64 pages • 2-hour read
Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
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Symbols & Motifs
Books and Movies
Books are an important motif throughout Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The hard-boiled narrator identifies with the titular character of Rudin and Julien Sorel in The Red and the Black (163). He also falls for a librarian, and they discuss many authors, such as Jorge Luis Borges (94) and Somerset Maugham (358). Reading is a huge part of his personality; even his fantasies of retirement include reading. The narrator, while underground, continually longs for a “morning paper” (286).
Movies also play a large role in the hard-boiled narrator’s life. To convince the librarian to bring books to his apartment, he uses a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey (81). After being unable to perform sexually with the librarian, he thinks about the movie The Enemy Below (93). When struggling to get through the underground, he thinks about Ben Johnson riding horses in “those great old John Ford movies” (213). The narrator’s “videodeck” (141) is one of his favorite possessions. Also, alongside reading, watching movies is part of the narrator’s ideal retirement.
Sound and Music
Sound is another motif in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. The Professor’s “sound-removal” (45) technology, demonstrated when he mutes his granddaughter and the sounds of water, is considered advanced science by the narrator. In the end of the world, the “eerie call” (122) of the Southern Pool is an “unearthly” sound of “snarling,” or groaning that sometimes “breaks off choking” (121). This keeps most inhabitants of the Town away, but the narrator’s shadow believes, despite the awful sound, the Pool is the way to escape the Town.
On the other hand, there is artistically organized sound, or music. When he has only a few hours left to live, the narrator buys some cassette tapes, including Bob Dylan, Johnny Mathis, and the Brandenburg Concertos (344). He describes the morning of his last day in terms of music: “The autumn sky was as clear as if it had been made that very morning. Perfect Duke Ellington weather” (387). This reference to song lyrics is almost synesthesia (a crossing of senses). As previously mentioned, the song Danny Boy is the key to the narrator at the end of the world realizing the truth about the Town.
Absence of Names
No one in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World has a name, including the first-person narrators. This lack of names is both a motif and a complicated symbol in the novel. On one hand, the lack of names allows the characters to maintain a relatively generic everyman quality that can be applied symbolically to every human. On the other hand, the lack of clear, concrete identity also represents the narrator’s inability to find true connection in relationships with other people—he was unable to maintain relationships with his wife and his cat, and he has trouble connecting with either of the women he expresses interest in throughout the story.
None of the characters having names also represents how invisible, insignificant, and finite an individual can be when compared to the collective human population or even the expanse of the universe. This idea also plays into the solipsism explored in the text in that our true identities are only fully present and relevant within our own minds.
Birds
Birds are an important symbol of freedom in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. At the end of the world, the Librarian and the narrator’s shadow mention birds in relation to freedom. The Librarian compares birds in flight to the narrator’s work as a Dreamreader: “You are not a prisoner. You are a bird in flight, searching the skies for dreams” (183). The shadow advises the narrator to “[l]ook at the birds [...] Nothing can hold them. Not the Wall, nor the Gate, nor the sounding of the horn. It does good to watch the birds” (249). Birds are also connected to freedom in the hard-boiled narrative. When Junior replies to the hard-boiled narrator about his freedom to speculate, he says, “Let yourself go, free as a bird, vast as the sea” (136).
Birds are especially significant at the end of the novel. The hard-boiled narrator feeds popcorn to pigeons in the park in his final hours (390). Before the shadow dives in the Southern Pool to escape the Town, he says he is “Free as the birds” (398). The novel ends on the narrator at the end of the world watching the flight of a “single white bird” (400), giving the reader the symbol of freedom without a clear resolution.
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