64 pages • 2-hour read
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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Chapters 17-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 17 Summary: “End of the World, Charlie Parker, Time Bomb”
The Professor’s granddaughter tries to get the protagonist out of bed. He tells her about his injury, blaming her and her grandfather for getting him involved. When he asks for the whole story, she claims to only know that the narrator is the key, and the Professor says the thing inside him is the end of the world. Her grandfather changed after he invented shuffling and did not talk openly to her about his work.
The Professor’s granddaughter gets into bed with the narrator, explaining that she got lost looking for the supermarket. He is suspicious of her. She clarifies that she is bad at directions because she has never really gone anywhere. Her family died in an accident when she was six. After that, her grandfather took her in and home-schooled her. She had little contact with the outside world other than a nanny who also worked as their housekeeper. At home, she learned languages, how to play musical instruments, and tightrope walking. She thinks the narrator is interesting and asks him to play a Charlie Parker record. He tells her the stereo is busted. When she asks to touch him, he says no, reminding her of his wound.
She talks about how shuffling makes her grandfather unhappy because the technology could reorder the world, and it is a door to a new world. The Professor did not intend to end the world and did not trust the System with his work anymore. The narrator considers Junior’s idea that the data he shuffled was a time bomb and tells the Professor’s granddaughter that his shuffling password is the end of the world. He does not know the story held in that password, but he now has no choice but to find out. She wants him to help her grandfather with the INKlings.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Dreamreading”
The narrator reads dreams without understanding them. He can read many dreams—up to six skulls—in one night but wonders why dreamreading exists (it is later revealed to help clear the mind of the sense of self that is altered by the real world). The Librarian says he is possessed by the act of dreaming and advises that he open his mind to learn the meaning of it. He can put his hands on the skulls, use his fingertips to extract image fragments from them, but he can’t make sense of the fragments, and then the fragments disappear.
She makes him coffee and sometimes food. One night, while looking at the moon on the steps of the Old Bridge, they talk about his mind, his delayed understanding and lack of understanding, and how the mind is the self.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Hamburgers, Skyline, Deadline”
The narrator gets out of bed and grabs some useful items, such as rope, a flashlight, food, and cash. He laments the destruction of his apartment as he turns off the lights. He drives his car despite being in pain from his wound since the Professor’s granddaughter doesn’t know how to drive. The narrator observes a young couple in a car beside them at a stoplight, and the woman wears bracelets on the arm she dangles out of the window. The narrator and the Professor’s granddaughter stop at a drive-in for hamburgers. As they eat, she explains there is a spare portable INKling-repelling device they can use to get to the lab. They stop at a supermarket so he can buy some alcohol. She assures him she has his back.
When they arrive at the office building, she uses her ID to get them through security. They talk about the Professor’s secret construction of his lab, their family money, and her stock market money. In the elevator, she asks what he thought about school. He didn’t like it, but never thought about dropping out. She asks him to live with her, offering to cover the costs of everything. When he notes the economic disparity, she suggests he teach her about his emotional shell to make things more even. She reveals that 25 out of 26 people who underwent the shuffling surgery and training died. However, he survived, so his emotional shell is special, and he is the key. Her grandfather tried to simulate his shell but failed, and she doesn’t know about his future plans for the narrator.
They see that the Professor’s office was ransacked. His granddaughter is angry and blames the people who trashed the narrator’s apartment. There are paperclips scattered around, and they find the small INKling-repelling device (later it is revealed that paperclips themselves are an inkling-repellant). The Professor’s granddaughter opens a hidden safe and extracts a gun (which she knows how to use but he doesn’t). In the Professor’s encoded datebook, she finds the narrator’s laundering and shuffling dates. It says to cancel the program at the time when the narrator was supposed to deliver the shuffled data. Thirty-six hours later, there is an X in the datebook, which indicates when the world ends. They head underground.
Chapter 20 Summary: “The Death of the Beasts”
When it starts to snow, some of the old beasts die. Following a description of the snow, the narrator goes to the Gatekeeper, who invites him to climb the Watchtower. When the Gatekeeper blows his horn to wake the beasts, the narrator sees the dead ones remain still as others come in through the Gate.
Back at his quarters, he cries from the pain the sun on the snow caused his eyes. The Colonel brings him coffee and warns him about the winter sun. They talk about how the dying beasts are weak, and their number is limited because they are part of the Town. The narrator realizes the beasts’ skulls are what he reads dreams from in the Library. The Colonel tells him that he will learn things in the winter.
Chapter 21 Summary: “Bracelets, Ben Johnson, Devil”
The narrator and the Professor’s granddaughter go down the ladder, heading toward the river, with the INKling-repelling device and flashlights. The narrator thinks about the couple he saw in the car on the ride over and wonders if the woman takes off her bracelets during sex. He imagines sleeping with her while she wears only her bracelets and gets an erection while still on the ladder. The Professor’s granddaughter says she hears the INKlings’ bat-like language. The narrator does not hear them, and she tells him they only eat putrefied things. He asks if she leaves her earrings on while she showers—she answers that she does. She suggests that the narrator ask the Professor to cancel out the pain signal from his wound when they get to him. They make it to the waterfall before the INKling-repelling device runs out of battery charge.
The waterfall is still noise-canceled, and the lab door is locked. Inside, they see the lab contains less destruction than the office—some equipment is untouched, the skulls are left intact, and the safe’s auto-incinerator burned the papers inside. The girl says there is an underground escape route her grandfather must have taken to a shelter. She finds a map in his notebook. The narrator worries about the INKling-repelling device’s battery running out while they search for the Professor. When they change out of their raingear, it is 12:30 a.m. The girl opens a secret door in the closet wall. As the INKling-repelling device charges, they talk about the Professor’s genius, and she kisses the narrator on the cheek. Once the repellant device is fully charged they go through the secret door, and she closes it behind them and warns the narrator that their escape route is through the INKlings’ sanctuary.
They travel through a low-ceilinged cave. The narrator painfully runs after the girl, catching up when she pauses at a fork in the path to check the map. At the fork, they find paperclips on the ground marking the way. They consult the map about boreholes and slowly descend into the earth. Eventually, they come to a circular domed chamber. The entrance to the INKlings’ sanctuary is marked with reliefs that contain mythical fish with claws. They follow more paperclips on the ground and begin climbing an underground mountain. They talk about the hill and hell as they ascend. She advises him to think about nice things.
He thinks of Ben Johnson on horseback in old movies as they scale a rock face, climbing in the dark since they are unable to use their hands while holding flashlights. She suggests they sing, and he sings a Russian folk song he learned as a kid and makes up lyrics of his own. They reach a plateau where there are paperclips and talk about her grandfather’s cartography. The girl tells him about the INKlings’ gods and sacrifices on the plateau and points out a trough carved into the ground that leads to the altar where her grandfather is.
As they walk through the trough, it is 2:21 a.m. The narrator hears noises and is hypnotized by the sound of footsteps, which he tries to translate into English then Finnish. Picturing the Professor’s granddaughter’s shoes as she walks, the hypnotic sounds tell him a story about the Devil and a Finnish farmer, and he falls asleep on the ground. The girl slaps him awake and tells him the hypnosis is a trap. Then she ties the rope from his knapsack around both of them. As they walk, he focuses on the jacket of his that she borrowed, thinking about when he bought it in the 70s. She asks him to sing again, but he suggests a conversation about rain instead. Rain reminds her of the day her parents died. She was in a hospital, and they were coming to visit her. She remembers the birds outside her window on a camphor tree. and how when her parents died it was the end of the world for her. Suddenly, she stops walking, and he bumps into her. They hear a rumbling, and she warns that it is something worse than an earthquake.
Chapter 22 Summary: “Gray Smoke”
Smoke from burning the beasts goes up every day. When the narrator asks why there are no methods for preventing the deaths, like a shelter, the Colonel says the beasts would not use it. As they play chess, they talk about the beasts and the nature of suffering.
After three days of snow, there is a clear day. The winter sun makes it impossible for the narrator to go out during the day, and he can only read one skull in the Library each night before the pain is too much. The Librarian gives him a cool towel and a warm drink when he is in too much pain to read any more dreams. He misses the sun, and she asks if he wants something from his past. He has trouble remembering the past without his shadow and worries about his shadow dying as well as his own death. Then, she asks if he wants to sleep with her. He thinks the Town will capture his mind if he does. Instead, he asks about her mother.
She recalls that her mother took her on walks to watch the beasts and that her mother used to sing. The Librarian asks the narrator to sing, but he cannot remember any songs. He asks about musical instruments, and she replies there might be some in the Collection Room. They find many objects there, including a typewriter stored inside of luggage, but no musical instruments. The pain from his eyes inspires him to head home. Feeling cold along the way, he wonders if he can take a scarf from the Collection Room. He wants to see his shadow, so he plans to visit the Gatekeeper.
Chapter 23 Summary: “Holes, Leeches, Tower”
The Professor’s granddaughter tells the narrator to run, and he feels like they are running toward the source of the noise. The sounds make it seem like the INKlings’ god knows they are coming. When she stops running suddenly, he crashes into her, falls, and hits his head on the ground as his body goes off the edge of a ledge. The narrator drags himself up with the rope that is attached to the girl.
After he is securely back on the ledge, she shines her flashlight to reveal that they are among many rows of holes. The ground is covered with leeches crawling up from holes, and the narrator has a couple stuck to him. As he realizes the holes were used for sacrifices, she warns him that water is going to fill the holes. Queasy, he fantasizes about a normal morning in the sunlight.
When they see the INKlings’ altar, the noise cuts out. They climb a tower—a stalagmite with steps chiseled into it—as the water begins to fill the holes. As they climb, the narrator has a vision of himself at 10 years old watching a film newsreel and seeing his shadow on the screen. His brother is there as well, but he feels like the rest of the memory is locked away by the shuffling operation. (Later, the Professor reveals this is a false bridge his mind is creating between separated parts of his consciousness. The narrator is determined to get his stolen memories back.)
They reach a rope with knots tied in it. He tells her to climb first while he holds on to the end. As she climbs, he fantasizes about getting a whiskey in a bar while wearing a nice suit. At 4:12 a.m., she signals she has reached the top, and he starts to climb the rope.
Chapter 24 Summary: “Shadow Grounds”
After three clear days, clouds come and bring relief to the narrator’s eyes. The Colonel says these are not snow clouds. The narrator goes to see the Gatekeeper—he has a stove like the one in the Library. When the narrator asks about the clothes in the Collection Room, the Gatekeeper says he can help himself. The Gatekeeper also says the Power Station Caretaker might have a musical instrument and draws a map to the station. When the narrator sees it is in the Woods, he asks if he should go because he got a fever the last time he went into the Woods. The Gatekeeper says the station is close to the entrance of the Woods, and he will be fine as long as he stays away from the Wall.
Then, the Gatekeeper agrees to let the narrator visit his shadow. They go to the Shadow Grounds behind the Gatehouse. Fenced in next to the Wall is the shadow’s extremely cold lean-to. When he is alone with the narrator, the unhealthy-looking shadow says the Gatekeeper makes him help burn the beasts and that the Gatekeeper likes dead things. The narrator explains he got sick when his shadow says the map arrived too late—he cannot plan an escape in winter.
The shadow knows the Town and its inhabitants are wrong but lacks the evidence to demonstrate the wrongness to the narrator. The narrator thinks there is no escape, but his shadow wants to get them out of there. The shadow is trying to find where things come in and out of the Town. He tries to explain that the Town is like a circle that causes people to doubt themselves, and while the narrator feels lost his thoughts are being kept from him, and he should believe in himself. The shadow advises the narrator to watch the birds because they are free to fly over the Wall and out of the Town. When the Gatekeeper calls for them to end their visit, the shadow tells the narrator to pretend they did not get along and to not visit for a while.
Chapters 17-24 Analysis
This section of the novel focuses on a descent into underground darkness in the hard-boiled chapters, which unfolds alongside sickness and death in the end of the world chapters. When helping the girl rescue her grandfather, the narrator follows a path that “wormed left and right but kept going further and further down [...] only a steady, even descent” (212). In the end of the world, the sky is colored gray with the smoke of the Gatekeeper burning the corpses of the beasts. The narrator says, “It almost seems the beasts wish to suffer and die,” to which the Colonel replies, “That is natural to them. Cold and discomfort” (223). This is before it is revealed that the beasts die for memory and ego to be completely erased from the Town. Both narrators pass through a place of darkness before reaching some light—the light of the sun and the light of understanding. The images of a fish in the INKlings’ sanctuary is an allusion to the Japanese mythological creature Namazu, who is a giant catfish imprisoned beneath mountain who causes earthquakes.
The end of the world chapters tend to be shorter than the hard-boiled chapters, but both examine the nature of the mind and memory. The girl describes the Professor as a genius who is able to do many things, like cabinetry as well as creating shuffling, because “Genius doesn’t specialize; genius is reason in itself” (210). The power of his mind can be applied to a variety of tasks, including altering the mind. In the end of the world—the unconscious mind isolated by the shuffling operation—elements from the real world only exist as representations. The Librarian explains that “[w]hat resembles coffee only resembles coffee. Everything is made in the image of something” (224). The narrator in the end of the world chapters does want to understand this isolated mental world, but it is not the real world.
Throughout the novel, Murakami uses sensory details to develop both worlds. For instance, there are several moments when the narrator notes the sound of shoes, starting in the first chapter with the girl’s pink heels echoing “down the empty corridor like an afternoon at the quarry” (7). In this third section of the novel, as they approach the INKlings’ sanctuary, the narrator notes the “squishing rhythm of [their] rubber boots” and tries to “impose a verbal meaning on the sounds” (216-217). This is how the INKlings hypnotize him into falling asleep; in other words, his mindfulness of the auditory is exploited. In a similar example from the end of the world, the narrator hopes to “read meaning from [the Librarian’s] fingers, but they tell [him] nothing” (225). Hands are untranslatable—his attempt at palmistry fails but with less dramatic results than his counterpart’s attempt to translate the sounds of feet. The sensory is connected to physicality in these cases.
This section also develops the fixation on physical media. The narrator notes the presence of paperclips in the Professor’s office: “There was something about them, I didn’t know what” (195). When he and the Professor’s granddaughter go underground looking for the Professor, paperclips end up being “trail markers” (211) left by the Professor to help guide them. However, it is not until later that the narrator (and reader) learn paperclips also repel INKlings. Also while underground, the narrator longs for the morning ritual of reading the newspaper despite the fact that he “didn’t subscribe to a newspaper” (235). This echoes Chapter 7, where the narrator uses his neighbor’s “morning edition” (68) to check what day it was after he had laundered the Professor’s data and slept for 10 hours. Physical media, the narrator decides, is useful for keeping track of time and is part of ritual behavior in Tokyo society.
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