After reading this novel, the first thing I want to say is that I like this story because it allows me to experience the world, life, and fate from the perspective of a 15-year-old boy. We have all experienced the state of being 15 years old, filled with confusion, perplexity, recklessness, insecurity, powerlessness, and emptiness. I think if I had read this book when I was 15, I might not have understood it, but I would have gained encouragement and strengthened my unstable spiritual world. Now, at the age of 22, I have read this book, not too early or too late. It is the beginning of independent living, standing at the door of society. I am also filled with confusion and perplexity, but my stable spiritual world provides me with enough security. I like the two topics discussed in the book:
1. What is the meaning of life?#
It seems that older generations rarely discuss "the meaning of life," but young people, especially teenagers, like to explore this topic. They always ask "why?" Why do we have to study? Why do we have to work? Why do we have to buy houses and cars? Why do we have to get married and have children? What is the purpose of our lives? These were the things I didn't understand when I was 15 years old.
As we grow older, we realize that all the unique insights and knowledge we think we have have been mentioned countless times by previous generations and have been deeply pondered. So, who was the first person to think about these things? If chaos is the norm in life, why bother thinking about so many things? In the end, it might be regretful to think about it. If you have astonishing and extraordinary ideas, then you are the only one wandering in the deep darkness.
Tamura Kafka, Saeki, Nakata, Sakura, they correspond to a son, a mother, a father, a sister, but in the novel, they are "family" without any blood relationship, some of them have never even met each other. The Kamura Memorial Library, which connects them, is a special, fixed, and individual place where their destinies intersect. It is not a "metaphor," but an irreplaceable library that needs someone to guard its memories. These characters collide in the interweaving of their destinies. Murakami seems to reveal to us through these seemingly vague "metaphors" what the meaning of life is: when Tamura Kafka says to Saeki, "I don't know the meaning of life," Saeki's advice is "look at paintings, listen to the wind." Yes, "look at paintings, listen to the wind," the meaning of life is in these.
2. What is fate?#
Of course, you can understand this as soon as you read it, the protagonist Tamura Kafka is not an ordinary teenager you can find anywhere.
He was abandoned by his mother in his childhood and cursed by his father. He resolved to "become the most resilient fifteen-year-old boy in the world." He immersed himself in deep loneliness, silently exercising his body, dropping out of school and leaving home, venturing into a strange world alone.
However you look at it, whether in Japan or perhaps in China, it is difficult to say that he is an average fifteen-year-old boy. Nevertheless, I still believe that many parts of Tamura Kafka are also me and you at the same time.
Being fifteen years old means that your heart is caught between hope and despair, that the world is wavering between reality and virtuality, and that your body is wavering between jumping and sinking. We receive both warm blessings and fierce curses.
Tamura Kafka is just using extreme forms to convey our actual experiences and things we have experienced at the age of fifteen.
From Murakami's words, we already understand that Tamura Kafka is different from an ordinary teenager. He was not only abandoned by his mother in his childhood but also cursed by his father. His father prophesied, "You will eventually kill your father and have intercourse with your mother."
In order to escape this prophecy and curse, Tamura Kafka ran away from home on his fifteenth birthday, throwing himself into the turbulent waves of the adult world in a state of isolation. At this point, you may be confused: why does his father's prophecy sound so absurd and terrifying? In fact, this is to show the extreme and unpredictable nature of fate. Murakami drew inspiration from the ancient Greek tragedy "Oedipus Rex."
Before Oedipus was born, his father, the king, learned from the god Apollo that this child would kill his father and marry his mother. So the king abandoned the newborn Oedipus in a gorge. Unexpectedly, the baby was saved by an old shepherd and was adopted by another king and queen. When Oedipus grew up, he learned about the terrible prophecy and left his adoptive parents, who he thought were his biological parents, to avoid the prophecy. On his way to Thebes, Oedipus got into a fight with a group of strangers and killed an old man, who turned out to be his biological father. After arriving in Thebes, he defeated the sphinx, a monster with a human head and a lion's body, and was hailed as the king. Unbeknownst to him, he married his mother, the former queen. Thus, the prophecy of "killing his father and marrying his mother" was fulfilled. After the truth was revealed, his mother committed suicide out of shame. He also blinded himself and willingly went into exile. In Oedipus, we see the extremes of fate, the power of fate, and the destruction of a noble hero. Fate is powerful because, on the one hand, it is not chosen by individuals. As the book says, "It is not people who choose fate, but fate that chooses people." On the other hand, fate can be absurd and evil, even arranging for people to do things that go against moral norms, such as "killing their father and marrying their mother."
So, back to Murakami's novel, did the protagonist Tamura Kafka escape his fate? Did he break free from his father's curse? In terms of killing his father, about ten days after Tamura Kafka ran away from home, his father was killed in his own study in Tokyo, while he was in Takamatsu, far away from Tokyo. However, strangely, his T-shirt was sticky and covered in someone's blood. So he suspects that he may have remotely killed his father through dreams. So, did Tamura Kafka really kill his father? According to Murakami's design, the answer is yes. Murakami says, "In the world I envisioned, things like remotely killing one's father are naturalistic and realistic, that is to say, they can exist and happen in reality. So, for example, another character in the novel, Nakata, kills someone, but Kafka's hands are stained with blood. This is not surprising at all. Why is it like this? I can't say for sure, but it is something that should happen."
However, why did this happen? Murakami's answer is, "because stories/novels are meant to express things that cannot be explained by ordinary words."
This may seem difficult to understand, but what Murakami wants to express is that the purpose of a novel is not to express things that happen in our daily lives, things that we can easily understand. Instead, it should express something deeper. This can be said to be an important aspect of understanding Murakami's works. In other words, we need to abandon the standards of reality, abandon the basis of objective things, and completely immerse ourselves in our own inner and subconscious kingdom in order to truly understand these seemingly strange things. Once we make this attempt, we realize that these things are not strange at all, but natural and normal.
However, fortunately, Kafka meets many people who believe in him. Kafka's self-awareness awakening is the opportunity for him to face the curse and attempt to betray his fate. After fulfilling the curse one after another, he tries to escape his fate by actively conforming to it, but he doesn't realize that this only adds to the weight of his fate. The crow is still calling behind him, and the unknown lies ahead. He finally understands that evil cannot be eliminated with evil. He chooses to face malice with an empty shell. He abandons all tangible things, so that no malice can harm him anymore.
As the crow says, he finally becomes the most resilient fifteen-year-old boy. Even if it's only half a shadow, they still bring light to the world. Like Kafka meeting Oshima, like Nakata meeting Hoshino. Oshima is a complete person, but not in the conventional sense. His minority sexual orientation makes him have sincere tenderness towards all things in the world, without prejudice, and he uses the emotions and rationality of men and women in a balanced way. It is his unreserved acceptance and guidance that gives meaning to Kafka's remaining shadow. He uses music, a small cabin, and the library to establish a real connection between Kafka and the real world.
On the other hand, Nakata saves Hoshino. This young and ordinary truck driver, following the mysterious old man Nakata, embarks on an adventure in Shikoku. The young man's life is ordinary, every day is just a repetition of the previous day. His mundane and empty life suddenly gains meaning after helping Nakata. Whether it is searching for the entrance stone or doing something that sounds absurd, he is needed as a real person. Nakata's half-shadow did not dissipate with his death but continued in Hoshino. In fact, even earlier, when Hoshino first heard the Trio Elégiaque or when he first thought of his grandfather, the fusion of life had already begun.
So, Kafka on the Shore's world is so pure. The June wind, the distant sea, the boy and the painting, the girl and the beach hat. I never knew summer could be so beautiful. Its heat is diluted, in the white, fine sand, the saturation decreases with time, turning into tangible tenderness.
So, I gradually understand here, everything is for Kafka's redemption. In order to fill the void he lost, Nakata fulfilled his duty and opened the entrance, Saeki filled the memories and repaired the wounds she left behind, Oshima provided shelter for the boy to find a place to belong, and Hoshino ended the evil, finally freeing Kafka from any worries. They may not know what they have done, but fate arranged for them to work together, to pull a fifteen-year-old boy with flaws from the edge of destruction, to inherit all the memories, and to stand at the forefront of reality, becoming the most resilient fifteen-year-old boy.
That's why it doesn't matter to give each character or object a specific real meaning. Isn't that what magical realism is all about? Fathers, Johnny Walker, Johnnie Walker, the white snake, what species are they and what kind of relationship do they have, are not important matters. To find reality in nothingness, we cannot find it by giving the essence of nothingness a representative of reality. They are shadows of the soul, the evil of the spirit, the cat's cry in the wind, and everything that is intangible and ready to slip into the entrance at any time. They are the things that Kafka and Nakata try to escape from and defeat.
So how can redemption be achieved?
Only at the end did I realize: it is love after all. The task of redeeming the evil in the world is ultimately condensed into redeeming a fifteen-year-old boy. It is the love of fifteen-year-old Saeki for her lover that redeems the soul in her memories. It is the love of fifty-year-old Saeki for her son that redeems the boy who is alive.
There are people in this real world who hope that you will live well. Therefore, please break free from nothingness and return to the sunlight. There are attachments in memories, but there is a future in reality. I feel that it is meaningless to describe my current feelings in words. Just like Kafka's reconciliation with his mother. He doesn't need to call his mother out, but belief and persistence give redemption the power it needs. This power supports the most resilient fifteen-year-old boy, who bravely walks on the path of reality on the fate opened by Nakata, carrying the memories of Saeki, and having no worries.
"You who have escaped from the dust storm are no longer the same as when you entered the dust storm."
"Soon, you will fall asleep. When you wake up, you will become a part of the new world."
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