Stories like this that feature such chilling images often open themselves up to all kinds of interpretations. It is a natural reaction. And whenever I'm in the process of trying to articulate my thoughts or feelings about a complex work, focusing on a symbol is often a very helpful starting point (2).
For me, the lasting concept left by this short story involved control. The sense of agency we have over a given situation influences the way we react to it and how much effort we exert in trying to improve its outcome.
The idea reminds me of my experiences with sleep deprivation. In my second to last semester of college, I was faced with the most congested schedule of my academic life. If I recall correctly, I was required to prepare for four finals and complete four additional projects over eight days. I also worked in the mail room for two hours each day and worked out on my own to maintain my conditioning levels for basketball practice.
So, I came up with the following schedule. I woke at seven and went to breakfast. From eight to twelve, I studied. Lunch was at noon followed by a half hour nap. At two, I was at work. From four to six was more studying before I went to the gym for my workout. By eight, I was back in the cafeteria. After dinner, I studied until three, taking a break around midnight for a snack.
Adding it all up, I had about four hours of sleep a night plus the nap- less than the recommended amount, let's say. I ran on this schedule for about two weeks. I do not recall ever feeling tired during this stretch, just focused. When my grades came back, I realized that this was the most productive period of my college career.
And yet, as productive as it was to run on half the suggested amount of sleep, I have not seen the same results during my other sleep-deprived stretches. There was the week that I could not figure out how mosquitoes were invading my apartment- the resulting biting and scratching kept me up for hours each night. I've had some general insomnia problems over the years, as well, that have caused my sleep totals to drop into that four hours a night range reminiscent of my crazy exam week.
The distinction between these more recent examples and my exam week schedule is the role I played as a decision maker. In choosing to stay up late to pursue a goal, I took control of my naturally running sleep pattern and made the needed adjustments. I've noted the same effect when I wake up tired after a late night out- when I take responsibility for my decisions, I find getting through the next day to be no issue at all.
It contrasted with those times I was kept awake despite trying to fall asleep. Without a say in the matter, I was overcome during the day with fatigue and found each night a new struggle against frustration and inevitability. Each yawn confirmed my inability to rest properly and each failed attempt to fall asleep only furthered the sense of hopelessness.
The way Akutagawa's protagonist cannot stop the gears from spinning through his field of vision reminded me of these experiences. With no sense of control over the appearance of these gears, he struggled to make healthy decisions for himself. Over the course of the story, his inability to influence even his most basic lens through which he sees the world undermined his will to continue on in the face of his difficulties.
The slide to madness described in 'Spinning Gears' rang true to me because control, whether an illusion or not, gives us the strength needed to navigate difficult times. It creates a narrative arc that explains the past and suggests a path into the uncertain future. It's why I can sleep for four hours one night and feel energized while a similar night of sleep a month later leaves me listless and depressed. Empower someone with a strong sense of agency and they can overcome almost any challenge; depriving them of the same leads to hopelessness and despair.
Footnotes / imagined complaints
1. Sounds familiar...
Longtime readers of the blog will recall that I wrote about another of Akutagawa's short stories, 'Hell Screen', last fall. Both were included in Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories, a title that very pragmatically describes a collection which includes his most well-known work among the eighteen total stories.
I read this story so long ago that, surely reader, you must be wondering: what took so long?
Outside the usual answers of my problems with a) churning out posts at a sloth-like speed b) general disorganization/chaos with how I organize posts and c) getting distracted by more important things like setting up email subscriptions or writing about The Animorphs, there was also d) I did consider a lot of other angles from which to look at this short story.
One discarded angle involved how knowing the author's story shades a reader's interaction with a work. 'Spinning Gears' is a story that I understand some consider autobiographical. For many, Akutagawa's own suicide in the same year he completed this work (1927) serves as confirmation of the theory. Plus, there are a number of close parallels in the story with known details of the author's life- and not just a shared occupation- that further reinforce the idea.
I either brought this knowledge with me into my initial reading or learned the details by reading the introductory chapter. Either way, I suspect it shaded my first interpretation of the story. For example, I thought it very likely at the time of reading that these spinning gears were something that the author himself battled with quite literally in his struggles with various mental demons.
That led me first to think about the gears as a cause of the author's impending madness and not as a symptom of it, a fairly significant distinction from my point of view given the unfair stigmas associated with those suffering from mental health issues. Recognizing this thought pattern served as a reminder of how easy it is to get sidetracked during the reading process by trying to get too clever and making false connections with the creator and the product.
The link of the gears to industrialization is another obvious one. At the time of publication, Japan was poised in a tense period of waiting between two world wars. It would be no surprise to learn that Akutagawa uses these gears to symbolize the endless drone of mechanization and its effect on a protagonist who was slowly losing his ability to keep up with the requirements of such activity.
Eventually, I read J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy, a book that prompted me to think much more deeply about agency than ever before. I have a few posts coming up that will look more closely at this idea.
