10/28 Wenzhuo Fei

 The Flying Tobita Sisters:

What this novel makes me think about is whether technological progress really means that humans have become freer. In the novel, humans finally have wings, but they have lost the ability to walk. In other words, when humans gain one new ability, they may also lose another ability. This makes me think of the development of human technology. So if a technology becomes something everyone must depend on, does it actually expand our freedom, or does it create a new kind of constraint? Take smartphones, for example. Smartphones allow us to communicate with anyone at any time and to obtain information. This is of course technological progress. But at the same time, it seems increasingly difficult for us to break away from smartphones. Many people cannot even tolerate several hours without internet access. Does this mean that we have gained the freedom to communicate, while at the same time losing the freedom not to communicate?

I Chase the Monkey:

This novel is too stream-of-consciousness. To be honest, I can't really understand it. My understanding of the story is probably that the protagonist may be a girl who has suffered assault and is experiencing severe psychological and physical pain. This kind of trauma leads to this stream-of-consciousness perspective.  

Mogera Wogura:

My understanding of the novel is that it discusses anthropocentrism — that is, a tendency to understand and evaluate the world with humans at the center. In this story, the moles have normal work, family, and social lives, while humans instead become objects that are captured, raised, and observed. In other words, it discusses that if we no longer look at the world from a human perspective, then the morality, emotions, and ways of life that we have always taken for granted may not be so taken for granted after all.  

A Peddler of Tears:

The first half of this novel feels quite normal, but the second half feels a bit creepy. However, I think if all those fantasy elements were removed, this would actually be a fairly easy story to understand.

1. A girl possesses a special talent and is able to live independently through her own abilities.

2. She meets a man and falls deeply in love with him.

3. She gradually places the entire meaning of her life in this man.

4. Because of jealousy and insecurity, she wants to be irreplaceable to this man.

5. She believes that only by constantly sacrificing herself can she provide him with the best things.

6. In the end, she is even willing to lose her entire body, just to retain the ability to keep devoting herself.

My Baby:

I didn't really understand this novel.

Paprika Jiro:

My understanding of this novel is that it turns the background normal people in action movies into protagonists. Behind grand battles like those of superheroes, there must be a large number of ordinary people. For example, a person opens a small restaurant in New York and runs it for ten years. Suddenly one day, a superhero and a villain start fighting and directly smash his restaurant. For the audience, this is just an exciting action scene. But for the restaurant owner, it may mean that ten years of hard work have been completely reduced to nothing. In other words: the same event, from the hero's perspective, is a thrilling performance, but from the ordinary person's perspective, it is a meaningless disaster. 

Furthermore, these movies all contain moral blind spots in storytelling. That is, we often decide how important a person's life and suffering are based on their position in the story. For example, when the protagonist's friend dies, the movie will spend a long time telling the protagonist's grief. But when a building collapses and dozens of ordinary people may die inside, the movie treats it merely as a visual spectacle. These two kinds of death should not be morally different, but in narrative they are given completely different weight. 

There is also an interesting point at the end of the story: after witnessing his home being destroyed and his grandfather being killed, Paprika Jiro still chooses to deliberately show exaggerated surprise to cooperate with those mysterious figures. I think there may be two explanations for this. One is that Jiro ultimately accepts that he is merely a background character. The other is that Jiro begins to realize that these so-called heroes actually depend on the reactions of ordinary people. That is, the reason heroes appear great, powerful, and shocking also requires background characters to set them off.

And in the final paragraph, "because no one really believes in them anymore," the "believe in them" here does not necessarily mean literally believing that they really exist; it may also mean that people no longer believe in, worship, or accept the heroic image they represent.