Critical Research Analysis
A Man’s Dream of Fulfilling Wish- A Psychological Bounce Back
There is a saying that “Virtue has its rewards”. Society always likes to criticize an individual regardless of what he/she goes through. In the story “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo”, Haruki Murakami explains how the Japanese society’s selfishness of getting works done by Katagiri but not appreciate his obligation toward the bank he worked for made him feel unappreciated, which could considerably be viewed through the Freudian lenses of wish fulfillment and dream-works.
Katagiri is a hardworking individual who is serious about his duty at the Tokyo Security Trust Bank.”(Murakami). He always worked hard for the bank by doing the most difficult jobs like collecting money from “thugs” (Murakami) and dealing with powerful people in society who could have possibly harmed him. He took the risk of his life to maintain the obligations toward his job, yet did not receive a little praise for doing so. This is a way of Murakami criticizing the society, demonstrating the society’s selfishness of making Katagiri do the jobs but not valuing him well. Meanwhile, as part of human nature, Katagiri always wanted to be appreciated for his sacrifices but constantly being neglected eventually made him give up to be appreciated, which left in his mind an unfulfilled wish. For instance, Katagiri revealed that “I do get some recognition within the division for my ability to collect on loans, but no real respect. I don’t have a single person who likes me, either at work or in my private life” (Murakami). This exhibits the dejection of Katagiri that nobody appreciates him, which made him feel unwanted and disliked. To create the vivid meaning to the story, Murakami constructs a character of a giant talking frog, who came in Katagiri’s dream asking for help to fight a worm living underground, who was going to cause an earthquake to destroy Tokyo. Consequently, the main purpose of Frog was to make Katagiri realize his real worth in his dream. This idea is acknowledged in the story when Frog says: “I know full well how difficult this has been for you, and I do not believe that either your superiors or your colleagues properly appreciate your accomplishments” (Murakami). This text exhibits Frog’s understanding of Katagiri’s sadness, that nobody values his accomplishments. In theory, when someone feels sorrow for a person understanding their difficulties, it is another way for them appreciating the person. Hence, this can be explained as a way of Katagiri fulfilling his wish to be appreciated by dreaming of a frog feeling sorrow for him.
Moreover, the idea of Katagiri seeing Frog understanding him exactly how he always wanted to be understood is a way of fulfilling his wish, which Sigmund Freud explained in his third lecture on Psychoanalysis saying “The first and most serious objection is that the content of adults’ dreams is, as a rule, unintelligible and could not look more unlike the fulfillment of a wish” ( Freud 2222). Freud explained that sometimes a person sees content in his dream which is more like the person’s wish that he wanted to fulfill in real life. Considering this, Katagiri also fulfilled his wish that, at least a frog is understanding his feelings, which was initially his desire to be noticed by his boss or colleagues. Katagiri’s such attitude further could be supported by the analysis of Murakami’s character choice in the article “Haruki Murakami’s Storytelling World” which states “Murakami’s characters appear content, though they are portrayed ironically…Nothing is wrong with their lives, but something is amiss” (Welch). This evidence elucidates that Katagiri was living a normal life, yet missing the inner satisfaction to be appreciated by the people around him; thus it was ironically fulfilled through his dream of a talking frog, which is manipulated via magical realism as a way of Murakami delivering the critique of Japanese society.
Not only Murakami demonstrated Katagiri fulfilling his wish, but he also provided important contexts in the story which are crucial to understand how Katagiri fulfilled his wish through his dream of a talking frog, thus can be explained through the Freudian lens of dream-work. In the story, Murakami combined several themes such as obligation, appreciation, and responsibility within Katagiri’s dream to make the critics of society. In Katagiri’s dream, he saw the giant frog appreciating him for every bit he did and praised him for the courage he gave the frog to fight the worm. The frog was displaced with Katagari’s superiors and colleagues in his dream, who he expected would appreciate him. Frog was saying to Katagiri in his dream: “ Darkness was our enemy’s ally. You brought in a foot-powered generator and used every ounce of your strength to fill the place with light” (Murakami). Here Frog refers to Katagiri as the light in the darkness as another way of showing his gratitude toward Katagiri for helping him fight the worm. Katagiri also dreamed that Frog visited him in the office during his lunchtime to tell him about the Big bear case that Katagari recently was having trouble to solve (Murakami). A clear explanation for this dream is that most of the time Katagiri is in his office and his office led to his disappointment of being unappreciated. Hence, Katagiri seeing Frog in his office during lunchtime tells the literal concept or the “manifest content” (Freud) of his dream. In the past, Freud in his lecture regarded the manifest content to explain the process of ones wish fulfillment by saying “The true meaning of the dream, which has now taken the place of its manifest content, is always clearly intelligible; it has its starting-point in experiences of the previous day and proves to be a fulfillment of unsatisfied wishes” (2222). This quote is considered to explain the true meaning of Katagiri relating his previous day experience of being in the office with the process of Frog appreciating him.
Meanwhile, there are several secret ideas behind each of the contents or objects presented in Katagiri’s dream, which are known as latent contents. According to Freud, latent contents are defined as the concealed meaning of a dream. The biggest hidden idea of this story hides behind the worm in the dark underground which Murakami presented to be the inner evil inside Katagiri’s mind because Frog revealed:“ I tore him to shreds, but still he refused to die. All he did was divided into smaller pieces… Darkness viewed with light in a horrific battle, and in the light, I grappled with the monstrous Worm” (Murakami). This text means that the worm is very strong, who is almost unbeatable, yet Frog managed to make him weak. Although it was possible for Frog because of the courage that Katagari provided, as Frog symbolizes Katagiri’s courage as the “light” (Murakami). Even more, the worm was the evil that Katagari was keeping into himself. Nevertheless, the evil was not something that was created by himself, rather it was something of hatred that was collected from the people around him. In other words, Katagiri was disappointed to be unappreciated continuously which created low self-esteem within himself, and eventually, this feeling became very powerful in his mind that made it almost impossible for him to neglect it. This behavior of Katagiri can be also understood through the “Dreamwork and Nightmares With Incarcerated Juvenile Felons”, an experiment about dreams that explains “Asking about dreams and nightmares should be as routine a part of the mental status screen as asking about appetite or mood” (Halliday). This quote suggests the mental state of dissatisfaction for a long time is the mood that affected Katagiri. This is further proved in the experiment saying “In Study 1, 50% of the youths reported dreams and 12% reported nightmares during routine mental status screening” (Halliday) which explains that the youth who were experimented on were found to be seeing dreams when they were going through mental phases and were under mental screening. Hence, Katagiri’s unfulfilled wish to be appreciated caused his mental situation of dissatisfaction, which eventually led him to see this dream as a way to satisfy himself.
Certainly, the reason for his previous experiences and unfulfilled feeling led his mind to see this dream as a way to bring inner satisfaction since his obligation and responsibility was not useless. Rather, it is something to be proud of his virtues even when no one notices or appreciates. In this case, Katagiri envisioned the frog in his dream to play the role of someone appreciating him for the sake of his unfulfilled wish. Besides, Katagiri realized his true worth and reminded himself that even though no one notices or appreciates him, his virtues would always stay with him and something that would bring him inner peace.
Work Cite
Freud, Sigmund. “Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis”.Celebration of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Foundation, 1909, Massachusetts, Clark University.
Halliday, Gordon. “Dreamwork and Nightmares With Incarcerated Juvenile Felons.” Dreaming (New York, N.Y.), vol. 14, no. 1, Educational Publishing Foundation, Mar. 2004, pp. 30–42, doi:10.1037/1053-0797.14.1.30.
Murakami, Haruki. “Super-Frog Saves Tokyo.” GQ, From the Archives: Super-Frog Saves Tokyo l GQ Translated by Jay Robin, Accessed November 27, 2020, from https://www.gq.com/story/haruki-murakami-super-frog-saves-tokyo-full-story
Welch, Patricia. “Haruki Murakami’s Storytelling World.” World Literature Today, vol. 79, no. 1, Jan. 2005, pp. 55–59. EBSCOhost, doi:10.2307/40158783.
