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Steve Fouse asked this question about Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World:
Has anybody got any ideas about why none the characters have names? The narrator is never named, and there are the chubby girl, the librarian(s), the Gatekeeper, and others. It may be a way of making the story's themes apply universally rather than just to specific people, but the characters are described in detail, and seem too real to be just nameless, non-specific persons.
Ritesh Lilaramani I believe that not giving names allows the reader to imagine who that character might actually be...for example in initial chapter a reader may think …moreI believe that not giving names allows the reader to imagine who that character might actually be...for example in initial chapter a reader may think that the two parallel plots are totally different , however during the course one realizes that there is so much in common that they have to be the same person, but for example in his core- consciousness whom he pictured as the librarian(in end of world), the actual librarian or the chubby girl or may be his ex-wife all that is left for the reader to imagine, the colonel who helped him could he be the professor, the trigger switch etc.
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Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World
by Haruki Murakami
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