Text 2. An Overview of the Hard-Boiled fiction of Murakami Haruki

In this essay, I will be examining the principal symbols and themes in two of Murakami's "Hard Boiled" novels, A Wild Sheep Chase and Dance Dance Dance. First, I will give a definition of alienation, which is a recurring theme throughout much of his corpus. I will then give a brief overview of some of Murakami's works, examining his style, and describing the protagonist. The main part of the essay will examine in detail the novels chosen from four different angles; firstly that of important symbols in the works, secondly, the role of death, thirdly, the impact and influence of foreign culture on his protagonist's value systems, actions, and way of life, and fourthly, Murakami's unique use of the Japanese language.

As much of Murakami's work is based around the themes of alienation, in particular those of rootlessness, powerlessness and estrangement, I will now examine a few of their definitions.

One source considers alienation to be "Estrangement from other people, society, or work... a blocking or dissociation of a person's feelings, causing the individual to become less effective. The focus here is on the person's problems in adjusting to society. However, some philosophers believe that alienation is inevitably produced by a shallow and depersonalised society."1 Also, from a sociological viewpoint: "Émile Durkheim's anomie, or rootlessness, stemmed from loss of societal and religious tradition..." "...according to Heidegger, mankind has fallen into crisis by taking a narrow, technological approach to the world and by ignoring the larger question of existence."

Alienation has also been described as: - "estrangement; mental or emotional detachment; the state of not being involved; the critical detachment with which, according to Bertolt Brecht, audience and actors should regard a play, considering action and dialogue and the ideas in the drama without emotional involvement."

The Encyclopaedia Britannica has this to say: "Alienation, in social sciences, the state of feeling estranged or separated from one's milieu, work, products of work, or self," encompassing such variants as "...powerlessness, the feeling that one's destiny is not under one's control but is determined by external agents, fate, luck, or institutional arrangements, meaninglessness, a generalised sense of purposelessness in life... cultural estrangement, the sense of removal from established values in society, and ... self-estrangement, perhaps the most difficult to define, and in a sense the master theme, the understanding that in one way or another the individual is out of touch with himself."

Text 3.

A Feature Article

Why does English have no phrase like "Bon appetite? Has it ever occurred to you that there is no simple way of expressing your hope that someone will enjoy what he is about to eat? If you are entertaining, and say to your guest as you put his dinner before him "I hope you like it", then he will probably think one of two things: either that there is an element of doubt about the meal, or that there is an element of doubt about him! — that the food is perhaps unusual, and he will not be enough of a gastronomic sophisticate to appreciate it. You can be certain of one thing — he will not interpret "I hope you like if in the same way that the Frenchman interprets "Bon appetite" — as a wish that focuses itself on the eater, and not on what is to be eaten. Those opposed to English cooking will no doubt explain the lack by pointing to the quality of food in this country, it's so bad, they will say, that no one ever really believes that it could be enjoyed. Hence, no need for a phrase that enjoins enjoyment! But surely not even English food can be as bad as all that.

Anyway, it's not only a matter of food. Have you never felt the need for a simple, universal and socially neutral expression to use when drinking with someone? The Spaniard has his "Salud", the German his "Prosit", Swedes say "Skaal", and the Frenchman, simply and sincerely "A votre sante". But what about the unfortunate English? For most of them, "Good health" is impossibly old-fashioned and stuffy. It may be all right for lawyers and stockbrokers, doctors and dons, or for crusty colonels inside the four walls of a club; but in the boozer down the Old Kent Road it just sounds out of place. It is true that there is a whole string of vaguely possible alternatives that range from the mildly jocular through the awkward to the phrase-book bizarre; and if you listen carefully you may just hear people still saying "Here's mud in your eye", "Here's the skin off your nose", "Down the hatch" or "All the best" as they sink their pints or sip their sherries. But mostly they take refuge nowadays in "Cheerio" or its truncated version "Cheers". And even here, for some people there is a sneaking suspicion that the term is not quite right. That it is somehow a shade too breezy, and comes most easily from someone addicted to tweeds and the phrase "Old chap".

Even when taking our leave it seems we English are victims of some strangedeficiencies in our valedictory vocabulary. The standard term "Goodbye is both too formal and too final. It may be just the job for ushering someone out of your life altogether; but most leave-takings — for better or worse — are temporary affairs. Perhaps in an attempt to escape implications of finality, many people now say "Bye bye" instead; others try to make this particularly nauseating bit of baby-talk more acceptable by shortening it to "Bye". And in place of those many leave-takings which so easily accommodate the idea of another meeting — "Au revoir", "Auf wiedersehen", "Arrivederci", and so on, we have, alas, only such sad colloquialisms as "So long" and I'll be seeing you".

These examples by no means exhaust the areas in which the English language doesn't exactly help social contact. They have been called "linguistic gaps' and tend to turn up in some way or another in most languages. But according to Mr. Daniel Kane — a lecturer at the University of Chester — there seem to be more of them in English than in other languages — at least other Western European languages. At the moment Mr. Kane is seeking funds to finance a small research project into the problem. He wants first of all to question a large number of people about their feelings on the matter. "After all, I must be certain that the man in the street is aware of these gaps in the same way that I think I am" says Mr. Kane. And then he proposes to compare English with several other languages in this respect, and "look for possible sociological reasons' for the differences he finds.

Задание № 2. Перед вами эссе Х. Мураками на русском языке. Сделайте предпереводческий анализ. Установите тип информации текста. Выполните фоновый анализ. Представьте письменный перевод эссе.

Харуки Мураками