"The Well": A metaphor that connects Thomas Mann and Haruki Murakami

Thomas Mann and Haruki Murakami, capturing the atmosphere of the beginning and end of the 20th. century, use similiar metaphors to depict a man who is alianeted-estranged- from his reality and himself. Passing from the 20.th to the 21th. century, the narration of the stories in Joseph and His Brothers and The Wind-up Bird Chronicle relates a clarified consciousness, bearing witness to his individuality, rescued from the imprisonment of history, starts on a mythological journey. Both authors claim that a man who wants to find his way through the conflict of good and evil disguised in different roles can liberate himself from the monotonyand absurdity of life simply by developing values. Facing their own reality within antiimperialist approaches, Mann and Murakami, get lost in the depths of the mist of the past. The journey of the disoriented self to the underground; to the depths of the dry well, in other words to the dephts of the unconscious, starts a new process free from the trap of memory. In Murakami?s novel, Toru emerges into a new identity, parallels a general quest for the individualization process in Japan, while the story of Joseph who was cast down into the well by his brothers, is matched its author?s phases of life; the years when he was pro-war, and his awakening into reality through the theories of ?regeneration? of his contemporary C. G. Jung. The quest of man for immortality, shown by symbols in myths and religion, aims to continually reconsruct life and meaning, bringing to mind the theory of consciousnessstressed by Mountcastle and Edelman. The evolution of consciousness in developing meaning about the existence of life also goes parallel with the patronage of art, ascribing different values to the conflict between ?life and death? The era in which the first and second world wars took place was a time of ambiguity about the search for existence and life and the measure of man himself or, on the contrary, the insignificance and absurdity of life. The political problems between Japan and China, brought up as the border conflict in The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Murakami known as The Nomonhan Incident, was the event that led to the II. World War in which thousands of people are assassinated and jammed into the wells and kept in secret over the years by the Japanese government. These periods were the breaking points of the century, reconstructing a new way of life leading to the new historicism. Man, while being given historical solution to the complexitiy and the disorder of life, the icons, symbols and the metaphors of life lay out different alternatives developing within the expression of art. His introverted journey identifiesitself with the rescue of the inner man?s revival, and acts as a converter or a transformer of society. That?s man?s destiny, given to him as a duty related to the time mostly bringing out hope. Joseph, Mann?s hero, is an archetype. Receiving God?s approval through his regeneration, he was blessed, became a prophet, and took a main role in Western and Eastern tradition. Mann?s conscious, like his hero, emerges from darkness to the light of the absolute as he sanctifies his transformation, personified as Joseph in his novel. By the way, Murakami?s hero, alienated from his surrounding by hostilities and social distress, becomes aculturel transformer. Because of his earned virtues and his struggle against the evil of imperialism Toru, like Joseph, shows us the archetype of the Japanese soul. In the depths ofthe unconscious, he is searching for his wife Kumiko, whom he has identified with the meaning of life. As he explores the dephts of the dried well, coming out, he arises into a new meaning and a new identity referring to a different cosmos in Murakami?s novel.Key words: Japanese Culture, identity, imperializm, mythology, Thomas Mann, Haruki Murakami, C.G.. Jung, synchronicity, archetypes, anima (meaning of life), well / herb with no water, rebirth-regeneration