Sleep by Haruki Murakami Literary Analysis Essay

Routine is a schedule, a pattern that people set up to manage the chaos of their everyday lives and to make life simpler, more predictable. Regardless of the variables that may interfere with their days, it always ends with sleep, a consistent and necessary process that they all partake in. In Sleep, Haruki Murakami (the author), removes this constant and describes the life of a woman who cannot be physically tired. With this new freedom, she spends her time doing things she hadn’t done ever since her marriage -eating chocolate, driving around, drinking-. Ironically, she ultimately establishes a new routine constrained to the repetitive cycle of her favorite activities. By displaying the irony of her “free time”, repeating the narrator’s everyday life, and by providing internal monologue, Murakami displays life as a routine.

Before the narrator conceived the ability to not sleep, she was a stereotypical housewife that did chores and took care of her husband and kid. Her normal routine was making breakfast, seeing her husband out for work, going to the market, cleaning, cooking dinner, and tucking her son to bed. Being the wife of the family, she is constrained to this pattern of life; she only has the remaining time to go swim rather than pursuing her other interests (drinking, driving) as observed later in the story. “So they don’t suspect a thing. On the surface, our life flows on unchanged” (Murakami 1). Even while she was unable to sleep and had begun her nightly activities, Murakami repeats her daily ritual to enforce the concept of routine. While she would prefer to read and walk about the house intoxicated, she is bound to perform her typical tasks due to her obligations. For example, when she was reading “Anna Karenina” she lost track of time: “Eleven-forty! My husband would be home soon. I closed the book and hurried to the kitchen. I put water in the pot and turned on the gas” (Murakami 3). Even though she was distracted, Murakami, once again, mentions her daily duties as if to put forth that she is tied to a recurrent lifestyle. Though this may be due to the traditional Japanese oppression of women, the author clearly intended to display how life is constantly dominated by routine, whether it is due to obligation or one’s own interests.

After gaining her special powers, the narrator began to pursue her other interests, starting with an array of nightly activities. Having all the time and not being constrained to the physical limits of her body, she was able to do things she wouldn’t have had the time to do during an average day. Accordingly, she took advantage of this and began reading “Anna Karenina”, reminiscing of her childhood and college life: “I just enjoyed reading books [] once I graduated from college I simply had to begin supporting myself”. Parts of her past self like drinking brandy and taking late night drives came back became her part-time amusements. Ironically, she formed a new routine – one that was exclusive yet still a recurring pattern of activities.

Initially, Murakami made it seem as if she was straying completely from her normal life, by introducing new aspects of the character. However, he eventually reveals that she was in fact, creating a new cycle for her extensive “free time”: when her husband and child went to bed. “I would get out of bed. I would go to the living room, turn on the floor lamp, and pour myself a glass of brandy. Then I would sit on the sofa and read my book” (Murakami 6). As regulated as her day was, her midnight schedule becomes as solidified, and she even admits to this truth in the passage. Murakami uses this irony to expose the pervasive quality of routine in people’s lives, even when they are presented with intermissions throughout their normal days.