IB English: Paper 2 New Criteria B1 & B2
Paper 2 Essay
Works: Haruki Murakami’s anthology of short stories “After the Quake” and Henrik Ibsen’s drama “A Doll’s House”
Both Haruki Murakami, in his short stories “Thailand,” “All God’s Children Can Dance,” and “UFO in Kushiro,” and Henrik Ibsen, in A Doll’s House, explore how loss forces people to think about who they really are. In Murakami’s post‑earthquake Japan, loss often takes the form of emptiness and emotional disconnection, reflecting the shock and uncertainty that follow disaster. In Ibsen’s nineteenth‑century Norway, Nora’s loss is moral and social. She realizes that the world she lives in prevents her from being independent. Although they work in different styles, Murakami through quiet symbolism and Ibsen through realist drama, both show that losing stability or illusion can lead to honesty, growth, and freedom.
In both “Thailand” and A Doll’s House, loss helps the main characters discover who they are, but the two writers approach this journey in very different ways, Murakami through introspection, and Ibsen through confrontation. In Murakami’s short story, Satsuki’s outward calm hides deep conflict; the “heavy heat and stillness of Bangkok” reflect her emotional paralysis and disconnection from self. Through this vivid setting, Murakami transforms climate into emotion, showing how repression becomes suffocating. The old Thai woman’s warning that “something harmful rests within her” turns guilt into something physical, suggesting that denial poisons the spirit. Murakami’s restrained narration and measured pacing mirror Satsuki’s numb composure, revealing that recovery begins when inner stillness gives way to recognition. While Murakami shows self‑discovery emerging from silent acceptance of loss, Ibsen portrays it through the painful confrontation of illusion and truth. Torvald’s pet names for Nora, “my little skylark” and “my squirrel”, sound affectionate but expose her lack of power, reflecting Ibsen’s critique of domestic roles that disguise control as love. Even the “comfortable and tastefully furnished” home conceals strain that tightens as the play unfolds, until Nora’s admission, “I have been your doll‑wife,” exposes the artificiality of her existence. By presenting Nora’s awakening through plain, realistic dialogue, Ibsen heightens authenticity and audience empathy. Ultimately, both writers reveal that loss is an intrinsic part of human growth through Murakami’s restrained narration and symbolic setting and Ibsen’s realist dialogue and stagecraft to show how we must confront what we’ve outgrown to rediscover authenticity and freedom.
In All God’s Children Can Dance, Murakami explores the collapse of selfhood when belief gives way to uncertainty. Yoshiya’s blind faith in his mother’s story that he is “the child of our Lord” fills an emotional void after the earthquake, yet when this belief unravels, so does his sense of meaning. Murakami’s measured, detached narration mirrors Yoshiya’s drifting emotional state; the emptiness of the post‑earthquake city reflects a nation, as well as a man, disoriented by lost certainties. This narrative restraint compels the reader to experience loss as quiet suspension rather than open despair, inviting reflection on how identity depends on illusion. The final image, in which Yoshiya dances “in time with the stirring of the grass and the flowing of the clouds,” fuses realism and symbolism, suggesting that acceptance of impermanence, not belief, restores harmony. Ibsen constructs a parallel but more confrontational unmasking of identity in A Doll’s House. Like Yoshiya, Nora lives within an invented truth, the role of the perfect wife that guarantees social approval. When Torvald’s anger exposes her fragility, the warm domestic space becomes theatrically cold; Ibsen’s stage directions, once describing comfort, now frame alienation. His realistic dialogue sharpens the shift from affection to accusation, showing how language itself enforces social control. While Murakami’s symbolism invites meditative acceptance, Ibsen’s realism demands ethical judgment. Both writers thus expose the pain of self‑recognition: Yoshiya’s dancing yields tranquil self‑awareness, whereas Nora’s final assertion, “Before all else, I am a reasonable human being,” claims independence through rupture. Each transforms loss into self‑definition, Murakami through inward reconciliation, Ibsen through outward defiance.
In UFO in Kushiro, Murakami expresses loss through absence: meaning evaporates, leaving characters suspended between detachment and renewal. Komura’s wife’s accusation,“You have nothing inside you that you can give me”, reduces the marriage to air and silence. Murakami’s short, unadorned sentences and restrained narration echo this emotional void; each pause becomes a symbol of what language cannot restore. The earthquake motif enlarges personal hollowness into a national metaphor, suggesting that catastrophe exposes how fragile identity and connection truly are. Yet Murakami’s minimalism is not despairing. The mysterious box Komura carries, said to contain “the something that was inside you,” externalises inner loss, forcing both character and reader to confront what has vanished. This ambiguity provokes reflection rather than closure, an ending defined by uncertainty that gestures toward renewal. By contrast, Ibsen closes A Doll’s House with unmistakable finality. When Nora counters Torvald’s “No man would sacrifice his honour for the one he loves” with “Before all else, I must stand quite alone,” realism crystallises into moral clarity. The famous “slam of the door” provides what Murakami withholds, an audible assertion of freedom. Through dialogue and sound, Ibsen converts silence into action; through ellipsis and restraint, Murakami turns emptiness into thought. Both endings achieve catharsis, but of different kinds: Ibsen’s sharp confrontation compels social realignment, whereas Murakami’s quiet ambiguity invites introspection. In each, loss functions as purification,the breaking of illusion that allows the possibility of truly beginning again.
In Murakami’s short stories and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House, loss breaks apart illusion but also opens the way for truth. Murakami links his characters’ inner pain to Japan’s collective sense of rupture after the earthquake, using silence and symbolism to show how emptiness can teach resilience. Ibsen uses realistic settings, tension, and speech to challenge social myths and point toward early feminism. Although one ends with quiet reflection and the other with a loud door slam, both writers show loss as necessary change. For Satsuki, Yoshiya, Komura, and Nora, freedom begins only when the life they once trusted finally collapses, and that moment of collapse becomes their beginning.
