Curses in Murakami - Mark

    The supernatural world is a recurring theme in Murakami's work as he often showcases people or objects with these extraordinary abilities and oftentimes they are seen as a doorway or connection into a supernatural magical world that's in parallel with the existing world that is this dull reality, but some of Murakami's works that interested me involved curses which I hadn't seen before to this point. What is so interesting about these curses is that they usually stem from an unresolved moment from the past but they now have come back into the present, leaving the narrator with some trauma or feeling of needing more.

The two stories I read with curses from Murakami are "The Second Bakery Attack" and "Sputnik Sweetheart."  In the second bakery attack the curse started when bread was exchanged but there was no proper attack, and it caused a violent hunger, but this curse was cured when the husband and wife attacked the McDonald's some time later. In Sputnik Sweetheart this is much darker because she saw her doppleganger with the man and this caused her soul to split in half forever changing her and even with it spreading to the narrator. It's interesting to see how in one story the curse is relatively mild and easy to fix while in another its very dark and serious. 

It shows how Murakami essentially uses curses to show yet another way in which that secret supernatural world merges in with the reality that his characters experience in their day to day lives, and it adds depth to his characters showing how they deal with these curses and the emotions they have because of it.