Haruki Murakami <Norwegian Wood>

Nobody likes being alone that much. I don't go out of my way to make friends, that's all. It just leads to disappointment.^[각주:1] ─Haruki Murakami.

I'm a far more flawed human being than you realize. (…) Don't wait for me. Sleep with other girls if you want to. (…) I don't want to interfere with your life. I don't want to interfere with anybody's life. Like I said before, I want you to come to see me every once in a while, and always remember me. That's all I want.^[각주:2]  ─Haruki Murakami.

 

This novel doesn't say at length about a broken heart of someone, but it makes a wounded heart heal. The wounded heart could be healed up through the reading this book in itself like we can grow more accustomed each other with walking together in itself. We can read as if it were a religious ritual meaning to heal our wounded mind. This book has such the power.

The two of the most appearing images would be the silence and forget (or remember). Watanabe don't remember what he did with girl friends, especially conversations that he had shared with Midori, and don't try to remember that. Watanabe had seen her a lot back then, but he doesn’t remember talking to her much. Naoko may be a little same to Watanabe in some point of view. They don't try to explain themselves. They said: "No, that’s not it either." And they say without further explanation. They don't attempt to solve their memories, words wrong. Possibly life is such a thing. With one's mind in his pocket, keeping one's distance against the others, just to live in loneliness. "I would try to forget her." The last thing waiting for me is that.

The reason why this story can have some sort of the affirmative power is that it opens some ways to be able to overcome what kind of a difficulty through identifying the misfortune and distress. If I don't read this book, I wouldn't know <why she would fiddle with the barrette, why she would dab at the corners of her mouth with a handkerchief, or why she would look into my eyes in that meaningless way.> But now, if she act like that, I'm able to know now she is trying to grasp within herself to convey something to me she could not put into words. While there is the absence of hope, there is the existence of hope. It in itself can open recognition of the problem. This novel has such a role for me. 

The odd loss; I could fall into it reading page after page. But that's not a situation I want to be in. I can get into the endless loss though I don't ever read it. No, I have got into the loss. What I want is to get out of it. I wish to know why these leading characters fell into the loss, and why they couldn't free themselves from it. Building sympathy in itself would be the start of the escape. So I just wait for the result, someone feeling the loss.

1. By Haruki Murakami. Translated from the Japanese by Jay Rubin.『Norwegian Wood』(Vintage Book, 2000), p.52 [본문으로]
2. Ibid. p.146 [본문으로]