What I find interesting about today's readings is that both these stories deal with the past, but evoke, rather than nostalgia, a feeling of indescribable loneliness. In "Relive Box," the main character is so obsessed with escaping his current disappointments by reliving his past that he forgets about his responsibilities and the one chance he has at improving his life--through his daughter. In "The Ice Man," the main character falls in love with a man who has no past, and in turn isolates herself. Both stories result in their protagonists becoming lost, alone, numb. The Ice Man's wife says "I lost almost all sensation." "Are you there?" Katie says desperately at the end of "Relive Box," and her dad replies dumbly, "no, I'm not."
Something else I thought was interesting in terms of reaction to the reading was that in the beginning of "Relive Box," I felt pity for the protagonist and a little frustration towards Katie, since she was portrayed as the rebellious teenager her father can't understand. But gradually, as the situation with the "Relive Box" was explained and we were drawn into Dad's life, I felt less pity and more revulsion. Perhaps that's unfair--addiction is a very real problem, after all, and this is a very accurate way to portray it. But its very real possibility is probably why it's so repulsive to me--I don't want to imagine losing control of my life so hopelessly. And I'll definitely remember this story, so strong reader reactions, whether positive or negative, can be extremely useful to the writer.
I know that this might sound absurd, but I felt an intrinsic connection to “The Relive Box.” While I enjoyed the creativity of an invention like this, I could not help but see the parallels to the world we live in now. Throughout this story, Wes misses out on a good deal of his life because the relive box is like his drug. He cannot help but use it for hours, losing time and neglecting his daughter. All I could think was: how is this any different from what we are doing now? As he talked about not caring for his daughter as he should have been I could not help but think to memories of parents sitting in a restaurant, glued to their phone as their children cried for attention. Instead of playing with their children and talking to them, they are trapped in the lives of others on Facebook or living in an imaginary world on Netflix. They are not living the lives they have, and like Wes, they do not snap out of it easily. Our lives are passing us by, we are stuck in the past watching YouTube videos. Rather than going out and making our own memories, new memories we borrow others and make none of our own. We might not have a relive box, but we are no different than Wes.
What I found interesting about The Ice Man was that I immediately guessed the writer was Japanese, confirming this only after reading when I saw his name in the contents page. There was a Manga-esque quality to his character of the ice man. A character that was almost human, just distorted by one attribute of another animal, element or form.
I found the story intriguing at the same time it was heartbreaking. The way in which the narrator sacrificed her world and sense of belonging for that of her husband's made her a deeply sympathetic character. The narrator had tried so wholeheartedly to make her husband fit into her world, and although she failed, it did not seem that her husband did the same for her in the South Pole. I wonder if this story was in some way a reflection of the challenges mixed marriages face in a society as homogeneous as the Japanese. Even with the political nuances removed, Haruki Murakami's story is poetic and creatively rich - perhaps my favorite story that we have read so far.
I found the symbols of the Ice Man and the Relive Box to be particularly interesting as both are relevant to the issue of time. The “Relive Box” not only emphasizes the danger of technological advances but also the limitations of looking to the past for answers. The Relive Box draws people away from each other by drawing them more into themselves and their memories. Wes looks to his relationship with his first girlfriend, Lisa, in an attempt to understand how his relationship with his wife, Christine, fell apart. However, because he was a different person when he was dating Lisa, he fails to reach any form of understanding as to what happened to his marriage. His addiction for living in the past not only destroys his relationship with his daughter but also prevents him from forming new memories worth reliving. Thus, the Relive Box ironically destroys what it was meant to create: the process of having worthwhile memories in one’s life.
The “Ice Man” illustrates a similar, though more subtle, form of obsession with as “The Relive Box.” The ice man knows only the past, so I assumed that in marrying the ice man, she became inextricably tied to her past. She even states that “moment by moment [she] was becoming the past…[she] had lost track of time, and [she] had lost all sense of [her] self.” This quote reveals the extent of the effect of ice, or the past, on the girl who has become too fixated on her past and has lot sense of both time and her identity. Time stops for the girl, and her focus becomes directed on what has been. Just as Wes relies on his broken relationship with Christine, the girl’s happiness depends on the Ice Man’s wants and desires. The end of the story confirms my suspicion as she says, “The eternal past, heavy beyond all comprehension, had [her] in its grasp.” Just as Wes in “The Relive Box” cannot shake the past off, neither can the girl.
One aspect of “The Ice Man” was particularly intriguing to me. All the characters, though they noted that he was a different “kind of person” than they were, accepted the existence of an Ice Man relatively easily. No one denies that the Ice Man is real, or is surprised to see him.
The meat storehouse manager just sees him as an especially hard worker, and the mother and sister of the protagonist are mainly worried about his family and that he will melt, not that he is an undiscovered species. It is this nonchalant attitude toward the Ice Man that makes the story more poignant, since he is portrayed more like a real person. This tone makes the animosity of the protagonist’s family much more depressing and relevant.
What intrigued me about "The Ice Man" was a single line near the end of the first part of the story. "To speak more precisely, I have no concept of the future. Ice has no future. It just captures the past. It captures everything just as it was in life, fresh, and preserves it that way. Ice can preserve all kinds of things in this way. Totally freshly, totally clearly. Just as it is. That's the purpose of ice, it's true quality." It's an interesting analogy to ice, this preserver of the past. Also, as Michelle saw Japanese style of writing with the Manga-esque characterization in the Ice Man, I saw a Japanese style of writing comparing something natural to a lesson or some event in life, much like in haikus.
However, what interested me the most in this line is the hilarity of the context. This person approaches a stranger for the first time and immediately he starts rambling about seeing only the past and how ice preserves the past. It just struck a funny chord in me seeing this bearded stranger respond to a question about seeing the future with some profound comment on nature.
I was fascinated by the ways that both stories perceived time. "The Ice Man" emphasized living in the present moment and not worrying about the past or future. Whereas, "The Relive Box" dealt with the consequences of living in the past. Both stories show faults in living too much in either. In "The Ice Man", the wife is intrigued by the Ice Man and learns that he doesn't have a past, but she embraces that and learns to live in the present. They bond over their celebration of the present, yet this backfires because the wife doesn't think about the future or know much about the Ice Man. She soon realizes that she doesn't have a very eventful life and she loses her family, but since she was so consumed in the present moment she wasn't aware of the consequences.
In "The Relive Box" we see that the narrator has become so consumed on his past, and reliving it, and his present moments no longer have substance. His life slowly become what he relives, as his current life disappears. I liked this story a lot because it relays the message of not letting your past consume you in a very creative form. Both stories made me question the balance between past, present, and future. Our past defines us, our present shapes us, and our future is undetermined, so I feel that all three are very important when trying to live a happy life.
I really liked the way that "The Ice Man" wove the supernatural into its storytelling. As Roger said, no one really questioned that the Ice Man existed, and there was a clear inevitability to the story's ending with the protagonist and her child becoming Ice People. Part of me, though, wishes that the protagonist had been less aloof from the rest of the world. I think the story would have been more interesting if the Ice Man had interacted more with humans who weren't in love with him, or were frightened of or just interested in him.
In “The Ice Man,” I liked how Murakami handled the creation of a slightly different world. I feel world-building is not an easy feat, especially when there are so many other aspects of storytelling to consider. Here, the elements of this world are, for the most part, not told directly (and in fact many elements seem normal) yet through the beat of the language we sense something strange – it is not a completely new world, but more of a parallel to our own. Additionally on another, wholly different note, I was reminded on the movie Frozen during (a few parts of) this story, and could not help but wonder whether the writers and animators had this short story on their inspiration boards in the making of the film (especially the line “The cold never bothered him” in the short story, and the similar corresponding line in one of the movie’s songs).
I found the character of the Ice Man himself to be particularly intriguing--his features, his untold story, his changes throughout the story. It made me curious as a reader. I wanted to almost invent my own story on how he got to be the way that he was. It also made me want to meet him, touch him, and speak to him. I think his personality went very well with his character as well. He seemed blunt and mysterious and it added to the excitement of my questioning the story as I continued reading.
As others have stated, both of these stories provide unique perspectives on the theme of time, particularly the past. That being said, I had a significantly stronger reaction the "The Relive Box" than "The Ice Man." Certainly, emotional reaction does not necessarily determine the quality of literature. But I think the emotion created by "The Relive Box" was the result of expert writing.
Throughout the story, I had a mounting dread, and the dread increased as the thing I feared became more and more inevitable. I was afraid that Wes was going to lose his ability to function in society, because of the "relive" box. In fact, the entire story I wanted Wes to take a bat to the box in order to destroy it and its power in his and his daughter's lives. However, I knew he could not. As Leena says, it is a masterful rendering of the development of an addiction. In addition, as Lori points out, the object of addiction highlights the trends in our society by which our advancements of technology take people out of the physical reality and put them in a world that ignores real life human connection.
What I found fascinating about the Relive Box was just how universally appealing its premise seems. As I began to read the story, I immediately guessed it would be a cautionary tale about the dangers of "reliving," yet I couldn't stop myself from wondering what parts of my life I would want to relive, if the technology actually existed. When I mentioned the irony to my roommate, she almost immediately told me what memory she would want to relive - the attraction seems nearly universal. I feel that this nostalgia/regret/curiosity for things past is an integral part of the human experience, which is why I think this story and ones like it have so much appeal. The ending, of course, is terrifying. We are left with no doubt in our minds that the authors feels this type of retrospective fixation will only lead down a bad path. The story rakes up old memories for the reader, so that they are left with an urge to revisit them, but with a certain amount of caution. It is a delicate process to recall the past and integrate it in the present.
The Ice Man was effective for me because Murakami never gave us too much information. We had to mine every sentence about the narrator for hints about what an Ice Man actually was. This is what kept me "turning the page," as an earlier blog post prompt said. The lack of explanation about the Ice Man also helped the story operate more effectively as a metaphor. I had to restrain myself from googling the story to see what others thought it was a metaphor for, but at the very least I thought race was a really interesting way of thinking about the story.
I was very interested in the notion of time in the Ice Man, which was also explored in The Relive Box. I thought it was interesting that as the relationship in the Ice Man progressed, the two began to operate outside of time in a way. Time began to have less meaning for the narrator, as it always had for the Ice Man.
What I find interesting about today's readings is that both these stories deal with the past, but evoke, rather than nostalgia, a feeling of indescribable loneliness. In "Relive Box," the main character is so obsessed with escaping his current disappointments by reliving his past that he forgets about his responsibilities and the one chance he has at improving his life--through his daughter. In "The Ice Man," the main character falls in love with a man who has no past, and in turn isolates herself. Both stories result in their protagonists becoming lost, alone, numb. The Ice Man's wife says "I lost almost all sensation." "Are you there?" Katie says desperately at the end of "Relive Box," and her dad replies dumbly, "no, I'm not."
ReplyDeleteSomething else I thought was interesting in terms of reaction to the reading was that in the beginning of "Relive Box," I felt pity for the protagonist and a little frustration towards Katie, since she was portrayed as the rebellious teenager her father can't understand. But gradually, as the situation with the "Relive Box" was explained and we were drawn into Dad's life, I felt less pity and more revulsion. Perhaps that's unfair--addiction is a very real problem, after all, and this is a very accurate way to portray it. But its very real possibility is probably why it's so repulsive to me--I don't want to imagine losing control of my life so hopelessly. And I'll definitely remember this story, so strong reader reactions, whether positive or negative, can be extremely useful to the writer.
I know that this might sound absurd, but I felt an intrinsic connection to “The Relive Box.” While I enjoyed the creativity of an invention like this, I could not help but see the parallels to the world we live in now. Throughout this story, Wes misses out on a good deal of his life because the relive box is like his drug. He cannot help but use it for hours, losing time and neglecting his daughter. All I could think was: how is this any different from what we are doing now? As he talked about not caring for his daughter as he should have been I could not help but think to memories of parents sitting in a restaurant, glued to their phone as their children cried for attention. Instead of playing with their children and talking to them, they are trapped in the lives of others on Facebook or living in an imaginary world on Netflix. They are not living the lives they have, and like Wes, they do not snap out of it easily. Our lives are passing us by, we are stuck in the past watching YouTube videos. Rather than going out and making our own memories, new memories we borrow others and make none of our own. We might not have a relive box, but we are no different than Wes.
ReplyDeleteWhat I found interesting about The Ice Man was that I immediately guessed the writer was Japanese, confirming this only after reading when I saw his name in the contents page. There was a Manga-esque quality to his character of the ice man. A character that was almost human, just distorted by one attribute of another animal, element or form.
ReplyDeleteI found the story intriguing at the same time it was heartbreaking. The way in which the narrator sacrificed her world and sense of belonging for that of her husband's made her a deeply sympathetic character. The narrator had tried so wholeheartedly to make her husband fit into her world, and although she failed, it did not seem that her husband did the same for her in the South Pole. I wonder if this story was in some way a reflection of the challenges mixed marriages face in a society as homogeneous as the Japanese. Even with the political nuances removed, Haruki Murakami's story is poetic and creatively rich - perhaps my favorite story that we have read so far.
I found the symbols of the Ice Man and the Relive Box to be particularly interesting as both are relevant to the issue of time. The “Relive Box” not only emphasizes the danger of technological advances but also the limitations of looking to the past for answers. The Relive Box draws people away from each other by drawing them more into themselves and their memories. Wes looks to his relationship with his first girlfriend, Lisa, in an attempt to understand how his relationship with his wife, Christine, fell apart. However, because he was a different person when he was dating Lisa, he fails to reach any form of understanding as to what happened to his marriage. His addiction for living in the past not only destroys his relationship with his daughter but also prevents him from forming new memories worth reliving. Thus, the Relive Box ironically destroys what it was meant to create: the process of having worthwhile memories in one’s life.
ReplyDeleteThe “Ice Man” illustrates a similar, though more subtle, form of obsession with as “The Relive Box.” The ice man knows only the past, so I assumed that in marrying the ice man, she became inextricably tied to her past. She even states that “moment by moment [she] was becoming the past…[she] had lost track of time, and [she] had lost all sense of [her] self.” This quote reveals the extent of the effect of ice, or the past, on the girl who has become too fixated on her past and has lot sense of both time and her identity. Time stops for the girl, and her focus becomes directed on what has been. Just as Wes relies on his broken relationship with Christine, the girl’s happiness depends on the Ice Man’s wants and desires. The end of the story confirms my suspicion as she says, “The eternal past, heavy beyond all comprehension, had [her] in its grasp.” Just as Wes in “The Relive Box” cannot shake the past off, neither can the girl.
One aspect of “The Ice Man” was particularly intriguing to me. All the characters, though they noted that he was a different “kind of person” than they were, accepted the existence of an Ice Man relatively easily. No one denies that the Ice Man is real, or is surprised to see him.
ReplyDeleteThe meat storehouse manager just sees him as an especially hard worker, and the mother and sister of the protagonist are mainly worried about his family and that he will melt, not that he is an undiscovered species. It is this nonchalant attitude toward the Ice Man that makes the story more poignant, since he is portrayed more like a real person. This tone makes the animosity of the protagonist’s family much more depressing and relevant.
What intrigued me about "The Ice Man" was a single line near the end of the first part of the story. "To speak more precisely, I have no concept of the future. Ice has no future. It just captures the past. It captures everything just as it was in life, fresh, and preserves it that way. Ice can preserve all kinds of things in this way. Totally freshly, totally clearly. Just as it is. That's the purpose of ice, it's true quality." It's an interesting analogy to ice, this preserver of the past. Also, as Michelle saw Japanese style of writing with the Manga-esque characterization in the Ice Man, I saw a Japanese style of writing comparing something natural to a lesson or some event in life, much like in haikus.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what interested me the most in this line is the hilarity of the context. This person approaches a stranger for the first time and immediately he starts rambling about seeing only the past and how ice preserves the past. It just struck a funny chord in me seeing this bearded stranger respond to a question about seeing the future with some profound comment on nature.
I was fascinated by the ways that both stories perceived time. "The Ice Man" emphasized living in the present moment and not worrying about the past or future. Whereas, "The Relive Box" dealt with the consequences of living in the past. Both stories show faults in living too much in either. In "The Ice Man", the wife is intrigued by the Ice Man and learns that he doesn't have a past, but she embraces that and learns to live in the present. They bond over their celebration of the present, yet this backfires because the wife doesn't think about the future or know much about the Ice Man. She soon realizes that she doesn't have a very eventful life and she loses her family, but since she was so consumed in the present moment she wasn't aware of the consequences.
ReplyDeleteIn "The Relive Box" we see that the narrator has become so consumed on his past, and reliving it, and his present moments no longer have substance. His life slowly become what he relives, as his current life disappears. I liked this story a lot because it relays the message of not letting your past consume you in a very creative form. Both stories made me question the balance between past, present, and future. Our past defines us, our present shapes us, and our future is undetermined, so I feel that all three are very important when trying to live a happy life.
I really liked the way that "The Ice Man" wove the supernatural into its storytelling. As Roger said, no one really questioned that the Ice Man existed, and there was a clear inevitability to the story's ending with the protagonist and her child becoming Ice People. Part of me, though, wishes that the protagonist had been less aloof from the rest of the world. I think the story would have been more interesting if the Ice Man had interacted more with humans who weren't in love with him, or were frightened of or just interested in him.
ReplyDeleteIn “The Ice Man,” I liked how Murakami handled the creation of a slightly different world. I feel world-building is not an easy feat, especially when there are so many other aspects of storytelling to consider. Here, the elements of this world are, for the most part, not told directly (and in fact many elements seem normal) yet through the beat of the language we sense something strange – it is not a completely new world, but more of a parallel to our own. Additionally on another, wholly different note, I was reminded on the movie Frozen during (a few parts of) this story, and could not help but wonder whether the writers and animators had this short story on their inspiration boards in the making of the film (especially the line “The cold never bothered him” in the short story, and the similar corresponding line in one of the movie’s songs).
ReplyDeleteI found the character of the Ice Man himself to be particularly intriguing--his features, his untold story, his changes throughout the story. It made me curious as a reader. I wanted to almost invent my own story on how he got to be the way that he was. It also made me want to meet him, touch him, and speak to him. I think his personality went very well with his character as well. He seemed blunt and mysterious and it added to the excitement of my questioning the story as I continued reading.
ReplyDeleteAs others have stated, both of these stories provide unique perspectives on the theme of time, particularly the past. That being said, I had a significantly stronger reaction the "The Relive Box" than "The Ice Man." Certainly, emotional reaction does not necessarily determine the quality of literature. But I think the emotion created by "The Relive Box" was the result of expert writing.
ReplyDeleteThroughout the story, I had a mounting dread, and the dread increased as the thing I feared became more and more inevitable. I was afraid that Wes was going to lose his ability to function in society, because of the "relive" box. In fact, the entire story I wanted Wes to take a bat to the box in order to destroy it and its power in his and his daughter's lives. However, I knew he could not. As Leena says, it is a masterful rendering of the development of an addiction. In addition, as Lori points out, the object of addiction highlights the trends in our society by which our advancements of technology take people out of the physical reality and put them in a world that ignores real life human connection.
What I found fascinating about the Relive Box was just how universally appealing its premise seems. As I began to read the story, I immediately guessed it would be a cautionary tale about the dangers of "reliving," yet I couldn't stop myself from wondering what parts of my life I would want to relive, if the technology actually existed. When I mentioned the irony to my roommate, she almost immediately told me what memory she would want to relive - the attraction seems nearly universal. I feel that this nostalgia/regret/curiosity for things past is an integral part of the human experience, which is why I think this story and ones like it have so much appeal.
ReplyDeleteThe ending, of course, is terrifying. We are left with no doubt in our minds that the authors feels this type of retrospective fixation will only lead down a bad path. The story rakes up old memories for the reader, so that they are left with an urge to revisit them, but with a certain amount of caution. It is a delicate process to recall the past and integrate it in the present.
The Ice Man was effective for me because Murakami never gave us too much information. We had to mine every sentence about the narrator for hints about what an Ice Man actually was. This is what kept me "turning the page," as an earlier blog post prompt said. The lack of explanation about the Ice Man also helped the story operate more effectively as a metaphor. I had to restrain myself from googling the story to see what others thought it was a metaphor for, but at the very least I thought race was a really interesting way of thinking about the story.
ReplyDeleteI was very interested in the notion of time in the Ice Man, which was also explored in The Relive Box. I thought it was interesting that as the relationship in the Ice Man progressed, the two began to operate outside of time in a way. Time began to have less meaning for the narrator, as it always had for the Ice Man.