form. He retains the narrator's memory of their former life together, but he is doomed to die, separated as he is, and is harshly (but not cruelly) treated by his custodian, the Gatekeeper. Upon his death, the narrator would then cease to have a "mind". The Shadow longs to escape from the Town and be reunited with the world where he and the narrator rightfully belong. The Gatekeeper The guardian and maintenance foreman of The End of the World. He instructs the narrator in his duties, and keeps the narrator’s Shadow effectively a prisoner, putting him to work – disposing of dead beasts who die during winter. The Librarian The Town's Librarian who keeps the beasts' skulls in which the "dreams" reside. She assists the narrator in his work. She has no "mind", but her mother did, and the narrator becomes increasingly convinced that her mind is in fact only hidden, not irretrievably lost. The connection between this Librarian and the other, in Hard-Boiled Wonderland, is never made explicit, although the narrator repeatedly mentions that she looks familiar. The Colonel An old man, the narrator's neighbor, who provides advice and support, and nurses him when he falls sick. The Caretaker A young man who tends the Power Station in the Town's dangerous Woods. He is an outsider who provides a miniature accordion, a possible key in the narrator's efforts to recover his mind and memories. The Caretaker is banished to the Woods because he still has a semblance of a mind, and cannot be allowed to live within the Town. Influences Murakami has often referred to his love of Western literature and particular admiration for hard-boiled pioneer Raymond Chandler. The Hard-Boiled Wonderland narrative owes much to American hard-boiled detective fiction, as well as to science fiction and cyberpunk, but the book does not belong in any of those categories. The End of the World narrative has much in common with The Castle by Franz Kafka. Both deal with newcomers to strange villages who are both intrigued and horrified by the behavior of the villagers. The image of losing one's shadow when approaching the end of the world is found in Knut Hamsun's 1898 novel Victoria. The same idea appeared earlier, in both the 1814 story of "Peter Schlemihls wundersame Geschichte" ("Peter Schlemihl's Remarkable Story") by Adelbert von Chamisso and the 1847 fairy-tale The Shadow by Hans Christian Andersen. The theme