For Professor Gavin Walker
Literature, Art, and the Built Environment
12/15/2024
Belonging in the Built Environment
Introduction
From my apartment in the Collegetown area of Ithaca, it takes roughly 25 minutes to reach Trumansburg by car. The journey consists of a simple drive north along New York State Route 96. I found myself making the trip several times this semester; my fifth-semester design studio was centered around creating an affordable housing framework for Ithaca Neighborhood Housing Services (INHS) in Northeast Trumansburg.
Trumansburg started as a small colonial hamlet built on the ruins of an even smaller Native American village. It was during the Sullivan-Clinton Campaign against the Iroquois Nation that Sergeant Abner Treman of the 2nd New York Regiment claimed 600 acres of land as his rightful bounty. After the end of the Revolutionary War, Abner would settle this plot of land, father 12 children, and live to the ripe age of 62. Even after his passing, the small hamlet ‘Tremaine’s (Treman’s) Borough' would grow into what we know as the town of Ulysses and the incorporated village of Trumansburg.
By 1820, the mills and dams the lined the village’s central creek had turned into a manufacturing hub that manufactured and processed everything from flour to silverware. Additionally, as ‘country-living’ became more fashionable, Trumansburg saw a large migration of younger professionals from Ithaca and Cortland.
Apart from two fires during the mid-1800s, the town has largely remained insulated from much rebuilding and new construction; most of the houses from the 19th-century economic boom remain well-preserved and happily inhabited today. Distinct architectural styles such as Federalist, Greek Revival, Italianate, Victorian Revival, Gothic Revival, and Second Empire are all present within the small downtown area.
The residents are extremely proud of their quaint and picturesque town, and this was strongly communicated in a village board meeting that our class had the pleasure of attending. During a short tour, we were able to see the distinct architectural idiosyncrasies that created the distinct patchwork-like built fabric of Trumansburg. Village representatives later stated that the use of ornamentation such as architrave window frames, ornate corbels, and Greco-Roman columns would be welcome. However, this fierce desire to preserve the ‘built character of Trumansburg’ is not entirely positive.
Newer developments that aesthetically stray from the ‘Finger Lakes Vernacular’ are often shunned, and ‘town character’ is often used as justification for personal biases and prejudice against newcomers. This is clearly shown in the zoning guidelines, where manufactured and prefabricated structures must be at least 1000’ away from the historic and commercial districts in the downtown area. Previously built INHS affordable housing communities are all situated near the northeast borders of the village, and our project would be no different.
So, how can design navigate these difficult constraints? How are we tied to our buildings, and is ‘built character’ only based on motifs and symbolism? How do you create belonging in a built environment that does not welcome you? And do we, as individual residents, have ownership of the cities that we live in?
Personal Identity in Architecture
The oldest archeological evidence of human construction dates to 1.8 million years ago. The evidence, located in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania, consists of a small stone plinth that likely served as a foundation for a circular stick or grass hut. Humanity created its first shelter more than a million years before the arrival of Homo Sapiens; building is an inherently human activity, and the value of built structures to us beyond programmatic need is universally accepted as truth.
If there is immaterial value in physical structures, then what exactly must the act of building entail beyond construction? Martin Heidegger examines ‘building’ from an etymological perspective; the German word for building, bauen, descends from the High German word buan, which means “to dwell”. He continues to assert that dwelling and building are inherently bound together, and “we attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building. The latter, building, has the former, dwelling, as its goal.” The two actions are tied through a relationship of ends and means, though relation does not take the form of a linear process: “to build is in itself already to dwell.”
Heidegger describes dwelling as the manner in which humans inhabit place, but the concept is further defined by a particular state of being that can be likened to ‘belonging’; one is at peace and in comfort in their domain of dwelling. The manner of building that creates this dwelling place also takes on a dual meaning; bauen is also etymologically related to the High German barren, meaning “to cherish or protect, to preserve and care for, specifically to till the soil, to cultivate the vine.” If the definitions of both bauen and barren are considered equally important, cultivation and construction become the dual modes that comprise the act of genuine building. This holistic act is what Heidegger ultimately defines as dwelling, and thus, a place of your own is marked by belonging and stewardship.
Then, how do we as humans translate our personal identity into a formal language of architecture, i.e., how can and/or should the people of Trumansburg create new buildings that still uphold the village’s character? Currently, many residents consider the use of ornamental motifs and material palettes in line with the existing 19th-century vernacular types as the foremost method of designing buildings that best represent the town. However, many lineages of architectural philosophy do not explicitly consider aesthetic character as an essential element of communicating identity.
After the Opening of Japan in 1855, the Western audience found themselves captivated by cultural artifacts exported from the island nation. In similar fashion to previous exoticist obsessions with Greece, Africa, and China, the European bourgeoisie began collecting “japonaiserie-exotica such as ukiyo-e (wood-block prints), byobu (folding screens), kacchu (samurai helmets and armor), inro (ivory or shagreen medicine boxes), and so on.” Aware of this increasing demand for objects with ‘Japan-ness’, Japanese craftsmen began creating items such as Western silverware with traditional carvings, and fountain pens adorned with bonsai motifs.
This desire to highlight a Japanese ‘character’ would soon manifest in architectural discourse as well. Fleeing Germany for political reasons, architect Bruno Taut arrived on Japan’s shores in 1933. After visiting many of Japan’s famous shrines and villas, he would publish a set of books on the ‘Japan-ness’ of Japanese architecture. Puzzled by this phenomenon, Metabolist architect Arata Isozaki began work on his book “Japan-ness in Architecture” in order to “trace the process through which Japan-ness itself was constructed as a discourse in Japanese modernity.”
Japanese architecture, even before the Opening of Japan, bore many similarities with European early Modernist works; this is evident in the Katsura Rikyu or Sutemi Horiguchi’s villas. The combination of a long-standing craftsman culture and a design philosophy rooted in restraint, simplicity, and pragmatism meant that the products of Japanese design shared many formal qualities with the Gesamtkunstwerk created by the form-follows-function mentality of Bauhaus designers.
For example, the double-wing plan of Sutemi Horiguchi’s Okada house organizes rectilinear spaces along the perpendicular axes of streetfront-to-nature and public-to-private. He articulates the programmatic arrangement of these spaces using principles of transparency and density. The rooms themselves were dimensioned using the standard rectangular tatami mat as a standard unit; this, when combined with a post-and-beam grid and paper curtain partitions, meant that the Okada house was modular, flexible, and ephemeral: the architectural embodiment of wabi-sabi.
Isozaki would probably consider the flexible nature of Horiguchi’s work as key to its ‘Japan-ness’. After all, the modular flexibility of Japanese Metabolist projects was a result of a post-war housing crisis; pragmatic design would be the ethos that connected the otherwise contrasting projects of Horiguchi and Isozaki. Conversely, Junichiro Tanizaki, a 20th-century architecture critic, believed that the ephemerality of the Horiguchi houses was key to their ‘Japan-ness’. He claimed that the beauty of Japanese architecture manifests through a “variation of shadows, heavy shadows against light shadows – it has nothing else…”; this opinion would later become formative to the future works of Tadao Ando, another prominent.
In either case, neither Isozaki nor Tanizaki attributes ‘Japan-ness’ to a stylistic element of motif. Both did not believe in the encapsulation of an ever-changing cultural identity into a physical ornament. In order to accommodate the history, present, and potential future of a nation within a design language, its identity must be abstracted into a new set of formal logics. Likewise, the holistic identity of Trumansburg can also be communicated through form in a timeless fashion, and continuous stewardship by multiple generations of residents will ensure that their uniquely Trumansburg manner of dwelling will be cemented as ‘belonging’ to the architecture.
Living in Another’s House
In the context of the housing proposal, the collective opinion of the existing Trumansburgers was not the principal viewpoint of consideration. Rather, most of the design decisions were based on the overarching goal of creating a pleasant and comfortable housing community that would enrich the dwelling experience of the residents. However, the truth remains that the community would be locationally isolated from the rest of Trumansburg. Furthermore, it would take time for many existing villagers to warm up to the newcomers; there was a likelihood that the newcomers would face some form of prejudice during the acclimation period.
Whether it be through zoning, symbolism, or some other design element, the built environment has just as much power in separating people as it does in bringing people together. This dynamic becomes further pronounced in the context of a power imbalance, i.e., a situation where one side is in unfamiliar territory, far away from home. In that case, how do you go about living in the house of the ‘other’?
According to the United Nations, the “question” of Palestine starts when the region was placed under British administration in 1922. To accommodate the large number of Jewish refugees to the region following World War II, the UN would separate the territory into two ethno-states. In its 1948 “independence” war involving several Arab nations in the Levant, Israel would expand its borders to cover 77% of the original 1922 British mandate Palestine. In the subsequent 1967 “Six-Day War”, Israel would further occupy areas of East Jerusalem.
In 1973, the UN General Assembly would draft a resolution that called for an immediate ceasefire and Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. In the following year, the Assembly further reaffirmed the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people to self-determination, sovereignty, and return. (Security Council Resolution 338) However, the story of Palestine has not panned out as the resolution intended, and the region’s history since has been fraught with injustice and violence.
The turn of the 21st century was defined by uprisings of Palestinian resistance known as the Intifada, as well as the ensuing massive loss of Palestinian life and the Israeli erection of the West Bank border wall. In October 2023, another large-scale conflict began in the Gaza Strip. In July of 2024, the International Court of Justice declared the current Israeli presence in the Occupied Territories unlawful, and the General Assembly soon demanded a withdrawal of the military and settlers in 12 months as well as further Israeli reparations.
Within this new context, new proposed methods of decolonization suddenly provide a tangible model for reclaiming Palestinian land, architecture, and sovereignty. A prominent voice among the groups using architectural practice as a language of protest is Decolonizing Architecture and Art Residency (DAAR). Founded by architects Sandi Hilal, Alessandro Petti, and Eyal Weizman, DAAR is self-described as a studio (as well as a residency) of architects, artists, activists, and curators. They aim to use discursive and spatial intervention as a mode of operation for political practice, where “architecture [acts] in the world and not in the service of a pre-existing agenda.”
DAAR is also “the result of a delicate equilibrium between locals and internationals”, and their constant interaction with Palestinian artists, architects, educators, students, NGOs, and communities drives their practice of critical proximity. In this sense, the everyday Palestinian person is as equal as a protagonist to DAAR. While the Arabs of Palestine had been creating and developing a Palestinian identity for about 200 years, the idea that Palestinians form a distinct people is relatively recent. Despite this, they have been able to forge a strong community, which forms the basis by which DAAR’s proposed methods of decolonization were inspired.
DAAR’s understanding of decolonization as outlined in their 2013 book Architecture After Revolution finds itself situated within a long-standing lineage of humanist political philosophy. DAAR draws references from Marxist thinkers such as Frantz Fanon, who pondered 'possible corruption in the radical moment of ‘unplugged power’. While both DAAR and Fanon highlight the issue of newfound regimes potentially using withstanding architecture for the same purposes as previous colonizers, their ideologies begin to diverge.
The built environment is an important material signifier of the regimes and ideologies that built it, which was an idea first proposed by thinker Georges Bataille. Fanon believes that the destruction of an oppressive built environment can liberate. There is a near-spiritual sense of idealism behind a scorched earth tabula rasa, but the practice leaves the sacred homeland of the Palestinians marred with rubble and toxic waste.
Other ideological inspirations of DAAR include the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben, who first proposed the idea of ‘profanation’ as an ideal method of decolonization. He describes profanation as playful and childlike, and unbound as a concept to time, space, and power, unlike ‘revolution’ or ‘solution’. This contrasts with the militarized theodicy of the authoritarian Israeli Liberal Democracy, which makes profane subversion an effective counter-apparatus of colonization. The idea of ‘profanation’ was also employed by other social activists such as Gandhi, who believed that subverting the program of historically violent colonial spaces can effectively “exorcise” their harmful nature.
The concept of the ‘return’ is explored multiple times, and the Hilal frames a “true” return for Palestinians as deeply connected to the land and ancestral memory. However, within the political framework of the oppressor, the idea of return can become muddied. When ‘return’ truly shines is how it builds bridges between sites of exile and origin.
In Stone Men: The Palestinians Who Built Israel, historian Andrew Ross frames ‘return’ within the specific context of the quarried granite of the Levant, and the Palestinian miners and masons who produced the blocks. Through their outsourced labor in occupied land, the masons are constantly building with a potential return in mind; each stone they lay is a piece of the framework for the future. In line with this spirit, DAAR further aims to distance the rhetoric of decolonization from the concepts of “revolution” and “solution”; instead, they choose to frame decolonization as a continuous and incremental process of repurposing, restoration, and enduring stewardship.
When considering how DAAR’s work fits within the timeline of occupation and decolonization —specifically outside of revolution as solution— it’s easy to question its impact, especially given the ongoing state of conflict. However, critiquing DAAR’s post-evacuation interventions as unproductive highlights a broader issue: well-intentioned architecture can easily be undermined by existing power structures and regimes.
Furthermore, DAAR does not attempt to take an “activist stance”, establish culpability, or protest injustice; their practice is not ameliorative. They recognize that the scope of colonial oppression as an issue is much greater than architecture. Instead, DAAR wishes to use their interventions to sow the ideological seeds towards an ideal future where “architecture [acts] in the world and not in the service of a pre-existing agenda.”
Using a similar approach to DAAR, artist Krzysztof Wodiczko uses profanation and subversion as an artistic strategy to ease the experience of refugees living in the United States. For the creation of his 2020 public art installation Monument for the Living, Krzysztof Wodiczko collaborated with twelve resettled refugees in the United States. Their filmed testimonies are video projected onto the 1881 monument of Union Admiral David Farragut, located in Madison Square Park.
It was always imperative for Wodiczko that the piece utilize a monument; monuments serve as important sites for public gatherings and protests, often serving as a silent witness of history. This furthers the Farragut statue’s importance as a canvas for new narratives. Additionally, new documentation of the Civil War refugee crisis also sparked the development of this project. Wodiczko wanted to highlight how even “morally righteous” wars generate harm, as collateral damage fuels the military-industrial complex.
Each filmed individual’s home nation has recently suffered through a civil war. Wodiczko tied this context to the Farragut location, showcasing how certain wartime parties are heroized while others are hidden away. This becomes especially important in the context of prevailing regimes and power structures, and the importance of ‘victory’ in historical narratives. With footage of refugees from Africa, South Asia, South America, and the Middle East, the bronze monument emerges “as a surrogate for those whose harrowing journeys and quest for democracy brought them to the United States.”
Through a series of projection calibration tests in the park before the installation’s opening, Wodiczko ensured that the faces and hands of the refugees from his video interviews align with the Farragut statue’s exposed skin.
“As the final work plays in the darkened park each evening, passersby hear the refugees’ difficult and at times heartbreaking stories.”
The primary goal of Monument for the Living is to create catharsis for the lived refugee experience, but the installation also serves to relate historical context to contemporary life, “so that we can build a better future, maybe a future in which some of those monuments, like war memorials, will never need to be built, because there will be no wars and no refugees.” By appropriating public buildings and monuments as backdrops for projections, Wodiczko can strategically bring attention to the ways in which architecture can reflect collective memory and history.
Spaces in the City
In the context of a large city, it can become increasingly hard for an individual to project their experience onto their surrounding built environment; the scale of the metropolis easily seems to disregard the individual. While the spike in urban cost-of-living following the COVID-19 Pandemic can create the illusion that unsustainable city living is a more recent phenomenon, the truth is that the urban condition has long raised ethical questions about who has the right to the city.
To preface, urban spatial dynamics are never considered as binary to their rural counterparts; as Raymond Williams outlined in his book The Country and the City, the country is not a picturesque, idyllic landscape of stagnation, nor is the city a bustling hub of opportunity and modernity. In his words, many consider “the idea of the country [as] an idea of a natural way of life: of peace, innocence, and simple virtue. The idea of the city is an idea of an achieved centre: of learning, communication, light. Powerful hostile associations cling to both ideas: on the city as a place of noise, worldliness and ambition; on the country as a place of backwardness, ignorance, limitation.”
This simplified, one-dimensional perception of city and country life erases the multifaceted social and economic dynamics that constantly shift both the urban and rural environment. Furthermore, these assumptions used in tandem contribute to the widespread understanding of the city and the country as separate, opposite entities. Rather, Williams draws on Marxist ideology to describe how the constant flow of people, materials, and resources between rural and urban areas is key to the development of their identities.
After the acceleration of the Enclosure Movement in English pastures in the 19th century, the previously public village commons were parceled off into privately owned plots of land. Preexisting land inequality was exacerbated, and the large population of disenfranchised subsistence farmers had no choice but to seek work in urban areas. This mass migration of human resources is seen as a key precursor to the Industrial Revolution, which furthered income inequality in urban areas as well. As a response to worsening living conditions in cities such as London, rural areas were re-framed by the bourgeoisie through a romantic lens. What remained of public land in the country was purchased to make room for expansive vacation homes and country estates.
Williams’ contemporary, Henri Lefebvre, also utilizes a materialist analysis to further focus on the flow of capital within cities and its effect on urban space in his seminal essay The Right to the City, which analyzes a similar marginalization of the proletariat class and the privatization of once public space. Through his writing, Lefebvre introduces an important wrench into the lineage of thought regarding the city and its publics; while thinkers such as Hannah Arendt and Jurgen Habermas were occupied with the public space of sphere as a metaphysical entity, The Right to the City materializes the city as a canvas onto which the ideological ‘public’ is projected.
Lefebvre begins The Right to the City under the assertion that urbanization is a key process is capitalist production; the intense densification of material resources and labor creates ideal conditions for industry and economic development. The city was always meant to be “the privileged site of the accumulation of capital and the realization of surplus value." When “the logic of exchange value” is consistently placed in favor of “use value” by the urban elite, the result is the rampant commodification of the precious urban spaces. The working class’s lack of any ownership in any portion of the urban fabric as a “dwelling place” completely robs them of any meaningful lived experience of the city. It is under these conditions that Lefebvre writes the latter half of The Right to the City as a “cry and a demand [for] a transformed and renewed access to urban life” and urges urban inhabitants to reclaim their right to the city.
Luckily, the qualities that make the city a suitable growth medium for capitalist development are the same ones that can encourage the collective reappropriation of urban space. The unprecedented population density of cities allows for the rapid development and exchange of new ideas, movements, and creativity. These create ideal conditions for revolution; Lefebvre claims that "revolutionary events have always been urban events... the urban revolution signals the possibility of a transformed society."
If urban inhabitants truly embrace their “rights to freedom, to individualization in socialization, to habitat and to inhabit”, the social product of urban space can begin to resist the effects of exploitative capitalism and commodification. The city is no longer a mere vessel of human activity, but a collective art-in-the-works which all dwellers can shape with their creativity.
Works Cited
Arata Isozaki, et al. Japan-Ness in Architecture. Cambridge (Mass.) ; London, Mit Press, 2011.
Dpr 3. “History of the Question of Palestine.” Question of Palestine, www.un.org/unispal/history/.
Harvey, David. Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution. Verso, 2012.
Heidegger, Martin. Poetry, Language, Thought. 1971. Translated by Albert Hofstadter, New York, Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2013.
Jun'ichiro Tanizaki. In Praise of Shadows. 1933. S.L., Vintage Classics, 2019.
“Krzysztof Wodiczko: Monument.” Madison Square Park Conservancy, madisonsquarepark.org/art/exhibitions/krzysztof-wodiczko-monument/.
Lefebvre, Henri. Writings on Cities. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing, 1996.
“Monument for the Living, Krzysztof Wodiczko.” Art21, art21.org/watch/extended-play/krzysztof-wodiczko-monument-for-the-living-short/.
Petti, Alessandro, et al. Architecture after Revolution. Sternberg Press, 6 Sept. 2013.
Ross, Andrew. Stone Men : The Palestinians Who Built Israel. London ; Brooklyn, Ny, Verso, 2021.
Trumansburg, N.Y, Free Press. A History of Trumansburg. 1890. Cornell University Library, 8 July 2009.
Williams, Raymond. The Country and the City. London, Vintage, 1973.
For Professor Natalie Melas
Reading for the End of Time
5/12/25
Clarity Before the End: The Philosophy of Meaning in “Melancholia” and “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”
The “concept of death” is a foundational idea in several scientific disciplines, particularly in developmental psychology, psychoanalysis, and thanatology -the scientific study of death and dying. Thanatology, in particular, refers to the “concept of death” as a cognitive framework around the nature and implications of death; this particular framing emphasizes the universality, irreversibility, and the causality of human mortality.
In neurocognitive mapping models, the “concept of death” is stored in higher-order cortical areas relating to reasoning, memory, and language. Access to these brain regions can become limited by medical conditions (dementia), external stimuli, or stress and trauma accumulated over everyday life. In the case of end-of-life (EOL) lucidity, the conscious (or unconscious) acknowledgement of impending death can trigger a transient reactivation of these brain regions, temporarily restoring access to abstract cognitive frameworks such as the “concept of death” framework. (Becker) In the resultant lucid episodes, individuals express understanding, create closure, and find philosophical insights, possibly reflect a cognitive reconciliation with death.
In addition to the scientific explanation, EOL lucidity and its associated meaning-making in the face of impending death can be examined through the lens of three key philosophical perspectives: Existentialism, Humanism, and Phenomenology.
Classic Existentialist thinkers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger argue that death is the ultimate confrontation with absurdity. It is awareness of death that gives life meaning in a world devoid of inherent meaning; the confrontation between the self and the finite nature of life encourages the realization of values, choices, and authenticity. In his seminal 1927 text “Being and Time”, Heidegger suggests that the true authentic self is revealed when mortality is faced, not avoided. He writes that “Anticipation of death (Sein-zum-Tode, literally translated as “being-towards-death”) is anticipation of the potentiality-of-being of that entity whose kind of being is anticipation itself. In anticipating, Dasein (the human being) frees itself for its ownmost potentiality-of-being — that is, for the authenticity of its being." (Heidegger)
From a Humanist perspective, the concept of death is further developed from the Existentialist viewpoint towards a more embodied, grounded form of secular meaning-making. Much like Existentialism, the Humanist perspective shares the view that meaning is not divine or cosmic; however, secular humanism asserts that meaning is found in human relationships, achievements, knowledge, and beauty. It affirms intrinsic human value, and while death is recognized as universal, causal, and final, meaning survives in legacy, connection, and other shared human experiences.
Phenomenology, as outlined by thinkers like Emmanuel Levinas, examine death as an embodied experience. Even during death (and the ritual experience of dying), relationships and responsibilities towards the “Other” can create meaning. Phenomenologist thinkers suggest that the experiences of witnessing and being witnessed, or remembering and being remembered affirms the meaning of life, even as it ends.
These three philosophical perspectives are pervasive in our modern understanding of human mortality and the associated meaning-making. The ethos of these philosophies can be found in a variety of literature, film, and other media, and both Lars Von Trier’s 2011 film “Melancholia” and Haruki Murakami’s 1985 novel “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” are no exception. Both works examine how a confrontation with an impending end inspires Existentialist, Humanist, and Phenomenologist meaning. In this paper, I will argue that both the binary characters of Justine and Claire in “Melancholia” and the Calcutec and Dreamreader from “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” illustrate these meaning-making processes in their final moments at the play fort, the car, and the pool, respectively. The means of their meaning-making also provide insight into the key philosophical differences in existential belief between Von Trier, Murakami, and the above works.
Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia” tells the story of two sisters, Justine and Claire, who navigate life after learning that the title rogue planet is on course to collide with Earth. The film is split into two parts; part one, “Justine”, showcases the duality of the two sisters. Justine suffers from a deep depression; this is shown through both her own ambivalent attitude towards life as well as her strained relationship with the “well-adjusted” Claire. Part two, “Claire”, illustrates the existence of Melancholia’s impending collision with Earth, as well as the intense, yet opposing effects this has on Justine and Claire. The planet Melancholia itself serves as a metaphor within the presented narrative; it represents an inescapable all-consuming loss –similar to loss as discussed by Sigmund Freud in his essay “Melancholia and Mourning”.
Claire is a character who mourns. Freud described mourning as a “reaction to the loss of a loved person, or to the loss of some abstraction which has taken the place of one, such as one’s country, liberty, an ideal, and so on.” Mourning, as a reactionary act, then works to withdraw libido (attachment) from the loved “object” in a process that “demands an amount of time and finds certain opposition.” (Freud) It is this painful process of detachment that is intensely examined through Claire’s narrative arc.
This process of mourning is deeply intertwined with meaning for Claire; when the loved “object” is the world and the loss of the object spells the end of everything she holds dear, Claire finds it increasingly hard to keep composure. Following the suicide of her husband John and the subsequent confirmation of Melancholia’s collision with Earth, Claire not only has to mourn her own life, but the life of her young son Leo as well. The growing shadow of Melancholia is unlike any other sense of impending death; the meaning that Claire could find in her legacy, relationships, and posterity all crumble in the face of total destruction.
In contrast to Claire’s mourning, Justine is shown to be a character immersed in the Freudian concept of melancholia. Melancholia is operationally similar to mourning, but the key difference lies in the loved “object”. Though the loved object may be lost as a "loved" object, it is not necessarily implied that the object itself is inherently lost or damaged. As described by Freud, in melancholia, the subject “knows whom he has lost but not what he has lost in him,” (Freud); Justine does not mourn the specific loss of the world, as the world —and her own life— has already lost its place as the loved object. This can be interpreted as Justine’s innate Existentialist understanding of the universe as an absurd, indifferent place.
On the final day, Claire asks Justine, “But where would Leo grow up?”. She also asks if “There may be life somewhere else”; a possibility that Justine negates. (Von Trier) The dialogue underscores Claire’s desperation to find hope and meaning; her question about Leo’s future signifies a mother’s grief over the loss of her child’s potential life experiences. Claire’s insistence that “there may be life somewhere else” reflects a form of hopeful bargaining. She further insists that the three of them, Leo, Justine, and herself, “do this the right way… together when it happens. Maybe out —outside on the terrace.” (Von Trier) This reflects her desire to create a semblance of human dignity in their final moments. By suggesting they share a glass of wine on the terrace, Claire seeks comfort and connection; this is her final attempt to find meaning through a shared human experience as the world ends. Justine refutes this offer; her rejection highlights her deep understanding of cosmic indifference and the fragility of humanist optimism under existential pressure.
While most of “Melancholia” is deeply anti-humanist in tone, as depicted in the futility of Claire and John’s attempt to maintain dignity through human ritual and science, there are echoes of human warmth in the final sequence of the film. An emotional and ideological reconciliation occurs between the two once Justine declines Claire’s proposal for a glass of wine. Instead, Justine suggests building a “magic cave” out of sticks with Leo. (Von Trier)
The “magic cave” is a childlike structure with a ritualistic process of construction. Claire’s reluctant help in constructing the fort represents her final acceptance of the absurdity of life, while the act of building becomes the phenomenological means of final collective meaning-making for both her and Justine. For Justine, this act echoes the idea of EOL lucidity; the lack of vigor she exhibits through part one is contrasted with the clear-minded, even nurturing behavior she shows while guiding Leo and Claire in part two. This dissonance between Justine’s understanding of existential absurdity and human connection to Leo and Claire is exemplified in her final lines: “Hold my hand. Close your Eyes.” (Von Trier)
The physical structure of the fort not only reflects the human need to create symbolic containers for incomprehensive realities such as the “end of the world”, but the fort also embodies a mature understanding of the “concept of death”: personal, irreversible, and universal. The “magic cave” is also a symbolically human structure; it embodies the beautiful sentiment of a mother protecting her child, even if the effort is futile. It is within the shelter of this makeshift structure that the estranged sisters face their final moments. This final scene is incredibly human; there is no spiritual reckoning or cosmic salvation – it is just three humans facing oblivion. The absurdity of the universe comes crashing down with the advent of Melancholia’s collision with Earth as the screen goes white.
In comparison to the planetwide destruction at the core of Von Trier’s “Melancholia”, the dual protagonists of Haruki Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” face a much more quiet end. Just like “Melancholia”, “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” is a story split in two. The two part structure of “Melancholia” mirrors the opposing philosophies present in Claire and Justine, while the bifurcated narrative of “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” metaphysically separates existential meaning-making into dual modes of identity (external and rational, internal and symbolic) present within a single self.
The protagonist of the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” narrative is a Calcutec: technologically modified human that encrypts data into his brain. He lives in a dystopian Tokyo, which can be described as a material, rational, and hierarchical world. The Calcutec’s place in the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland” is characterized by responsibility; his role as a human data processor involves repetitive tasks that blur the lines between consciousness and subconsciousness. The sense of detachment created by this routine mode of existence is depicted through his daily activities, such as listening to old music, enjoying alcohol, and reading alone. Existential futility is further highlighted through internal dialogue –the Calcutec simply works because “…the pay is good. If I work fifteen years, I will have made enough money to take it easy for the rest of my life.” (Murakami) This ethos is reflected in certain Existentialist perspectives; in his Logotherapy framework, Viktor Frankl claims that “life is never made unbearable by circumstance, but only by lack of meaning and purpose”. (Frankl)
However, this all changes in the final chapters of the novel. The Calcutec discovers that his conscious mind has been split and encoded into the subconscious (which is represented in the "End of the World" narrative). This split is irreversible, and the Calcutec’s current, conscious self will die once the process is complete. “[He is] going to die. There’s no use trying to deny it. A mere matter of time.” (Murakami) The awareness of this imminent death creates yet another confrontation with the absurdity of life. In a subsequent form of EOL lucidity, the Calcutec embodies elements of Heidegger’s “being-towards-death”; he is untethered from inauthentic, external goals, and becomes radically free. (Heidegger) In beginning his own death, he begins his life as well –he just must choose how to spend his final days.
Rather than panic, escape, or trying to reverse this fate, the Calcutec returns home to find authenticity in reflection. He adamantly declares “I choose this, I chose this;” this final posture embodies a mature form of acceptance, rather than defeat. He stops participating in the performative roles assigned by the “System”, and instead focuses on sensory experiences and human relationships. (Murakami) Music, literature, and personal ritual become quietly significant. He listens to old vinyls, eats oysters, and drinks beer while observing the movement of sunlight. “Watching the hands of a clock advance is a meaningless way to spend time, but I couldn’t think of anything better to do.” (Murakami) In this deeply phenomenological turn, the Calcutec is no longer doing but being –dwelling in time, in perception, and in feeling.
In this period, the human relationships that the Calcutec cultivates over the course of the novel become increasingly significant as well. In his newfound state of being, he is able to reflect on his relationship with the librarian in profound way; “…she had taken [his hand]. [He had] never noticed how small and warm her hand was. That was enough.” (Murakami) The connections he feels with the nameless librarian and the chubby girl are modest, uncertain, and unromanticized –but they are deeply felt by the Calcutec nonetheless. Murakami simply allows these encounters to be meaningful, creating a narrative of Humanist affirmation through emotional presence, even if brief.
This profound philosophical journey of the Calcutec is mirrored by the second protagonist, the Dreamreader, in the “End of the World” narrative. The Dreamreader finds himself in a surreal town where people’s shadows are removed. This reality is stripped of time and context which allows for a pure experience of perception and being, but the associated selfhood, memory, and identity of the residents are stripped away as well. Existence is reduced to the textures of the world: the wind, the unicorns, and the artifacts of the library. This main conflict of the “End of the World” mirrors that of the “Hard-Boiled Wonderland”, which all results from the fragmentation of the Calcutec’s mind.
Like the Calcutec, the Dreamreader is faced with a confrontation with absurdity upon discovering the truth of the Town: the “End of the World” is not a real place, but just a cognitive after image resulting from a faulty science experiment. His existence in the town is but a symbolic echo of consciousness, but this revelation does not annihilate meaning for the Dreamreader. Instead, like the Calcutec in the "real" world, the Dreamreader discovers a way to affirm life, choice, and interiority in the face of illusion, loss, and death. This is his Sartrean awakening; he is thrown into an absurd world devoid of inherent meaning governed by opaque rules, but it is his freedom of choice that will create personal meaning in the end.
The Dreamreader also chooses solace in the ideals of Humanism and Phenomenology. He forges authentic emotional bonds with the his shadow, the Beasts, and the Librarian; these relationships are anchored by a sense of empathy, quiet empathy, and mutual care. Much like the Calcutec’s relationship with the “Hard Boiled Wonderland” librarian, the Dreamreader’s bond with the Librarian in particular is not one of idealized fulfilment—it represents the will to create human connection in a space that denies it. The way the Dreamreader inhabits the “End of the World” also speaks towards interior life as a means of meaning-making and dignity. He reads dreams, remembers to play music, and engages with the symbolism of the forest, the pool, and the town, which all become a form of phenomenal ritual. “The walls surround [him], but [he] walks its edge and find[s] solace. [He] is inside, but not lost.” (Murakami)
In the end, the Dreamreader’s shadow chooses to escape by jumping into the Pool. The Pool, described as a bottomless whirlpool that “never gives back what it takes,” can be seen as a symbol of oblivion, much like the rogue planet Melancholia. Jumping in the Pool implies a surrender to the state of “non-being”; for the Dreamreader, it also spells a way to escape his fragmented, uncertain, and painful state of self. However, the Dreamreader does not jump. He turns back toward the Town, choosing to continue dwelling in lived experience. Despite the knowledge that the Town is a closed loop –constructed and static– the Dreamreader still values the emotional bonds he developed within the town, especially with the Librarian. He knows that she “waits for [him] in the library with the accordion.” (Murakami) Even in a world stripped of context and meaning, the presence of the librarian and the sound of the accordion signify that connection and love can still persist. In choosing to affirm meaning in care, memory, and presence, the Dreamreader does not concede to nihilism, and chooses to struggle on. As Camus writes, “The struggle itself… is enough to fill a man’s heart.” (Camus)
While both Lars Von Trier’s “Melancholia” and Haruki Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World” deal with the dissolution of ordinary reality, and specifically, the confrontation with death, existence, and meaning that follows, these two works approach meaning-making from radically different philosophical perspectives.
“Melancholia” is a visceral embodiment of the absurd: the world ends not with meaning or redemption, but the utter annihilation of a planetary collision. Justine, a figure who is regarded as troubled or dysfunctional in ordinary reality, is framed as a figure of existential lucidity. Her depression (melancholia) makes her acutely aware of the absurdity and the finitude of existence. Claire, her sister and foil, is framed as a character marked by inauthentic existence and denial that seeks comfort in futile humanist rituals. Von Trier’s attitude towards the film is summarized in Justine, as he emphasizes melancholia as a mode of being defined by yearning for reality and truth in a vapid, inauthentic world, rather than an illness. “ [Melancholia] is true. Longing is true. It may be that there’s no truth at all to long for, but the longing itself is true. Just like pain is true. We feel it inside. It’s a part of reality.” (Von Trier, Interview) The end that melancholics (like Justine and Von Trier) long for is not tragic, but an aesthetic and existential catharsis.
Both Murakami and Von Trier view the process of discovering existential meaningless as an essential process in finding authenticity as a “being-towards-death”. However, Murakami chooses to frame his narrative on the growth and changed spurned by knowledge of an impending end. Through the fate chosen by the Dreamreader/Calcutec, he warns against conceding to nihilism; instead, he asserts that even in a fractured reality, interiority, care, and human relationships retain inherent value. A narrative conflict that incites a cold existentialist outlook in Von Trier’s “Melancholia” incites a subtle, secular humanism in Murakami’s “Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World”.
Works Cited
Becker, Ernest. The Denial of Death. Free Press, 1973.
Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus. Translated by Justin O’Brien, Vintage International, 1991.
Frankl, Viktor E. Man’s Search for Meaning. Beacon Press, 2006.
Freud, Sigmund. “Mourning and Melancholia.” The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, translated and edited by James Strachey, vol. 14, Hogarth Press, 1957, pp. 237–258.
Heidegger, Martin. Being and Time. Translated by John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson, Harper Perennial Modern Thought, 2008.
Murakami, Haruki. Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World. Translated by Alfred Birnbaum, Vintage International, 1993.
von Trier, Lars. Melancholia – Lars von Trier Interview. Wild Bunch / Zentropa, 2011. PDF.
von Trier, Lars, director. Melancholia. Performances by Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, and Kiefer Sutherland, Zentropa Entertainments, 2011.