Blog Post 2

In our recent readings of Murakami and Carver, there is the common theme of talking on the phone. However, they are not just your normal conversations – a stranger would pick up the phone and know a lot of information about the person, or the caller would hang up suddenly. The phone conversations, especially in Carver's Are You a Doctor? and Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird and the Tuesday's Women, create a really weird, tense atmosphere. In the beginning of the story, the out-of-the-blue phone calls create a forced connection between the unknown caller and the protagonist.

Both male protagonists live at home while their wives are out working. In Are You a Doctor?, the wife is out on a business trip while in The Wind-Up Bird and the Tuesday's Woman, the husband is trying to find the house cat. They don't have much going on in their lives. The phone call forces something to stir from within. Although the caller and the protagonist do not know one another, interestingly, they are able to immediately sustain a conversation. Perhaps, for the protagonists, hearing themselves speak out loud gives them a sense of being. It also could show that the husbands may not be on the best terms with their wives. The unknown female callers in both stories have a seductive power to them.