“The Little Green Monster” Literary Analysis Short stories are always much more difficult to review compared to novels, simply because the author uses so many metaphors and symbols within. Usually the audience reads it, and then analyzes it as a whole. In “The Little Green Monster” Haruki Murakami tells a story about a strange green monster that digs it way out from under the soil to ask the heroine to marry him. She responds in a very repulsed way stating that “It is rude and presumptuous” along with “What a rude little creature you are to come seeking my love!” (153), even though the little monster meant her no harm. The heroine then starts to kill the monster (who can read her mind) with her evil thoughts, until there is nothing …show more content…

Eyes are often called ‘the windows to our souls’ if the monsters eyes are just like ours, then maybe it is exactly how we are (maybe even better). Metaphors are in almost every story or piece of writing there is, so it isn’t a huge surprise that short stories are more than loaded with them. In almost every surrealist story that Murakami writes, things are symbols and metaphors for something else, and in that case, the creature is just that. Murakami uses the little green monster and compares it to the heroine. There is a clear difference: the heroine is average, normal looking (by society’s definition) and the monster is described to be absurd and abnormal looking. The author uses the characters to compare society and people who society does not yet accept or is pushing away. Murakami’s use of hyperboles brings back the drama that is involved in the story and created by the heroine. It emphasizes the heroine getting less and less afraid of the monster ( because it is so kind) and eventually beats the monster to death (because she is not used to it). In this scene, the heroine is not only killing the monster but is killing it in a very violent way. “I tied it down to a heavy chair with thick wires and the, and with needle nose pliers I began ripping out its scales, one by one.” This is an example of a hyperbole in the story, its clear that the heroine is very extreme in torturing the little monster. The hyperbole brings us back to the