Chapter summaries The City and Its Uncertain Walls Haruki Murakami

Chapter 60: The Brothers’ Visit and the Mystery of the Vanished Boy

⚠️ Spoiler Warning: This guide contains detailed spoilers for the entire novel. Proceed only if you've finished reading or are comfortable knowing the plot.

Summary

Two brothers of the missing boy M** come to the library to speak with the narrator. The older brother, a lawyer, explains that their family has searched everywhere but found no trace of M**. The younger brother, a medical student, suggests that M** may have been drawn to the narrator’s fictional walled town and could have found a passageway into it. The narrator recounts his tale of the town while omitting sinister details. The brothers, though skeptical, sense that the story may have triggered M**’s disappearance. The older brother thinks M** might have wandered into the mountains and succumbed to cold. The younger brother offers a psychological reading: the wall represents human consciousness, and M** may have stepped into a dark realm of the unconscious. After the brothers leave, the narrator gazes out at the garden and reflects that the town might not be merely symbolic—it could be a real place the boy entered.

Key Events

  • The narrator meets the two brothers in the library’s reception room; they present their business card and explain their connection to M**.
  • The older brother describes the failed search and the family’s belief that M** was “spirited away,” a local legend.
  • The younger brother states that M** possessed special abilities and lived in a near-divine realm.
  • The narrator lies about not having M**’s map of the walled town, choosing to keep it hidden.
  • The narrator recounts his fictional walled town to the brothers, leaving out disturbing elements like the shadow-ripping and the ominous pool.
  • The younger brother speculates that M** left home to find a passageway into that town.
  • The brothers explain that police believe M** ran away, but their mother insists no clothes or cash are missing and the house was locked from inside.
  • The younger brother shares his theory: the wall symbolizes personal consciousness, with most of it hidden like a glacier.
  • The brothers thank the narrator and leave, asking him to contact them if he remembers anything.
  • Alone, the narrator wonders if the town is a real place M** entered and feels longing for both the boy and the town.

Character Development

  • The Narrator: He continues to protect the fictional town as a private reality, lying to the brothers about the map. His growing certainty that the town might be real—not just a metaphor—marks a shift in his understanding of his own creation.
  • Older Brother (lawyer): Pragmatic and logical, he insists on concrete clues and practical search methods. He represents the rational world that cannot accept supernatural explanations.
  • Younger Brother (medical student): Open to psychological and symbolic interpretations. His interest in neurosurgery and psychiatry allows him to bridge the gap between science and the mysterious. He is more receptive to the idea that M** crossed into a different realm.
  • M (the missing boy)**: Though absent, he is defined through his brothers’ descriptions: eccentric, socially inept, but gifted with deep concentration and a powerful attraction to the walled town.

Themes, Symbols, or Motifs

  • The Walled Town as Consciousness: The younger brother’s metaphor—the wall as the boundary of personal consciousness, with only a fraction visible—echoes the novel’s exploration of hidden inner worlds.
  • Spirited Away: The local legend of children vanishing without trace connects to M**’s disappearance and to the walled town’s mysterious nature, blurring the line between folklore and reality.
  • The Unconscious as a Passageway: The younger brother suggests M** may have found a “dark realm of the unconscious.” This reinforces the motif of thresholds between ordinary reality and hidden dimensions.
  • Silence and Secrecy: The narrator’s choice to lie about the map and omit dark details shows how secrecy protects the integrity of the fictional realm, even as its boundaries become uncertain.

Why This Chapter Matters

This chapter deepens the mystery of M**’s disappearance while advancing the novel’s central question: Is the walled town a mere fantasy or a real alternate world? By introducing two rational yet open-minded brothers, Murakami contrasts empirical reasoning with the lure of the inexplicable. The younger brother’s psychological interpretation gives legitimacy to the narrator’s own doubts. The chapter also reinforces the theme of longing—the narrator’s wistful gaze at the garden and his feeling of longing for the boy and the town suggest that the boundary between the fictional and the real is growing more porous. This scene sets up the possibility that M** truly did cross over, and that the narrator may follow.

Study Questions

  1. Why does the narrator lie about not having the map of the walled town? What does this reveal about his relationship with that imaginary world?
    Answer: The narrator lies to protect the private reality he shares with his teenage self and the girl. He does not want the brothers to possess the map, perhaps because it would turn the imagined town into an object of investigation, diminishing its sacredness. This shows his deep attachment to the town as something personally meaningful, not to be rationally examined.

  2. How do the two brothers’ approaches to M**’s disappearance reflect different ways of understanding reality?
    Answer: The older brother relies on logic, evidence, and practical search methods—a lawyer’s perspective. The younger brother, trained in medicine and psychiatry, is willing to consider symbolic and psychological explanations, such as consciousness as a wall and M** entering an unconscious realm. Their contrast highlights the tension between scientific reasoning and the need to embrace mystery.

  3. What might the younger brother mean when he says the wall of the town is “the consciousness that creates you as a person”? How does this relate to the novel’s themes?
    Answer: He suggests that the wall represents the boundary of individual awareness, with most of the mind hidden beneath the surface like a glacier. This aligns with the novel’s exploration of hidden inner worlds, the unreliable nature of reality, and how stories about the walled town may be projections of the narrator’s own psyche. It also implies that crossing the wall could mean accessing a deeper, truer self or an alternate dimension.

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