Identity Found: An Analysis of Existential Allegories to Modern Japan in Abe’s The Woman in The Dunes Anonymous College

Life is full of intricacy and irony. Escapism can turn into captivity. And in captivity, there may lie freedom. Incredulous and nonsensical as it may sound, one can indeed find freedom in imprisonment, or, at least, it appears valid in the case of Niki Jumpei – the protagonist in Kobo Abe’s renowned novel The Woman in The Dunes. The central trope of the novel is, unsurprisingly, the sand. The sand is everywhere. It is both gentle and violent, beautiful and frightening, sensual and abstinent; it either signifies life and hope or death and destruction. It is in short fluid. This characteristic posits the sand as an ethereal allegory to Japanese modernity by allowing the sand to assert its tyranny over any significant entities in the universe: Be it the self, the body, or the space. In such fashion, the sand challenges the protagonist’s scientifically-oriented, overly-rational approach to life and endows him with spiritual intellect and serenity in that his new identity emerges. The sand as an allegorical imagery thus sheds light on the path to modern identity and individual subjectivity that is fundamental to human dignity.

The ever-shifting landscape of the desert allegorically represent the ever-changing, industrializing...