Behind the Evocative Metaphors of Ice Man and My Life with the Wave - Essay Example

?Behind the Evocative Metaphors of “Ice Man” by Haruki Murakami and “My Life with the Wave” by Octavio Paz Introduction Love takes time to reveal theunlock mystery of what the past concealed and what the future aims to foretell. “Ice Man” triggers the past while the “Life with the Wave” flips on what could happen to a love with limits. The two stories revealed how an idealistic love could make one’s life turn miserable. This lesson is showed by the narrator of the “Ice Man” and the literal wave in the story of Octavio Paz. The present paper delved on the reactive reflections based on the two stories mentioned. The two stories will be compared based on the features of the characters and the writers themselves. The present paper will be significant in terms of showing how the writers could be identified characteristically based on how they personify the metaphorical symbolisms that they used in their stories. However, the comparisons of the two stories will be taken into account after the in-depth and enigmatic analysis of each story. "Ice Man" by Haruki Murakami The story of Murakami moves one’s heart to become enthralled with excitement. It is excitement because the words used in the story could easily drive one to read the result of the story. The “Ice Man” story is like a music of hope for the readers who wish to save the cravings of the protagonist (the narrator). She emancipates to find her lost self. She yearns for attention as she discovers that her husband, the ice man, makes her realized that what she got in life is nothing. She discovers that she repeats and makes the events in her life worse as it turns out that her marriage with the Ice man is a total failure at the end, which is opposite to what she really expects. The happiness turns out be something hard to reach. The story is realistically fantastic (Barr 5). It is realistic because there are many girls out there who are like the narrator who cannot escape the mistakes of the mystery. The narrator is a victim of her own choice. She is clearly blind not to learn how to appreciate what she already has. She makes her life miserable because she finds out that she is not happy at the end. She feels alone with the “intrapsychic loss,” a shattered dream of everlasting happiness. A lasting love that will make her complete turns out that she completely makes herself incomplete. The story is reflective to the song of the “Secrets” by the One Republic. As the song says “Tell me what you want to hear, something that were like those years, I’m sick of all the insincere, I’m gonna give all my secrets away.” Such line of the song incorporates how the Ice Man tells the narrator how he truly loves her, but as he comprehends the urge of his wife to leave South Pole, the Ice Man is slowly revealing his secret that they could not easily turn their lives back then. However, the Ice Man is still literally conveying his message for his wife, the thing that he expects what his wife wants to hear-- the words of “I Love You” (Murakami). The narrator tangles herself with such line that it allows her to melt the hope of happiness as she regrets how she is unable to escape the truth of her intuitions. The intuitions that are pre-determined with fear that attract and pull her mind to feel so remarkably lifeless. Indeed, the lyrics of the song is relative to what the Ice Man intends to the narrator, especially when they are already in the setting of South Pole, a place where the actions and languages of the Ice Man reveals his natural mystery. The natural mystery that answers the curiosity of the narrator to where the Ice Man originated is already answered. The Ice man makes the narrator totally frozen, stocked with the inability to act and speak to the people whom she could not relate to. She feels threatened by the destiny of her own choice as the Ice Man’s words of love become truthful yet unproven because the narrator is left misunderstood by her husband. The narrator feels being imprisoned not to grab the chance that she had once used to have, especially before they came from the land of South Pole. "My Life with the Wave" by Octavio Paz The story makes one to perceive how creative Paz is in terms of writing the words that could allow one to think critically out of how the waves are used as metaphorical images of women. The story of Octavio Paz is very endearing that it makes the readers to go beyond the literal image of the words that drives out one’s emotion to imaginatively dance with the spirit of one’s curiosity. The story is so mean on how the waves represent a woman’s heart and emotions that could sometimes become so unpredictable. The guy dances with the waves but turns out to become so tired with the harshness of a woman’s insensitiveness to how he longs for her attention. The ending of the story revolves around the journey of a woman that would be ended with uncertainty as she melted like the ice, broken, and turned into pieces (Martinez). It turns out that the guy is able to retake the life that he once had with the wave as he is searching for his tranquility with her presence, but Alas, the man is able to regain his impasse when the woman was crashed out with her own destiny of making cyclical adjustments every time she chooses and alternates her attention from one man over the others. The wave (that represents the water), an imagelike of a woman, ends up the way how she initially treated the man with unfulfilled attention and dearth of love. It goes in the saying that “what you did unto others will be back unto you.” Such saying is so golden that it pervades the lives of people who are like the waves (not putting too much attention unto how waves represent the women side) that are so ungrateful with what they have in life. This is so because there are some points in one’s life in which one searches for perfection like how the waves crave for things that could satisfy her gratifications. People are like waves, especially for the women’s side who like their lovers to become perfect that could be impressive in the eyes and standards of others. This manifestation could result to the loss of one’s reality because perfectionism is just a fantasy, unreal, and unsurpassable. The waves represent one’s hidden insecurities of what one already owned. Ergo, the story is an overwhelming realistic and practical picture that shows the modern values of women who strive for a perfect lover that could chase their demands and pleasures in lives. The story is an alarm clock to the women and to anybody who wish for unreachable things that could lead them to restart a life for peace and love like how water endlessly adjust itself to every step it takes. Comparisons of the Stories The stories could be dissimilar in terms of the background of the authors in which the Murakami of the Ice man is a Japanese and Paz of the Live with the Wave is a Mexican. However, both stories are metaphorically sound as they use the art of the symbolical meanings of Ice and Wave for the boundaries of love. Murakami and Paz are the same in terms of how they could persuade the readers to think outside the limitations of reality. Both have different magnificent ways of dealing with their words. Murakami uses simpler layman’s terms than Paz. Paz way of writing is so rhetorically mysterious because one has to undergo a very critical analysis in taking time to understand what he intends to convey. The Ice Man and the Life with the Wave have the same characteristic feature of the women protagonists, narrator for the former and the wave for the latter. Both characters crave for unending happiness and perfect life like a fairy tale where problems and sorrows do not exist. Both characters are anxious and afraid to take up the road of tests that could take them to learn how to let go from the insecurities of what they do not have. The two roles represent the main characteristics of the modern women who annihilate their energy to look back where happiness of love does not betray. The narrator of the Ice Man and the Wave represent how women could be uncertain, doubtful, anxious, and deliberately unpredictable with their decisions in life. Both characters have the same rhythmic hearts as they dwell on how the past could be taken back to change what has been done wrong. They are intuitively transparent with their emotional fears of taking the road to nothingness to regain themselves. Obviously, both are searching for themselves. As they are craving to find themselves, they forget to appreciate what they have already owned. They tend to forget how life could be so cruel when they overemphasized themselves to impossibilities of their gratifications. They do not give attention to the miracles of the reality. Miracles that could be shared in one single voice, a voice that could capture the intentions of their hearts, which could be satisfied with the presence of their significant others. All they have to do are just to snap their fingers and eyes to wake up that they could change the way they are depending on how they perceive and give importance to the people around them. The narrator could still choose to be happy and could bring back her husband’s sweetness if she primes him how life could be so great without the regret of her decision to chose and marry her husband. She should know how to take her stand when she decided to be tangled with the love of her husband. On the other hand, the wave must then realize how life could be wild when she turned to be abusive with the selfless love of her lover. Therefore, the narrator and the wave could be connected as both of them are initially unsatisfied with the status of their lives when the narrator craves for a vacation to South Pole, and when the wave craves for the colony of fishes. Both characters could be characterized with the lack of satisfaction to the love that they behold. The Ice Man and the Lover of the Wave are the same in terms of how they give and respond to the demands and needs of their loved ones. Both characters take the sensible things that their loved ones are wishing of even when their lives would be at risks, especially when the Ice Man could be forever frozen in South Pole, and when the Lover of the Wave almost drowned himself for the sake of love. Both characters are the same when the end of the two stories depicts how they could be tired from the sacrifices that they made for their loved ones when it all turned out to be unsatisfactory and not enough for the narrator and the wave. The characters are intentionally serious, but their love turns out to be corrosive as the women spoiled them to work out for their ideal love. Conclusion Ice Man and the Life with the Wave parallel the unforeseeable dictatorship love of women to men. The stories prevail how women could be deaf and blind not to hear and see the righteousness of a love that should be reciprocated to men. The narrator of Ice Man and the wave in Paz’ story seem to rely too much on their lovers unconditional love. However, the stories did not fail to consider how a man’s heart could become dry when the Ice man and the Lover of the Wave became universal. Conclusively, the Ice Man and the Life with the Wave used the sudden transformations of water (Ice and Wave) relative to an abrupt change of decisions, emotions, and longings of a woman’s heart. Therefore, a woman’s heart is like a water that searches for the serenity and stillness of a man’s constant and must be proven love. Works Cited Barr, Ryan. “Murakami: Love and Nothingness.” English and Comparative Literary Studies (2009): 1-27. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. Martinez, April S. He Lived and Loved with the Water. Virginia Wesleyan College. n.d. Web. 25 Nov. 2012. . Murakami, H. The Ice Man. The New Yorker. 2003. Web. 27 Nov. 2012. . Read More