter a marriage of convenience, a sexless and emotionally distant partnership designed to give them the appearance of a socially conforming couple to evade the constant scrutiny of the Factory. Their relationship is a performance, a hollow imitation of the societal ideal they are expected to embody. This arrangement highlights how the demand for conformity does not foster genuine connection but rather necessitates the creation of artificial structures. Their marriage is a strategic alliance against a society that offers no room for alternative ways of being, demonstrating that the only way to be left alone is to pretend to be a functioning part of the system. Through their efforts to fit in and therefore avoid scrutiny, Natsuki and Tomoya are forced to chip away at their authentic selves.
Ultimately, the characters’ rejection of societal norms escalates into a complete disavowal of their humanity. Natsuki, Tomoya, and her cousin Yuu transform into self-proclaimed “Popinpobopians,” an alien species free from human rules. This transformation culminates in acts of murder and cannibalism, which they rationalize as the logical endpoint of their liberation from societal norms. By consuming human flesh, they commit the ultimate taboo, severing their final ties to a world that has systematically dehumanized them. Murata suggests that when a society consumes its individuals in the name of conformity, the only possible act of rebellion is to become something monstrously other, becoming a mirror of the society that created it. Through Natsuki and Tomoya’s journeys, the novel illustrates how the pressures of social conformity can lead to the destruction of their authentic selves and their humanity.
Survival as an Act of Radical Rebellion
In Earthlings, survival is framed not as passive endurance but as an active rebellion against the forces of trauma and societal oppression. This theme is rooted in the childhood pact made between Natsuki and her cousin, Yuu, who promise each other that they will “[s]urvive, whatever it takes” (30). This pledge becomes the guiding principle of their lives, justifying increasingly extreme actions as they navigate a world that seeks to erase them. For Natsuki, survival begins as an internal act of rebellion. To cope with the trauma of familial and sexual abuse, she develops what she calls “magical powers,” a form of dissociation that allows her to mentally escape her physical reality. When her mother dismisses her abuse, it reinforces Natsuki’s profound isolation and solidifies her reliance on these self-created realities, suggesting that survival in an unbearable world requires the construction of a new one.
As the characters age, their methods of survival escalate in response to mounting pressure. Their childhood sexual exploration, which horrifies the adults in their family, is a desperate attempt to create a private, meaningful bond in a world governed by hypocrisy and abuse. It is a manifestation of their pledge to one another, an act of mutual preservation that society condemns as a transgression. This condemnation illustrates a central conflict in the novel: The characters’ attempts to survive are consistently misinterpreted and punished by the very system that inflicts their trauma, pushing them further toward the fringes and forcing them to explore even more radical means of self-preservation.
The novel’s violent climax represents the terrifying but logical conclusion of this trajectory. The final acts of murder and cannibalism are presented as the ultimate fulfillment of the pledge to survive. Trapped by agents of the Factory and with no path to escape, the characters rationalize these acts as the only way to achieve true liberation from their tormentors. They are attempting to survive psychically by destroying the symbols of their oppression and forging a new world order where they are no longer victims. Murata posits that when an individual is completely oppressed, the act of survival becomes an act of rebellion against that oppression.
Deconstructing the Logic of Human Norms
Sayaka Murata’s Earthlings systematically deconstructs societal definitions of “normalcy” and morality, presenting them as the arbitrary and often illogical constructs of what the characters call the Factory. By filtering horrific events through the characters’ detached, “alien” logic, the novel confronts the possibility that society’s most cherished values and norms are no more logical than the acts of those who reject them. This deconstruction is evident in the stark contrast between how adults react to different transgressions of societal norms. Natsuki and Yuu’s sexual act is met with emotional reactions of outrage and punishment, while Natsuki’s credible claims of sexual abuse by her cram-school teacher are dismissed and reframed as her fault. Her mother accuses her of having a “filthy mind,” revealing the illogical application of societal norms and a reaction that prioritizes the preservation of a respectable façade over the actual protection of children.
The protagonists counter this inverted morality with their own consistent, albeit disturbing, logic in an attempt to transcend societal norms. Tomoya proposes committing incest not out of desire but as a clinical experiment to undo his societal “brainwashing.” He approaches this profound taboo with the dispassionate air of a scientist, stripping it of its emotional and moral weight. Later, the trio’s calm, practical decision to butcher and eat the corpses of their attackers is framed as a logical solution to their food shortage, not as a monstrous act. They analyze the situation and conclude that consuming the bodies is the most rational way to ensure their survival. Murata forces the reader to engage with this cold reasoning, highlighting the illogical nature of the revulsion such acts inspire and questioning the foundations of conventional morality.
Through this lens, the novel dismantles even the perceived sanctity of human relationships and emotions. Natsuki describes romantic love as little more than a “drug” or an “anesthetic” designed to make the painful and repellent act of mating tolerable for the sake of procreation. By using the characters’ exploration of the logic behind societal norms to strip away the sentimentality that typically surrounds societal pillars like love, marriage, and family, Murata exposes them as functional, and often oppressive, systems. The protagonists’ transgression of norms and taboos is depicted as the application of a different, but equally coherent, logic. The novel ultimately suggests that what society deems “normal” isn’t based in logic but presented as such while being based in illogical norms and emotion.
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