The City and Its Uncertain Walls

“You just need to wish your way in. But truly wishing for something, from the heart, isn’t that simple. It might take time. In the meanwhile, you might have to give up all sorts of things. Things that you treasure. But don’t give up, not matter how long it takes. The town isn’t going anywhere.”

In this excerpt, the protagonist’s teenage girlfriend warns him of the long journey to the walled-in town while also foreshadowing the heart’s unpredictable role in the protagonist’s fate. At the conclusion of the novel, when the protagonist finally leaves, it is because his heart wishes to reunited with his shadow. While so much of The City and Its Uncertain Walls focuses on the mind, the heart plays an influential role.

“There was no sound whatever, only a silence, like being at the bottom of the sea. I tried clearing my throat once, but it didn’t sound like a throat clearing.”

Haruki Murakami uses frequent similes in the novel to create a picture of the environment the characters interact with. In this example, the author compares the silence to that of the bottom of the sea, an isolated place. This creates the sense that the quiet is not just the absence of loud noises, or voices, but a complete and utter absence of sound.

“A place where the words people used only had their literal meaning, where everything had its rightful place, fixed, unwavering, in a place you could see.”

One of the ways in which the walled-in town is characterized as being a different reality is through its more fantastical elements, like the unicorns, the clock with no hands, and the dreams in the library. It is also characterized by its people, and the ways in which they live.