Protista reminds me of Murakami’s works a lot, particularly of Sleep. Both stories are unclear, contain fantastical elements, and have an abrupt ending. The narrators of both are also unreliable (the narrator in Sleep has not slept for days and has drunk a lot of alcohol, while the narrator in Protista is dehydrated and malnutritioned), seem to have hallucinations, and are telling the story from some point in the future. However, for the narrator in Protista, it is completely impossible for me to tell how much of what he is telling the readers has really happened. Although in the beginning, certain parts seem believable, as the story progresses, the things the narrator is experiencing blend together and become so fantastical that one cannot even perceive them as metaphors.For example, there is the repetitive image of the red circle. On page 123, it is said that a red circle has been drawn by Maria and that it would bleed when she is in danger. Later, on page 126, such a red circle becomes the creation of the manfish that visited the narrator’s room when he was young and has been drawn so that only the narrator can see it and would bleed until the narrator goes to the manfish. Therefore, when the circle bleeds at the end on page 128, the significance that holds remains unclear to me. Another example is of Maria, who, on page 129, is described to have come back as “a fleshless skeleton”, but, on page 130, the narrator is leaving a letter for Maria, who is yet to come back. Although it is possible that the woman on page 129 is not Maria, if we presume that to be true, then it becomes unclear for whom the narrator bought a coat with silver buttons. Many other points of great confusion can be found, as well. Given the conditions the narrator is living in because of his exile (a hot, barren, dry land, where only insects seem to thrive) and the convoluted, fantastical nature of his narrative, I’m inclined to think that he has either been bitten by a disease-carrying insect, or is suffering from severe dehydration and malnutrition, and has started to hallucinate because of this. Moreover, on page 130, he mentions that his “head is roaring with fever”, and he barely knows what he has written, which further reinforces my belief in this interpretation. The narrator is possibly on the edge of dying, as well, as he uses phrases such as: “After that, the sun never came up." on page 129 and “Yesterday I met Barbara's father in the valley.” on page 130, when we know from earlier in the story that the sun is constantly drying the valley and that Barbara’s father has been dead for a long time. Overall, Protista is a very confusing story with quite an abrupt but also unsurprising ending, given the rest of the narrative (130).
