Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World as a Celebration of the Unconscious Mind

In Murakami’s novel, two concepts of mind, the conscious mind and the unconscious mind, are juxtaposed as different worlds in the main character’s plane of existence.  In Hard-Boiled Wonderland, the protagonist’s work environment, big data rules every aspect of life.  In fact, the protagonist’s sole purpose is to shuffle through tons of data and protect it with everything in his power.  Life and existence itself are disposable entities in the midst of numbers, as the protagonist functions as a biologically-based processor who is in danger of losing his own sense of self.  In the way that people in our society risk everything to attain money, members of this society see data as the new necessity.  If we were to conceptualize consciousness as the way it is widely understood, we would describe it as identity, personality, awareness, even life-force…in essence, consciousness is what distinguishes us from other animals and what drives us to achieve.  However, if we consider the mind’s portrayal in Hard-Boiled Wonderland as consciousness, this idealization of consciousness becomes completely uprooted.  Instead of a testament to individualism and passion, consciousness is a means to an end.  The protagonist’s mind is predominately a machine, utilized for the scientific and pragmatic purpose of processing data.  In the End of the World, Wonderland’s locational foil, poetic prose replaces the dry and calculated tone of the odd chapters.  Concepts such as emotion, identity, and self-concept are investigated through a new lens: the subconscious.  If this world also represents a foil to consciousness, subconsciousness could be interpreted as the new humanistic powerhouse.  Countless implications stem from this shift in thinking.  For example, has our technologized society created a need for a new outlook on what embodies the human psyche?  Has our need to process numbers replaced our affinity for processing ideas, feelings, and concepts?  In this novel Murakami effectively removes the conscious mind from the pedestal and replaces it with the unconscious.