Love and Loneliness using Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami Essay

Humans atomic number 18 probably the greediest animals that have walked on the face of earth. There is always a want to achieve whateverthing greater than what one has. This might be a positive force on one hand, exactly on the a nonher(prenominal) it roll in the hay leave some em organic structure wholly unsatisfied and unhappy with their tone. One of the things out of the m whatever which do chief(prenominal) strive to look for in their life is bop. bang, a recurring ascendent in noels, movies, music, poetry, drama and what not, is hard to escape from.Whether it is motherly, friendly or sentimentalist drive in, we wholly have experienced it at some point in our lives. notwithstanding does sack out actually hold out? If we look at this psyche from Haruki Murakamis Sputnik smashs point of view, the answer would be no. Even though whop is a major part of the tidings, in that respect is not a single moment where two deal are in venerate with each other. all t he characters of the carry have had some experience with fare, scarcely in the end all of them are managing their give birth lives all by themselves. The book of account strongly hints the nonexistence of sock and the desolation caused by it. The best way to know as to what exactly love is, is to look inside our own self. If we claim to olfactory perception it, something must be going on inside our bodies to give us that sense of travel or being in love. Firstly, its your brain, not your heart, that falls in love (Myers, 51).It is evident from many scientific and psychological experiments that human romantic love is associated with dopaminergic pathways in the brain (Fisher, Aron, Brown, 2175). So when Sumire, a lesbian in the book Sputnik Sweetheart, fell in love, as if she was crossing a orbit when bang a bolt of lightning zapped her right in the head, the real culprits were something cognize as neurotransmitters and hormones which are, in simple words, chemicals in ou r body that control us (Murakami, 9). Sumire was in the lust manakin and near probably under the chance of the hormones called testosterone and oestrogen.These hormones as Helen Fisher pronounces sustain you out looking for anything (The Science of Love). The second phase or the truly love struck phase is seen in the book when Sumire cannot escape from the thoughts of Miu (The science of love). Thats the ballpoint pen pen she uses the mug she drinks coffee from (Murakami, 50). One cannot blame Sumire for being so sappy as she has no control over the dopamine, serotonin and noradrenaline levels in her body. These chemicals are responsible for the cloud-nine looking, and the loss of appetite, sleep and parsimoniousness when one is in love. This is seen in Sumires case too when all single time she sat down to start writing something no matter how much she stared at the screen, not a single destine came to her (Murakami, 36).Heart racing, flushed cheeks, butterflies in th e stomach, these all the signs of being in love, but it is not love, it is secure chemicals in our bodies do us receive that way. Very closely tied to the brain is our mental psych and genetic paper and it can help explain the complex topic of love well. The main objective of animals and plants on this earth is to make more of their cast so that their genes are passed on, have a better chance of surviving in the future, and can compete against others genes. Like any other animal, humans are predisposed to this kind of behaviour too. In Sputnik Sweetheart K, the narrator and Sumires best friend, is in love with Sumire who is a lesbian and hence cannot repay his love. Even though K knows Sumire is the one he has genuine feelings for, his body seeks sex.This makes him sleep around with other women on a daily basis. though these little flings never aroused much passion in him they were, at just about a kind of comfort for his body (Murakami, 64). According to the Maslows hierarc hy of needs, sex is considered as important as air, sleep, food and protect (Myers, 331). It is one of the basic needs in life regardless of any emotional connection to the other person. Also, all the women who K had physical relationships with were cured and either were espouse or had fiancs or steady boyfriends.psychological science can explain even this as men are most attracted to women who were at ages associated with peak fertility and thus teen boys are most excited by a woman several years sure-enough(a) than themselves. (Myers, 106). When it comes to attraction every small factor like skin, smell and body shape play a huge role in deciding whether a woman is good to mate with or not (Myers, 106). All these behaviours are a result of a phenomenon known as  internal selection where nature selects behaviours that increase the likelihood of sending ones gene into the future (Myers, 106). So in the end, it is not us who travel to decide who we will pair up with and hav e children with, but it is our genes that grasp to choose.How can love exist when we do not even flap to choose the person we get attracted to? After looking at the scientific explanations of love, it is important to know how philosophy describes it to get an overall idea of what love is. Kierkegaard, an existentialist philosopher believes only Christian love is true and all other love, whether humanly speaking it withers early and is altered or fondly preserves itself for a round of timesuch love is tranquillise transient it merely blossoms. This is precisely its weakness and tragedy, whether it blossoms for an hour or for 70 yearsit merely blossoms. (25).There is no sense of any kind of God in the book Sputnik Sweetheart, so at that place is no supposition of Christian love which Kierkegaard seems to support. The only kind of love seen in the book is either friendly or erotic love. But what he say about other kind of love, like Eros, seems to be very true since there is no t a single moment where two volume truly love each other and show it the love people have for each other never really blossoms.Kierkegaard in his calculate of love clearly states that there is no love if it bears no produce and in the book, there is no fruit, only loneliness which can be considered as the opposite of something fruitful (28). When Miu rejects Sumires love, Sumire disappears from everyones lives, which was very painful for K as well as Miu. And when she comes back to K she admits how she feels and says I think I cut somethings throat. One cannot say if she meant it literally or not, but even if she said it metaphorically, she must feel extremely dreadful to say something like that. Secondly, love makes one completely dependent on someone else. When Sumire leaves everyone without any proper explanation K admits, She Sumire helped me forget the undertone of loneliness in my life.His love for Sumire is making him completely dependent when throughout the book it is s hown how much she who is dependent on him. Love has turned the tables for him and now he is the one who is weak and vulnerable. And anyway, there is no point of loving someone if it keeps making one feel more and more alone. It is impossible to see the good part love plays as there is none. And as Kierkegaard said, love does not exist if it does not bear any fruits. If one was asked to summarise the story line of Sputnik Sweetheart it would be something like this K, the narrator, loves Sumire, but Sumire realises she is lesbian when she falls for Miu, a married woman 17 years elder to Sumire, and hence she cannot love K back. But due to an extraordinary incident, Miu has lost all sexual desires and so cannot reciprocate Sumires love.So after disappearing like mourning band for a few days, Sumire comes back to K to give their love a try even though she knows she is a lesbian (Murakami, 103). It is easy to overcharge out that there is a constant search for love in Sumires life. In the spring of her twenty-second year, Sumire fell in love for the commencement time in her life. (Murakami, 5). Even though in exalted school she had a few boyfriends, guys shed go to the cinema with, go swimming with, she took 22 years long to find the right person to fall in love with, and when she finally did, it was someone she could not get (Murakami, 11). If it was something other than love, one would have long given up on it. It is called learned helplessness in psychology.But, Sumire did not stop from trying to find love all over again and she came back to K. Love clearly seems to be a aspiration in life for some people. But what is the purpose of life? There is a point in the book where K realises and says, Id have to survive on my own. (Murakami, 187) and much we, as humans, feel that we are living for a purpose and there are people who care and love, the truth is that we are all by ourselves.K realises it, even though it is quite far into the book, but he does in, and in a rather painful way. Sputnik Sweetheart, the name of the book itself, suggests loneliness as it refers to Sputnik II, the Soviet satellite which was launched into aloofness with the dog Laika, the first living being to go into space which died barking of hunger. It gives a picture of the dark, shiny eyes of the dog gazing out of the tiny window into the empty space all alone (Murakami, 10).What is it about love that makes humans so dreaded for it? Biology and psychology clearly explain that it is just how our bodies are do and how the animal kingdom functions. Also, according to Kierkegaard, erotic, romantic, friendly or philia love is just temporary and never develops fully. It is also seen that being in love never has a positive outcome and from what Kierkegaard said love does not exist if it does not produce something useful. So why is it that we keep seeking love? Are we just lonely and anxious to find something more than life itself? Is it that we are lonely and by ourselves in this world, and hence cannot love, or is it that we cannot love that is why we are lonely? Either way, there is no love, but only loneliness.Work CitedThe Science of Love. BBC refresheds. BBC, n.d. Web. 14 May 2013. Myers, David G. Myers Psychology for AP. New York, NY Worth, 2011. Print. Helen E. Fisher, Arthur Aron and Lucy L. Brown Philosophical Transactions Biological Sciences , Vol. 361, No. 1476, The Neurobiology of Social Recognition, magnet and Bonding (Dec. 29, 2006), pp. 2173-2186