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Camille Kate S. Palomares

Professor Jillian Tan

Literature 13

26 March 2015

Isolation

Magical realism is defined as the attempt to incorporate magical elements in a story

with a realistic tone. With this in mind, one can safely assume that Haruki Murakami’s “The

Elephant Vanishes” falls under this genre.

The sudden disappearance of the elephant shrouds the story with unresolved mystery.

Based on the story, the elephant seems to have become a normal part of the town’s life since

its adoption a year ago that its disappearance created a commotion. The fact that this event

made it to the lead of the newspaper’s regional section with the headline “Elephant Missing

in Tokyo Suburb…Citizen’s Fear Mount, Some Call for Probe” shows the town’s distress

over the disappearance of the elephant (Murakami 453). One may find the headline alone as

implausible in the first place, asking how can an elephant vanish into thin air. But as the

narrator continues recounts the events from its adoption up to its disappearance, one can see

how he and the town’s citizens are very concerned about the mystery of this issue.

The struggle to make sense of this realistic tale of the elephant’s disappearance gives

one support for being a magical realist text. In the story, the narrator tells about the peculiar

news article that comes from the “confusion and bewilderment of the reporter” (456). No

matter how the reporter tries to make a rational explanation of this incident, the evidence

around that area points out that there is still a high probability that the elephant has not

escaped but instead vanished. Not even the officials can openly admit the latter (457).

This is where magical realism first comes to work. Because of this inability to explain

the reality behind the incident, the articles about this unexplained phenomenon become
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“noticeably scarcer after a week had gone by” (459). This implies that the townspeople

slowly accept this incident as something natural until there are no more articles regarding the

elephant and its keeper’s disappearance (465). In a sense, this mystery becomes accepted as

some kind of a natural occurrence, something that assimilates into the town’s reality, and

something that is no longer strange. This is supported when the narrator states that “the

disappearance of one old elephant and one old elephant keeper would have no impact on the

course of society… interest in a missing elephant could not last forever” (459). The

naturalization of something that is unnatural is one of the very definitions of magical realism,

which is, to make the magical appear as part of an everyday life.

Now comes the narrator, from whose perspective the story is being told. It is evident

that he seems to be obsessed with the elephant and its keeper. This obsession could be

something much more than the town’s appreciation of the elephant. Because he had his “own

private interest in the elephant problem from the very onset, and [I] kept a scrapbook with

every clipping [I] could find on it,” he becomes a reliable narrator for the story prior to the

incident (454). This dedication to the elephant did not stop as he has a habit of watching the

elephant when it was inside its house from a “cliff behind the elephant house…on the back of

the hill where you can see into the elephant house” until they both finally disappeared (462).

This is primarily the reason why he was greatly bothered, as he believes he was the last one

to see the elephant and its keeper before the incident happened.

One can infer that the narrator’s obsession to the elephant-keeper tandem is due to the

dynamics of their relationship to which he tries to rationalize. It is said that he would drop by

the elephant house during weekends to study how their relationship works even if he could

never comprehend where the communication is based. He even reached the point when he

asked the keeper about it, to which the latter only answered, “we’ve been together a long

time” (456). Moreover, the narrator is struck by the display of affection between the elephant
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and the keeper, which is something that they do not publicly show. As in the narrator’s

words, “there was no way to mistake that special warmth, that special trust, between them”

(463).

But it is not only that dynamics that the narrator is trying to rationalize. When he was

asked if he had seen something unusual about the tandem’s actions, he is unable to give a

direct answer. He points out that “it wasn’t what they did was different…something about the

balance…in size…to some extent the difference between them had shrunk” (463-4). He is

uncertain with what he sees that night, although he strongly believes that he could not

mistaken something as simple as that provided his habit. He seems to realize himself that his

eyes must be playing tricks on him, but his doubts disappear when he kept observing. He

comes to a conclusion that the shrunk elephant is indeed the old one as it retains its habits and

gestures (464).

Again, we see magical realism at work. There seems to be a thin line between what is

real and supernatural, which leaves the narrator confused as he tries to make sense of the

incident. This attempt of questioning what is real and how one perceives reality is one of the

core purposes of magical realism. The more he tries to rationalize what he sees that night

before the incident, the more he gets overwhelmed at the oddity of it and begins to doubt his

perception of real and hallucinations, making him an unreliable narrator.

With the purpose of magical realism in mind, one can infer that the narrator’s sense of

reality is different from the reality of the town he lives in, making him isolated in his own

perception of reality. Dispersed in the story are hints of his isolation – he spends most of his

time alone, trying to investigate the incident in his own accord and visiting the elephant’s

house before and after the incident. He also only came into contact with a person once, and

that was with a magazine editor who is unmarried as he was. The struggle to break free from

this isolation is shown when he invited the girl to the cocktail lounge after the party,
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“unconsciously… looking for someone – a good listener – to whom [I] could present my

own, unique view on the elephant’s disappearance” (461).

Because of his isolation, the narrator shares a different perception on balance and

unity. As he explains it, “the most important point is unity. Even the most beautifully

designed item dies if it is out of balance with its surroundings. Unity of design, unity of color,

unity of function…” (460). Even if it is because of his line of work, one can infer that this is

his sense of his reality too. This explains why he keeps on trying to resolve the disappearance

of the elephant and its keeper.

It is evident that the elephant and its keeper have already assimilated themselves into

his reality, given his habit of observing the tandem. It can be inferred that he enjoys watching

the elephant during its private time because he marvels their kind of isolation, which is

different from his. Despite their isolation in their own space, there seems to be warmth

emanating from that place because of the affection the tandem shows for each other. This is

different from the narrator’s isolation, in which he feels alone. The act of watching them

gives him the warmth and happiness he has been seeking as he continued living in this kind

of reality. With the presence of the tandem, his world is balanced and unified.

Because of this empathy he feels for the tandem, he finds it hard to accept that they

are gone from his reality. He mentions that he would still visit the house where the elephant

no longer lived, commenting on how the place isn’t taken care of anymore. He says “a few

short months without its elephant had given the place an air of doom and desolation that hung

there like a huge, oppressive rain cloud” (459).

From here thereon, there seems to be an air of emptiness coming from the narrator as

he comments “the papers print almost nothing about the elephant anymore.” This is contrary

to the town, which seems to have accepted the disappearance as something normal as time

passed. While this sense of balance and unity in the narrator’s reality is distorted by the
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absence of the elephant and its keeper in the cage where it used to be, the town’s reality is not

affected because “the people seem to have forgotten that their town once owned an elephant”

(465).

In the end, the isolation of the narrator from the society he lives in is more subverted

when a vital part of his reality was chunked off during the incident yet the town becomes

indifferent about the incident as time passed. It is the clashing of realities brought about by

this incident of the vanishing of the elephant is what makes the story a magical realist text.

As the story closes, “the elephant and keeper have vanished completely. They will never be

coming back” (465).

WORKS CITED

Haruki, Murakami. "The Elephant Vanishes." The Art of the Story: An International

Anthology of Contemporary Short Stories. Ed. Daniel Halpern. Trans. Jay Rubin.

New York: Viking, 1999. 453-465.