Genre
Fiction
Setting and Context
The book is set in the 1990s and is written in the context of social-political issues.
Narrator and Point of View
Third-person narrative
Tone and Mood
Temperamental, distrustful, aggrieved
Protagonist and Antagonist
Toru Okada is the protagonist of the story.
Major Conflict
The main conflict is that Komiko meets a new man and goes missing. Her husband, Toru, realizes that his wife has been having a secretive love affair all along.
Climax
The climax is when Toru realizes that woman he has been dating since he separated from his wife is indeed Komiko disguised as a different woman called Nutmeg. Therefore, in unclear circumstances, Toru reunites with his wife.
Foreshadowing
The missing cat foreshadowed Toru’s reunion with his estranged wife.
Understatement
Toru understated his love affair with Nutmeg, not knowing that it was destiny to reunite with his separated wife.
Allusions
The story alludes to the challenges that face marriages, such as unfaithfulness.
Imagery
The jellyfish in the aquarium provides imagery of sight to aid readers to visualize the dating environment between Toru and Komiko for the first time. Similarly, the description of the house that Toru buys depicts sight imagery to readers.
Paradox
The main paradox is that Komiko managed to have a secretive love affair with her boyfriend despite being married.
Parallelism
Toru’s sexual relation with Nutmeg parallels Komiko’s sexual affair with her secretive boyfriend.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The ‘missing cat’ exemplifies the secrets of the sexual relationships among the characters.
Personification
The missing cat is personified as having the human abilities to reunite Toru and Komiko.
