http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waiting_(novel)

1. Lin Kong seems to many to be too passive. But others, including the author, say that he is buffeted by forces larger than he can handle. Explain whether you believe Lin is personally responsible for how his life turns out or whether there are systemic influences we need to take into account.

3. Although the novel spans 18 years, the scenes of action take place in only a handful of places. Since Ha Jin is the designer of this world, why does he restrict his narrative palette in this way? What effect does this have on the novel?

8. Compare and contrast the role of sex in Waiting and Kafka on the Shore. And while Waiting takes place in an earlier era than KOTS, think beyond changing sexual mores in the latter twentieth century when you take this question on, and as always, support your answer with evidence from the text.

Question 1. "Responsibility"

Lin Kong is an extremely passive man and has to take much of the responsibility for his life's course. Over and over, beginning with his arranged marriage, he yields his own wishes for the benefit of others, in that case his parents (and tradition). It continues in his medical career, seeing his peers promoted while he is passed over. He's so afraid of breaking the rules of his society, and even of what comrades think of him, that he will not even consummate the passion he feels for Manna- for eighteen years! His brother-in-law Bensheng intimidates him and sabotages the desired divorce from Shuyu. At various times in the novel he is called a coward, a wimp, a chicken- and let's face it, he is. He waits so long to take any kind of action to improve his life that by the time he get's around to it, it is no longer what he wants.

But there are indeed larger and systemic influences to be taken into consideration. The deeper I read into this novel, the more "familiar" it felt to me, and that was mysterious to me at first- I'd never read it before. But then it hit me- this is very similar to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four. Lin Kong lives his life as a paranoid much like Winston Smith, Orwell's anti-hero. Both worlds created by the authors are dystopias; societies where the common people are intimidated and controlled by an authoritarian government. While Orwell's is more of a science-fiction setting, Ha Jin has given us an equally dark and depressing world based on communist China. The reality makes it all the more chilling. Lin Kong is timid and passive for a reason. His society makes him that way. Especially sensitive to its influence apparently, he never makes a decent and self-willed decision his entire life.

Question 3."Restriction"

The redundancy of settings (basically Goose Village, a courtroom, the hospital in Muji, and a few dwellings) enhances the feeling of drudgery and boredom; the "Waiting" that is so central to the novel. Day after day, year after year, Lin and Manna are at the hospital. He takes his leave every summer, goes back to Shuyu, goes to court, and then comes back to Muji, emasculated. He's like a hamster in a cage, running the treadmill and getting nowhere. I also appreciate Ha Jin's subtle but effective way of always injecting some kind of death, decay, excrement, or small cruelty into the majority of his little incidental descriptive passages. He very effectively paints a life of quiet misery.

Question 8. "Sex Scenes"

I found the sex acts depicted in both novels disturbing, which I think were the authors' intentions. All in the name of magic realism (Kafka on the Shore) or dystopian realism (Waiting), these encounters, whether actual or in dreams, tended to be anti-climactic (pun intended). The main difference of course is in language, the word choices. Muramati used more common and banal terms: "cock" as opposed to Ha Jin's "male member". The incestual, Oedipal element of Kafka... would not be possible in the more repressed world of Ha Jin's China, where any kind of sex outside of marriage is "abnormal" and would be considered heresy.

I saw another eerie parallel between the two novels: both Kafka and Lin Kong had an alter-ego ("Crow" for the former, unnamed in the latter) that these characters would have "conversations" with about their choices. It reminded me of old cartoons where you see an angel and a devil whispering into a character's ear about what to do in a given situation.