Books: The Woman in the Dunes, by Kobo Abe

It was rather – a difficult read. In that I am not sure I understood all of the existential arguments. Written in 1962, it has elements of Kafka where Abe replaces the infinite office corridors with grains of sand. Defined as sediment of certain measurements (ie: if it’s too big, it’s a pebble, too small and it’s dust), it’s uniformity together with its diverse make-up, along with the property of enormous weight when amassed, sand is a poignant analogy of human society and its pressures.

Niki Jumpei is held captive in a house within a village threatened to be engulfed by the surrounding dunes. Not accepting the Sisyphus sentence – who was condemned by Zeus to roll the boulder up the hill for all eternity, Niki thrashes, rebels, then later (as all else failed) decides to abide his time to plot an escape.  Through the monotonous hours of this new existence, Niki remembers a man from his past, Mr. Mobius. The strange and big questions posed by Mr. Mobius are once again challenged while Niki is jailed in a sand pit. As the name suggests, Niki goes through a soul crushing transformation; from plotting his escape to acceptance, only to return to the same mental framework of where he left off but upside down. What is our existential right? What is freewill? The answer peels off in layers as Niki sees his circumstance until it reaches its core as one final expression. All that is of our existential right, all that we can hope for – is the ability to harvest water from sand.  It is this tangibility of the abstract that makes him stay on, to shovel sand for all his days, even after the escape ladder is lowered.

“If you want to sing it, sing it. These days people caught in the clutches of the one-way ticket never sing it like that. The soles of those who have only a one-way ticket are so thin that they scream when they step on a pebble. They have had their fill of walking. ‘The Round-Trip Ticket Blues,’ is what they want to sing. A one-way ticket is a disjointed life that misses the links between yesterday and today, today and tomorrow. Only the man who obstinately hangs on to a round-trip ticket can hum with real sorrow a song of a one-way ticket. For this very reason he grows desperate lest the return half of his ticket be lost or stolen; he buys stocks, signs up for life insurance, and talks out of different sides of his mouth to his union pals and his superiors. He hums ‘The One-Way Ticket Blues,’ with all his might and, choosing a channel at random, turns the television up to full volume in an attempt to drown out the peevish voices of those who have only a one-way ticket and who keep asking for help, voices that come up through the bathtub drain or the toilet hole. It would not be strange at all if ‘The Round-Trip Ticket Blues’ were the song of mankind imprisoned.”

“The only way to go beyond work is through work. It is not that work itself is valuable; we surmount work by work. The real value of work lies in the strength of self-denial.”