WHO IS THE MONSTER? CONFIGURATIONS OF THE GROTESQUE IN THE TALE ‘THE LITTLE GREEN MONSTER’ BY HARUKI MURAKAMI

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The collection of short stories entitled “The elephant disappears”, by the writer Haruki Murakami, it presents a set of narratives that interweave reality characters  with aspects that dialogue productively with the unusual. In this sense, we intend to investigate some representations of the grotesque in the text “The little green monster”. The narrative plot is apparently simple from an architectural point of view, however, in the subtexts and intertexts we see the pulsation of debates throughout the themes, such as: the monstrosity, the characters and violence, the double and its distorted projections of reality etc. Our approach to grotesque begins from the thoughts of theorists like Julio Jeha, Victor Hugo and Célia Magalhães. When we analyze the tale under the specter of grotesque, it is evidente, that the connection between the monster and the central character that exerts over it, throughout the narrative is a power of subversion of logics referring to the monster and fear, that is, in Murakami's narrative is not all that it seems to be and at the end it may be something totally averse to the first rationalization of being outlined as a monster.

Keywords: Monstrosity; Grotesque; Monster; Tale; Murakami; Literature.