Dreams as a gateway to multiple universes

Ozeki creates the image of a time being and elicits self-awareness of the self in the present. However, she alludes to quantum physics to challenge the notion that we are one time being with only one existence. The divides between the past, present, and future seem blurred in the novel because she applies the idea of multiple universes to demonstrate how the three are actually one time continuum. They have no distinction because there is none when the universes collide and overlap.

At first, the inclusion of quantum mechanical theory seems randomly placed towards the end of the novel when Oliver explains the cat experiment. However, many times, Jiko reflects this theory with her odd remarks: “When up looks up, up is down. When down looks down, down is up. Not one, not two. Not same. Not different” (39-40). This idea of perspective and observation applies to wave-particle duality, for at the quantum scale a particle is also a wave. In wave form it is neither different nor the same as its particle counterpart; matter and energy have no distinction. When we consider multiple realities, the past, present, and future are all the same thing depending on one’s perspective. This is an analogy for the concept of observing oneself in another universe; your present could be your alternate’s future; thus, the present is the future, but they are neither the same nor different.

            Throughout the book, Ozeki uses dreams to cross these multiple realities. Strange dreams are a reoccurring event for Nao and Ruth, which seem to affect their present lives. Nao stabs an eye of her classmate in her dream only to discover the next day that the girl is wearing an eyepatch. Similarly, Ruth’s dreams seem to affect Nao’s life and evince more words in the diary. Indeed, she begins to consider “that if [she] hasn’t had the dream, Nao’s father might have gone ahead and hooked up with his suicide” (394). Also, she contemplates the idea that her dream took her back in time, so that she actually placed the French diary in Haruki #1’s box. In a way, her dream extended the events recorded in Nao’s diary as if she traversed to another universe and created another outcome. In doubting the concreteness of one universe, her dream makes possible the idea that she woke up to a new outcome; one where the diary was finished rather than abruptly stopped. One where Nao’s and her father live, rather than commit suicide.