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feeling also happened to Kawashima when he was a kid and stayed in Home, but when he had already become an adult, he did not feel it anymore. He thought that
it was the parents who did not deserve to be loved. In his anger, he thought that he must take revenge to all parents for the pain and the sadness that he and his
friends had felt when they were in Home. He believed that he was the representative for all children that could avenge for all the bad things that parents
had already done to him and his friends. Below is the evidence that will show the egocentric individual symptom.
“Kawashima began to think of himself as a representative. A representative of all the children who’d become insignificant dots in that
dark diorama; a martyr armed with only an ice pick, facing down the enemy hordes. Flushed with a sense of omnipotence he summoned up the
faces of the children in the Home one by one and told them: just wait and see. His lips grazed the window-pane, and several drops of water ran down
the glass like little bugs scattering. I’ll kill them all for you, Kawashima muttered again and again” Murakami, 2007: 58.
From the above quotation, when he remembered all his friends in Home who had the same experience as him, Kawashima believed that he was the
representative of people in Home to avenge all pain, sadness and disappointment that they had felt to the parents who ignored and abused their child. He thought
that he had the power to do that. Other evidence that prove the egocentric individual symptom also
appeared when he tried to stab Sanada. In his mind, he wanted to be feared by everyone. In this novel, He wanted Sanada to ask for his mercy to spare her life.
“I need her to squeal and weep and plead for her life” p.153. From this quotation, it is clearly seen that he is really a sick person. He imagined himself as
a great person who had power and must be feared. He wanted to be looked as a
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superior and a strong person who could give power, either to safe her from death or bring her to death.
4. Violent
In this novel, Kawashima is characterized as being violent. Something that disturbed his thought forced him to do violence. According to Gerald C. Davison
and John M. Neale in Abnormal Psychology an Experimental Clinic Approach, “paranoid schizophrenia are agitated, argumentative, angry and sometimes
violent” 1986: 343. From this quotation, the writer concludes that behind the normal life of paranoid schizophrenic, this person is actually dangerous.
People who suffer from this mental illness are easily disturbed by objects or situations in front of them. Usually they believe that something or somebody
will do bad things to them or do something that they do not like. Here, that fear does not come in sudden, but it appears because of the trauma that they got in
their past life. Usually when the delusions come intensely, a paranoid schizophrenic person will show anger and violent behaviors.
In the story, Kawashima’s characteristics match with one of the paranoid schizophrenia’s symptoms. Here, the first time he felt stronger and powerful was
when he slapped his mother. He slapped his mother because when he was a kid, his mother had always hit him and treated him differently from his brothers. A
bad experience that he received when he was a kid made him angry and saved avenge in him. Therefore, when he was a teen and his mother came and asked for
apology from him, it was the first time for him that he could express his anger by slapping his mother p.14. Here, Kawashima enjoyed what he did to his mother
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because that was the first time he could deliver his anger to his mother through violence that he committed.
The second violence that he did is when he was nineteen years old when he stayed with a stripper. His violence continued because he was covered by
suspicion and fear. He was afraid that his ex-girlfriend would leave him after she yelled at him because of his passiveness in letting her strip and not forbidding her
to serve other man. His violence continued because of the suspicion, anxiety and fear that came to him. These feeling had succeeded in making him think
illogically until it led him to stab his ex-girlfriend with an ice pick on her stomach p.27.
At that time, it was the first time he stabbed someone using an ice pick. He found it enjoyable to see blood splatting out from the part of body that he stabbed.
He did it because for him, being alone and ignored were the most things he had been afraid of. He did not want to feel what he felt when he was a kid. That is
why he thought he must not let his ex-girlfriend leave him by stabbing her. The third violence that he did is when he wanted to stab his own baby,
Little Rie. In this story, Kawashima did not stab his baby but the desire to stab his baby always appeared and made him continuously trying to stab her. For ten days
every midnight he always went to Little Rie’s bedroom. He always brought an ice pick and tried to stab his daughter, but he could not. On the tenth day when he
tried to stab Little Rie, Yoko’s voice surprised him and made the tip of the ice pick graze the baby’s cheek p.5. In this story, Kawashima did not really stab his
baby, but to feel and to attempt murder can be categorized as part of violence.
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What Kawashima did and felt toward Little Rie can be summarized as violence because although Kawashima did not really stab Little Rie, his desire and thought
to stab his daughter is still part of violence. Shortly, after he knew and realized that he could not stab his own
daughter, he finally decided to stab someone else. In the story, he decided to stab someone else after he got hallucinations in the shop near his apartment. That was
the last violence that Kawashima did in this story. Here, he tried to stab a prostitute named Sanada Chiaki. After he got hallucination in the shop, the next
day he lied to his wife by saying that he had gone to Tokyo to learn how to be a true salaryman, that was why he must took that chance. But the fact was that he
did not do that. In Tokyo he planned to kill someone. Below is a quotation that will prove his violence toward a prostitute named Sanada who he thought would
be perfect for him to stab. This quotation happened when Kawashima realized that his notebook was opened near Sanada after he helped her.
“His blood turned to ice. She must have read the notes, he thought, and a shiver emanating from his bitten finger rippled through every cell in his
body. He experienced a surge of nausea and looked over at the girl, who had turned her back to him and was climbing into her slip. I have no
choice now, he thought, and the chill and the nausea merged with a peculiar, bubbling excitement. I have no choice but to kill her” Murakami,
2007: 117. From the above quotation, the writer sees that Kawashima enjoyed doing
violence. On the quotation above, the writer also finds that Kawashima felt an excitement in him every time he thought that he must stab Sanada. The reason that
made him must stab her because he was afraid that Sanada had already read his plan to stab a woman then told someone about his plan. That situation really
