"Normal people enjoy putting non-normal humans on trial. But if you drive me out, people will judge you all the more. So you have no choice but to keep feeding me."
- Shiraha, speaking to Keiko (Furukura) about normal humans' trial of humans who aren't normal, p.146
0. Introduction
For the first time in a very long while, I picked up a Japanese novel. I bought this book in early December, but somehow I kept putting off reading it, and then I took a few books with me when going home, and thanks to that I read it a bit. The book wasn't thick or large, and the novel wasn't one that reads with difficulty, so I finished it in a little under two hours. I read the book on the bus from Gwangju to Nokdong in Goheung, and I think I concentrated better than expected. But unlike the novels I'd been reading one after another, I read this work bearing in mind that it corresponds, in its own way, to a 'novella,' that it has a cultural background different from most of the recent Korean literary works I'd read, and that the influence of macroscopic society seems to appear while also not appearing.
1. Plot
If one insists on classifying it, this story can be seen as a novel in which the 'conflict structure' develops centered on inner conflict, but the inner conflict here shows a slightly different aspect from other works. If someone asked me to compare it with the most similar work among the works of Korean literature, what I could immediately compare it with is Yi Sang's 'Wings.' Let me talk for a moment about Yi Sang's 'Wings.' In Yi Sang's 'Wings,' the protagonist 'I' belongs to a position of leeching off a wife who makes her living through prostitution, unable to live integrated into society. While living a parasitic life without any particular thought, 'I' comes to learn that the medicine the wife had been feeding him was not 'aspirin' but 'Adalin,' and the novel ends as he hears the siren blaring at noon and feels an itch in his shoulder blades. To sum it up, it's a story of coming to realize who 'I' is. Convenience Store Woman is no different from this. 'I,' who had many differences from other people since childhood, after becoming a convenience-store employee pretends to live a life like 'normal humans,' but in reality still spends a life close to that of a machine running for the 'convenience store,' not a normal human. Then, meeting Shiraha, who temporarily took a job at the convenience store for 'marriage-hunting,' the novel concludes as she is reborn as a true 'convenience-store clerk.'
'Wings' is in the first-person point of view, and since the protagonist 'I' narrates everything, the reader can grasp, without addition or subtraction, the thoughts arising from 'I's' perspective; meanwhile, in 'Convenience Store Woman' it's third person, but by developing the novel from 'Keiko's' perspective, in effect we come to understand the story in a situation where 'Keiko = narrator.' Meanwhile, if Yi Sang's 'Wings' criticized the material-civilization society and capitalist values of the time through the act of throwing away the jar of saved money, 'Convenience Store Woman' depicts a life lived not as a single autonomous 'human' treated as such in modern society but as a component for running a convenience store well, a life standardized by the remarks of 'normal people' who want normal people, a standardized society.
Yi Sang, 'Wings' - Money | Sayaka Murata, 'Convenience Store Woman' - Ordinariness (normality) / Standardization |
The protagonist 'I' happens to learn that the medicine his wife gave him was not 'aspirin' but 'Adalin,' and thereafter, holding doubts about the wife's actions, a perfect crack begins to form in the already-broken marriage. | Keiko's (Furukura's) life nearly came to change once again as she met 'Shiraha' and tried to become a 'normal human,' but she longs for the standardized life she'd built working as a convenience-store employee. |
'I,' who plays no role in the household economy, strolls the streets of Seoul and returns to be scolded by his wife, but then goes out again, living as a being who can't blend into the world. | The 'different child' of childhood didn't become a normal person even after growing up, and because she can't become this 'normal person,' she lives preparing various reasons to appear as if she's a 'normal person.' |
2. The Protagonist's Peculiarity
'Keiko,' the protagonist of the novel 'Convenience Store Woman,' realizes in childhood, through the following incidents, that she is not a 'normal person.'
1) When friends kept telling a boy to stop bullying a girl, Keiko picks up a 'shovel' and strikes the boy on the head.
2) After finding a dead 'bird' in the park in childhood, she suggests to her father, who wants to eat 'skewered grilled' food, that they make and eat skewers together with this 'bird.'
These two incidents signify the particularity that 'Keiko' possesses, and as for how she thought of a protagonist with such ideas - I can't infer it and have nothing to say but that it's the author's 'capacity,' so let's pass over it - but as in the situations above, the 'protagonist's' peculiarity, as the protagonist says, gradually becomes concealed thereafter through 'a life of speaking minimally.' Then, through the 'convenience-store work' she begins, the protagonist starts, for the first time, to act similarly to a normal person. But that was impossible, and it ends in an impossible ending. She herself knows she's different from others, but the ability to solve this is lacking. If it had been so from the start - if communion with others had been possible - this kind of setup would be impossible and she'd have appeared as a 'changing, three-dimensional protagonist.' But that wasn't the case. This protagonist shows peculiarity in that communion with others is impossible, in that even her eating shows the peculiarity of simply 'boiling' ingredients to eat, in that she feels meaning in the 'cog-like life' of keeping the convenience store running well, and in that she feels 'strangeness' toward conversation other than conversation for running the convenience store well. If I cite a few protagonists from novels I remember as examples, this 'difference' is revealed even more starkly. In Anna Karenina, 'Levin' lived to unfold the ideals he envisioned and felt fulfillment in life with the person he loved and in conversations with farmers. Humbert, one of the protagonists of Lolita, feels fulfillment in his relationship with his 'daughter.' But such novels can be said to be somewhat 'modern.' However, the protagonist in 'Convenience Store Woman' - the individual goal and the happiness she feels are somewhat difficult to call 'personal' goals. Yet to say they aren't 'personal' goals either - since the happiness obtained at the 'convenience store' is a happiness befitting 'Keiko,' it's personal to some degree.
3. Points to Consider in This Novel
1) Normal People
Actually, although I'm now a 'graduate,' I felt that at Korea National University of Education in particular, the 'trial' by 'normal people' of 'people who aren't normal' was severe. Examples of this include the burdensome questions from people in my first year, back when my hair was very long, like 'when are you going to cut your hair'; questions about my fashion - for instance, even clothes I simply wore because I wanted to made them imagine some 'intention,' so I got asked things like 'where are you going today?'; remarks like 'this school is a place only people who'll become teachers should come to'; and so on - too many and varied things to list. At first I felt anger toward those who didn't accept me, but gradually the anger faded and I resolved to understand them. The point being that I'm a bit removed from normal people, but many of the people at this school can be seen as normal people belonging to the type of 'academically capable, conservative person.' That's why I could empathize to some degree with 'Keiko's' thinking.
We usually call modern society, today's society, a 'postmodern' society. In other words, it's an age of diversity, but in this age of diversity people still tend to feel anxiety toward 'people different from themselves.' Although the people who feel that anxiety are gradually decreasing, I think a society like Korea, with its especially strong group culture, is relatively lacking in tolerance toward 'people who stand out alone.' This is one of the parts that must gradually develop.
2) A Component of Capitalism
If Yi Sang's 'Wings' criticized capitalist society in the form of negating capitalism, 'Convenience Store Woman' develops as a novel that criticizes it not by negating 'capitalism' but by showing the figure of someone as a 'component' that realizes it. What 'Keiko' feels the greatest joy in is when she hears the 'sounds of the convenience store' inside her home, or when she shows her 'professional' self at the convenience store, or when the store manager mentions the target count for today's sale items and emphasizes that it must be achieved, and so on. That is, for 'Keiko,' running the convenience store well appears as one method of 'self-actualization,' and this self-actualization can be summed up as being not so much 'because I want to' but because it's work she's done for 19 years, and because she thinks it's the only work she can do like a 'normal person,' and so on. That is, in fact 'Keiko' is a protagonist who hasn't given particular thought to what she herself wants to do. Of course, not everyone needs to agonize over what they want to do. Most protagonists in novels more often don't have such dreams. And that's also the image of an everyday modern person. Living in the role one is given. That's why the part where this protagonist, at the novel's ending, happens to enter a convenience store and feels 'I absolutely must do convenience-store work' is, for Keiko, 'self-actualization' and, at the same time on the other hand, belongs to the process of becoming, to a perfect degree, a part of 'capitalism.'
3) Shiraha
Shiraha, who says he started the convenience-store part-time job for marriage-hunting activity, holds points similar to Keiko. The very commonality is that he's not a 'normal person.' At the same time, this person tries to use 'Keiko.' He also wants to pose as a normal person through 'Keiko.' Because he too is annoyed by 'normal people's trial.' But Shiraha's choice was a failed choice. Because the very decision to live a life like a 'normal person' based on a person who isn't a 'normal person' was wrong from the start. Of course, Shiraha's feelings are understandable. He surely found in 'Keiko' a 'figure who doesn't put others on trial.' That's why he may have thought of 'Keiko' as hope, but Keiko isn't a 'normal person,' nor could she become a 'normal person.' She's merely 'mimicking,' so contrary to Shiraha's intent, his various plans, including the 'marriage plan,' failed. In short, this is because Keiko, while failing to play the role of a 'component of capitalism' and losing her vitality, happens to enter a convenience store and finds the meaning of her own existence there. That is, failing to get a job like a 'normal person' shows that 'Shiraha's' attempt failed.
4) The Convenience Store and the Friend Gathering
As the 'elderly female customer' who used the convenience store said, the convenience store in the novel is a place that feels not one bit different from 19 years ago. This means that the space of the 'convenience store' is set up as a space that reveals capitalism. In fact, one can infer that even though the people running the convenience store have kept changing, it has provided the 'same feeling' to the people who use it. In other words, the 'convenience store' in this novel should be interpreted as appearing not simply as a 'convenience store' but as a space where 'normal people' live their lives. Keiko's 'friend gathering,' too, in the end turns into a place where 'normal people put others on trial,' and this too turns into a gathering where she hears them say 'become the same as us.'
4. In Summary.
The 'protagonist' Keiko cannot empathize with 'normal people' different from herself. She doesn't think the way they think, nor act the way they act. But the 'reverse' is also the same. Keiko's younger sister can't empathize with the way 'Keiko' thinks or lives. This kind of relationship signifies the 'disconnection' of modern people.
And, within this disconnection, one can confirm that the structure of modern society has penetrated very deeply. It seems necessary to throw out the question of whether living as a mere 'person,' not as a normal person, is truly wrong.
Actually, I have no intention of becoming a 'normal person.' I'm far removed from normal people to begin with, and since finding people similar to me is my goal, I have no intention whatsoever of becoming a normal person. If someone asked whether I'd be willing to try 'posing as a normal person,' I'd want to try it but would answer that 'it seems difficult.' A person who isn't a normal person should rightly live on as someone who isn't a normal person. I want to become a person meaningful as 'myself,' not to live as a meaningful person by becoming someone other than myself. That would be very difficult and an act of deceiving others. I'll become a being meaningful in the world when I'm true to 'myself.' So I won't live as a 'normal person.'
Having read a postmodern novel for the first time in a while, my head feels like it's buzzing. Novels like this are wonderful yet give too much to think about. Next time I should write about a book other than a novel.
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