Content warning: This post contains spoilers for Earthlings by Sayaka Murata. Mentions of sexual assault, child abuse, incest, pedophilia, and other heavy topics.
When I started reading this book, I didn’t know what I was in for. The cover art is deceptively cute—a plush hedgehog floating in space. The summary on the back describes the story as a coming-of-age tale, in which a strange child questions her place in a world that tries its best to make her conform. Innocent enough, right?
I was very, very wrong.
Earthlings is a gut punch, brimming with horror and unspeakable acts. Within the pages of this petite novel are lengthy descriptions of child abuse, sexual assault, incest, murder, pedophilia, and cannibalism. (That last one really took me by surprise.)
I hardly ever read or watch anything from the horror genre, and I despise unnecessary use of gore, trauma, and violence. Often, I find it’s a shortcut to cheap sympathy or shock value, with no real purpose or justification. I never got that sense with Earthlings.
Murata is purposefully heavy-handed here. Indulgent, even. And she has to be, to get us to fully understand what the world looks and feels like to young Natsuki. She wants nothing more than to make sense of what is a frightening reality—by age 11, she has already endured physical and emotional abuse from her family as well as multiple incidents of sexual assault and pedophilia perpetrated by her schoolteacher. She finds solace in her relationship with her cousin Yuu, which begins innocently enough with their proclamations of love and naïve promises of marriage. Though uncomfortable for us to read as adults, it is clear that these two children feel less like outsiders in each other’s company, and they replicate that partnership through “marriage,” the only framework for partnership they’re really shown throughout the novel. Here, Murata’s thesis begins to take shape, as she asserts that marriage is prized above all other forms of partnership and can be the only legitimate fate for girls and boys in this society.
Natsuki also makes a bleak observation about the world, describing it as a “factory” in which her womb is simply a “component” that needs to be coupled with someone’s testes. Indeed, considering the way she is treated like an object by both family and people in positions of power, it would seem as though all she is meant for is to be used, consumed, and discarded. After Natsuki and Yuu are discovered using their “components” as prescribed, they are banned from ever seeing each other again.
Chillingly, Natsuki reflects, “The grown-ups, who did what society had wanted of them, were shaken by those of us who did not. The grown-ups had become anesthetized and seemed unable to remember what life had been like before. They all seemed to be under some kind of spell.” It’s as if Murata herself stepped out of the restraints of Natsuki’s voice on the page and spoke to me directly, asking, “Who are the real monsters here?” And indeed, while I did have a visceral reaction to Natsuki and Yuu’s unknowingly incestuous relationship, it was the adults who explicitly sexualized the act, turning the children’s best attempts at understanding the world and their bodies into something disgusting and evil.
Later, we witness Natsuki brutally murder her schoolteacher through the lens of a magical girl fighting off an evil villain. Piyuut, her extraterrestrial hedgehog, and the magical girl persona she dons is how her brain processes the level of trauma she experiences on a regular basis, and her dissociation and descent into murder are her body’s attempts to keep her safe.
As Natsuki moves into adulthood, Murata continues this pattern of utilizing unsettling events to force us to interrogate our biases—is it Natsuki who is the perverse deviant? Or does the perversion lie with the rigid social order, which has no tolerance for people who live outside its carefully constructed borders? Though flawed, Natsuki, her husband, and Yuu show us what it could look like to resist conformity and understand love, both of the self and of others, in its purest form. As Natsuki asserts: “What came first: the system or love? All I knew was that love was a mechanism designed to make Earthlings breed.” What was it like to experience love before it was objectified and weaponized?
To Natsuki, acts of “love” were always thinly-veiled tactics of manipulation and control, from the “generosity” of her schoolteacher’s “private lessons” to the expression of “care” by her family about the intimate details of her sex life. As such, her view of love is purely utilitarian, devoid of any deeper emotion or meaning. This, too, can be seen as a trauma response—it is much easier to excuse these betrayals if you convince yourself that the perpetrators are themselves victims of a script they are meant to follow.
What came first: the system or love? All I knew was that love was a mechanism designed to make Earthlings breed.
(Earthlings, p. 175)
Earthlings crescendos into one of the most shocking endings to a book I have ever read. Murata turns the entire thesis of the book on its head in this final passage, once again making us confront our beliefs and judgment. Matter-of-fact descriptions of sex and cannibalism illuminate just how far Natsuki, her husband, and Yuu have been divorced from humanity, and yet, there is a seed of doubt here. Throughout the book, I was rooting for Natsuki to live life on her terms, but when she finally does, I cannot stomach it. I am repulsed. I am no different than those who I had just condemned for attempting to control her life. Who am I to say, “This crosses the line, they’ve gone too far this time”?
Who determines the “line?” Where is the divide between social rules that protect, or limit, what it means to be human?
These are the questions I turned over in my mind for days, weeks after I finished the book. Truthfully, I do not think anyone has the answer. What I do know is the pendulum swing of resistance and survival can often turn us into radically different people than we expected ourselves to be, alternate versions of ourselves that would not have existed had we had different experiences. There is a very human tendency to react in complete opposition to trauma or mistakes. With all-or-nothing thinking, we reject everything to prove to ourselves that we’re different from that which we despise. Instead, we are actively avoiding a particular outcome, which is not the same as intentionally moving toward a specific goal or vision. In short, we lose sight of ourselves in an effort to create distance between us and the trauma.
So perhaps the question of normalcy vs. nonconformity is not about a “line.” Maybe it is a spectrum, expanding radially with many possibilities contained within the framework of humanity, which we as a species need to construct together without the silencing or oppression of particular voices.
Earthlings overwhelms us with the discomfort of examining our own choices and actions, both the ways in which we have been othered and how we have also been complicit in othering those around us. Murata’s vivid, grotesque, unsettling imagery holds us hostage, not letting us writhe away from this vital introspection. At times, I did find myself wriggling in my seat, made physically squeamish by two-dimensional words on a page.
Disgust is not an emotion I often sit with, usually opting to push it aside rather than let it linger. But Murata says, “No—feel it. Question it. What are you disgusted about? Who are you disgusted with?” My answer cycled endlessly between Natsuki, society, and myself.
It has been quite some time since a book has evoked such emotion in me, and while Earthlings is not for everyone, for those who are willing to take the plunge, it is a wild and worthwhile ride.
—
Additional quotes from the book I loved:
- “Plenty of people look squarely at things they don’t want to see and live with them.” p. 159
- “Submission had been a coping strategy for him as a child…The sooner i was brainwashed the better That way I would no longer suffer. I, too, would be able to live with a smile on my face in the virtual reality world in which everyone was living.” p. 160
- “Normality was contagious, and exposure to the infection was necessary to keep up with it.” p. 179
- “My body was not my own.” p. 188
peachoolongg.wordpress.com 