Symbols The City and Its Uncertain Walls Haruki Murakami

The Wall: A Symbol of Boundary and Illusion in The City and Its Uncertain Walls

What the Wall Literally Is

In The City and Its Uncertain Walls, the wall is described as a solid brick barrier approximately twenty-six feet high, surrounding a walled town that contains a library, watchtower, communal housing, and a pasture for unicorn beasts. The wall has a single gate guarded by the Gatekeeper, who controls entry and exit. The narrator maps the wall’s kidney-shaped perimeter during his early exploration, only to discover that the wall can shift its shape and location at will. It possesses its own will, a life force that allows it to change form, produce illusions, and even speak to those trying to cross it.

Where the Wall Recurs

The wall appears throughout the novel in multiple contexts:

  • Chapter 7: The Gatekeeper shows the protagonist the wall, calling it perfect and indestructible.
  • Chapter 12 (evidence): The narrator spends two weeks walking along the wall, noting its shape, but finds that residents have no curiosity about it. The wall watches him but does not interfere. After his fever, it shape-shifts in his dreams, laughing at his efforts.
  • Chapter 24 (evidence): During the escape, the wall suddenly looms up to block the narrator and his shadow. It tells them that even if they get through one wall, another will wait. It laughs, declaring it will always be there.
  • Chapter 50 (evidence): Yellow Submarine Boy reveals that the wall was built to prevent an epidemic—an epidemic of the soul. The wall now possesses its own will and functions as a permanent barrier.
  • Chapter 61 (evidence): The narrator reflects on a “high brick wall” separating him from the coffee shop woman, linking the symbol to emotional intimacy.

How the Wall’s Meaning Changes

Initially, the wall represents a physical boundary between the outside world and the walled town—a place where the narrator hopes to reunite with the girl’s true self. Early in the story, the wall is a hopeful threshold: the narrator sacrifices his shadow to enter, believing the wall will keep him safe in a timeless, dreamlike existence.

As the narrator maps the wall, its meaning shifts to a symbol of oppressive curiosity and control. The wall actively resists being understood, changing shape to mock his efforts. It becomes an antagonist, watching him, inducing fever, and laughing at his attempts to escape. The wall’s ability to produce illusions (as witnessed during the escape) undermines the town’s claim to perfection and reality.

Later, through Yellow Submarine Boy’s revelation, the wall is reframed as a quarantine measure against an “epidemic of the soul.” This suggests the wall represents psychological or spiritual protection—but also entrapment. The wall seals the town off from dangerous emotions and memories, yet at the cost of freedom and genuine human connection.

In the narrator’s later life outside the town, the wall becomes a metaphor for the barriers between people—between himself and the coffee shop woman, between the living and the dead (Mr. Koyasu’s ghost). The narrator even asks: “What is real, and what is not? In this world is there really something like a wall separating reality from the unreal?” He concludes there is such a wall, but it is uncertain, transforming like a living being.

Relevance to Characters and Themes

The Narrator

The narrator’s relationship with the wall defines his journey. He enters the town moved by love, but the wall imprisons him. He tries to understand it by mapping, but the wall resists. His escape through the wall, trusting his shadow’s advice that it is an illusion, marks a turning point: he chooses the real world over the walled town’s false perfection. Yet the wall’s laughter—“I will always be there”—haunts him afterward, symbolizing that the barriers of the mind and heart persist.

The Shadow

The narrator’s shadow is the key to breaking the wall’s power. The shadow insists the wall is an illusion, that the town is a land of shadows. By trusting his shadow’s heart (ignoring fear), the narrator passes through the wall like jelly. The shadow represents the narrator’s rejected real self—his humanity, emotions, and mortality. The wall must be overcome not by force but by inner conviction.

Yellow Submarine Boy

The boy draws a map of the walled town and corrects it. He knows the wall’s purpose: to prevent an epidemic of the soul. He declares he must go to that town to read old dreams forever, accepting the wall’s finality. The boy embodies a willing surrender to the wall’s isolation, showing that the wall can be both a prison and a refuge for those who feel they have no place in the ordinary world.

The Girl

Both the walled town’s Dream Reader and her shadow outside the wall are connected to the narrator. The wall separates the narrator from the girl’s true self; entering the town does not restore their love because the girl’s shadow died long ago. The wall becomes the barrier between their two selves, reinforcing the themes of memory, loss, and imperfect reunion.

Themes

  • Reality vs. Illusion: The wall is the ultimate test of what is real. The narrator’s map proves useless because the wall changes. The shadow insists the wall is an illusion that can be overcome by trust. This theme asks readers to question the solidity of perceived boundaries.

  • Identity and the Shadow: The wall forces the narrator to abandon his shadow—his identity. The shadow must be sacrificed to enter, and the narrator’s ability to reunite with it defines his escape. The wall thus symbolizes the loss and potential recovery of self.

  • Isolation and Connection: The wall isolates the town completely. Residents have no curiosity, no history, no connection to the outside. Yet the narrator finds a kind of connection with the Dream Reader inside. The wall both enables and destroys intimacy.

  • Memory and Forgetting: The wall is linked to the epidemic of the soul—a kind of forgetting. The town’s library stores old dreams (dangerous emotions) to seal them away. The wall prevents the spread of memory and feeling.

Study Questions with Answers

1. In what ways does the wall’s ability to shape-shift undermine the narrator’s attempt to understand the town?

When the narrator attempts to map the wall, he walks its perimeter for two weeks, noting every detail. But after falling ill, he dreams that the wall changes shape continuously, laughing at his efforts. This reveals that the wall is not a static object; it is alive with its own will. The wall’s elusive nature suggests that rational understanding cannot grasp the town’s essence. The narrator’s fever is a rite of passage for Dream Readers—he must accept that the wall defies objective measurement. The wall’s shape-shifting also foreshadows its later role as an illusion that can be overcome only by faith, not by logic.

2. How does the wall relate to the theme of memory and the “epidemic of the soul”?

Yellow Submarine Boy explains that the wall was built to prevent an epidemic—a metaphor for an epidemic of the soul. The town’s library stores old dreams that contain dangerous emotions like jealousy, love, and sadness. The wall seals these inside, preventing them from spreading and causing harm. However, the wall also cuts off the residents from genuine human feeling. The narrator’s role as Dream Reader is to calm these echoes through empathy. Thus, the wall represents both protection from emotional contamination and the suppression of the very memories and feelings that make life meaningful. The “never-ending epidemic” suggests that the wall’s purpose is permanent isolation, even after any literal epidemic ends.

3. What does the wall’s laughter during the escape symbolize?

When the narrator and his shadow attempt to flee through the wall, the wall speaks, saying, “No way you guys can get through the wall… I will always be there,” and laughs loudly. This laughter mocks the narrator’s attempt to leave, implying that the wall represents an inescapable psychological barrier. Even after the narrator passes through by trusting his shadow, the wall’s parting words echo, suggesting that the barrier between reality and illusion, or between the self and the other world, can never be fully erased. The laughter also symbolizes the town’s contempt for human agency—the wall believes it will always have the last word.

4. How does the narrator’s later life reflect the wall’s continuing presence, especially regarding his relationships?

After escaping the walled town, the narrator feels that the outside world is unreal while memories of the town feel more genuine. He becomes isolated, quitting his job and sleeping excessively. He eventually moves to a mountain town to work in a library, where he meets a coffee shop woman. He reflects that “something impenetrable, something like, for instance, a high brick wall” keeps them apart. This wall is the emotional barrier he built after losing the girl at age seventeen. The walled town’s influence persists as a metaphor for his difficulty forming intimate connections. He acknowledges that his inner clock stopped at seventeen, and the wall of grief and memory still separates him from the present. The wall thus transforms from a physical boundary into a lasting psychological structure.