Desire for the Otherworld: The Question of Reality in 'Sputnik Sweetheart' Madeline Burleson College

Sputnik Sweetheart is a novel that allows the reader to contemplate the complex personalities of human, and how they view themselves in reality. It is not only a tool to understand the character’s realities, but the reader may also use the material to interpret her own realities. Reality is not the only world characters contemplate in the novel, but they also contemplate the sense of an “otherworld” however, more indirectly. The reader may analyze the two worlds in terms of symbols and signs.

In the beginning of the novel, Sumire and K discuss the definitions of signs and symbols. These words are often taken to have the same meaning, but upon further discussion Sumire finally understood the two different definitions by use of K’s analogies. One can use these definitions to understand the otherworld is a two-way street; in other words, K would define it as a sign. K first defines a symbol as, “The emperor is a symbol of Japan.But this doesn’t mean that the emperor and Japan are equivalent…the arrow points in one direction. The emperor is a symbol of Japan, but Japan is not a symbol of the emperor,” (Murakami, 28). Sumire begins to understand his example, as it shows that the emperor is a symbol of Japan, not a sign for a sign...