Anton Talarico | Definitive Analysis | Haruki Murakami's "Barn Burning"

It's feeling a bit like deja vu with another Definitive Analysis focusing on the eternal act of burning barns, this time in Haruki Murakami's eerily subtle "Barn Burning" where our nameless protagonist searches out the depths of his loneliness, captured by the serene enchantment of a poor, beautiful young woman who seems to know no bounds in life, to the point where she seriously takes up pantomiming in a quest to express a hidden truth. When she returns from a long trip to Africa, she brings a boyfriend of sorts, a Jay Gatsby-like character who also finds himself in the depths of a serious undertaking: burning barns. I think what I appreciate about Murakami's story is the thematic links it grasps from William Faulkner's "Barn Burning," such as socioeconomic identity and class consciousness, reigniting the virtue of poverty and straying from temptation, and general ideas of friendship and companionship, what we seem to seek to no end. Even though the girl will disappear and take with her the scant reminders of youth and beauty, perception and deception - tangerine peelings left vacantly on the table - her memory persists like the steady jog and pace of the narrator as he runs the country hills, searching for the presence of a barn and for the inclination to burn it. Her memory will persist in their conversations as they sip overpriced coffee and wonder where she went - breathlessly, it seems - without a word. Murakami's "Barn Burning" balances between the surreal and ordinary with conversations verging into memory and being. The narrator's journey running through the hills eludes to the meanderings of the mind, where it dares to go, but cannot turn from: Tangerines and barns. Pantomiming a simple act of causation and devastation, and creating a new direction in life. While many are left behind... Table of Contents: Intro. & Preface with Faulkner's "Barn Burning" - 0:00 A Young, Broke Enigma - 4:05 First Connection to Faulkner's "Barn Burning" - 6:55 The French "Colonialist" Connection - 9:48 Reminiscing on the School Play - 21:25 Setting a Pace - 27:18 The Great Flood - 31:02 Burning Barns: an Obsession - 37:20 The Girl Disappears without a Word - 43:17 "A thing's too close and you miss it" - 48:11