Wednesday, February 9, 2011

Kafka on the Shore

by Haruki Murakami

11 comments:

  1. Even though I am only in the beginning of the novel I am enjoying it greatly. I love the alternating narrations in each chapter. Compared to my last literature circle book (which I loved) but was really dense and slow to read at times, this book reads really fast, and I think that is in part due to the alternating narrations. The chapters about Kafka and his encounters after running away from home always end with an event about to occur which makes me want to continue, but then the narration switches to something else, so I read that chapter quickly to get back to Kafka, but then that chapter itself is also really interesting, so overall the whole story so far has been a fast read. I really like writing where description doesn’t go on forever, so I like Muakami's style.
    I also really like the "magical realism" aspects Murakami throws in, with Nakata talking to cats. I personally love the character of Nakata, his easy-going lifestyle and how he says "stub city" instead of subsidy and his other characteristics of a life of someone who is mentally disabled.
    I find that while I am reading I am looking for aspects of the Japanese culture in Murakami's writing and constantly thinking about how the text must come across in its native language before the translations, Japanese, which is really cool to look out for. Overall I am really enjoying this book so far and look forward to how (or if) the two protagonists will connect later on.

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  2. The part I found most interesting was when Kafka first met the girl at the rest stop. When they are discussing the meaning of the phrase “In traveling, a companion, in life, compassion” (23 Murakami) and the conversation turns to what the name of the area is, the girl makes a memorable (at least to me) statement. Although the above phrase is, in simple terms set by Kafka, “‘chance encounters [that] are what keep us going’” (23), for some reason the girl believes that the rest area’s name is pointless to know because “‘We’re coming from somewhere, heading somewhere else. That’s all you need to know, right?’” (23). This is really contradictory. Her character, although established as a more air-headed type character, makes this profound statement (one contradiction) that goes completely against the meaning of the phrase that she believed to be true (“‘I think you’re right about that – that chance encounters keep us going’” (23), another contraction). If the girl truly believed the statement to be true, then wouldn’t every random detail possibly be important? Wouldn’t she try not to eliminate such details for fear that they are important in motivating her through life? Although this book is just beginning, it appears that Murakami is attempting to reveal life’s paradoxes through his novel. He wants his reader to see how simple-minded humans are that we go against our ideas and beliefs. Will Murakami attempt to argue this throughout his novel or have one of his main characters disprove this?

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  3. Also Eva – I agree completely with your post! I think that because we are both extremely interested in the Japanese culture and plan on majoring in either Japanese or East Asian Studies, this book is perfect for us. It is written well, makes you want to read it, and has Japanese aspects throughout.

    In addition, my favorite type of novel is one that switches narrators. It automatically makes the story more interesting because you are able to understand each character through their eyes. My last literature book was written like this, and I loved it. However, I have read some books that were written from different perspectives that, similarly to Kafka, the reader does not know how the characters are related to each other. Some of them have been great, while others haven’t been. This, I have concluded, is due to the timing of when the author decides to have the characters meet. If they meet in the middle-ish, then it’s good because the reader is able to grow an emotional attachment to not just the single characters but their relationship as well, which usually makes a story more dynamic. However, if they meet at the end, then it’s a bummer because you don’t have the time to make a connection to their relationship because there is no significant relationship created plus you have no time to make one. Hopefully, Murakami will not make this mistake and will have the characters meet at the perfect time. But, I am really excited to continue reading this novel!

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  4. I agree Livi, I really hope that Murakami has the characters meet in the middle of the novel and I think they might because of the events in this last section of reading. I was previously wondering how Nakata, Kafka and the strange incident of mass hypnotism during the war were going to connect, and around page 100 I got my first clue. The audience finds out that Nakata was in fact the boy who never woke up, and that his “dumbness” was the result from the intense memory loss after the accident on the hillside. Learning that Nakata was connected to the incident during the war, solves one of the missing pieces, and now all that’s left is to figure out how Nakata and Kafka will connect, and I think that will come next, because at the end of Nakata’s last chapter he murdered someone which I predict will cause him to have to leave town (if that is possible for him…maybe with the aid of the cats to guide him???) which might end up in him meeting Kafka.

    Another part I really enjoyed about this section of reading was how I really got a sense of Murakami’s writing. In the sections with Kafka as the narrator he sometimes has this internal dialogue with a boy named Crow, who I assume is Kafka’s conscience who will dictate some heavy knowledge and morals to Kafka. These ideas really make me as a reader think about what life, strength and humanity really means. In one particularly interesting part Crow says, “You’re afraid of imagination. And even more afraid of dreams. Afraid of the responsibility that begins in dreams. But you have to sleep, and dreams are a part of sleep. When you’re awake you can suppress imagination. But you can’t suppress dreams” (138). I found this quote really interesting, partly because I think it perfectly summarizes Freud’s beliefs about one’s id and the true desires that only surface in one’s dreams and also how in consciousness a person actively tries to suppress their true nature because they are aware of what is expected from society. I also liked this quote because I thought it was unique how Crow connected dreams to responsibility, which made me think of how dreams are only the beginning of a person’s actions, and how a person might be responsible for more than they are physically aware of.

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  5. I agree with what you said, however there was evidence earlier on in the book about the Nakata being the one person not to wake up from the coma when he is describing to Otsuka the accident that made him dumb. He says that he, “‘had a high fever for about three weeks. [He] was unconscious the whole times’” (51). Although it is not explicitly clear that this is the incident previously described in the book, it is an ambivalent reference to the event and immediately clued me in to him being the child to not wake up for a long time.

    But, one thing that has been confusing me throughout this reading (and the book as a whole), is what exactly is the character Crow? It appears that Crow is a figment of Kafka’s imagination; I’m assuming probably his conscious that tells him what to do. But still – why does it have a name? How has Kafka been able to communicate with it? One thing that has lead me to believe that Crow is his conscious is that, Crow manages to answer Kakfa’s questions that he does not speak aloud. He wonders things such as, “What am I always so tense about? Why this desperate struggle just to survive?” (56), which were clearly all asked in his mind. And Crow responds. From this moment, it appears that Murakami will be delving deep into questioning what motivates humans and what persuades us to do certain things and make certain decisions.

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  6. Wow Livi, I hadn’t even caught that connection to the beginning of the book about Nakata, thanks for pointing it out! Also about the character Crow, I also believe that he is Kafka’s conscience because he seems to always be with Kafka in his times of confusion, but he never speaks aloud like you said. The one thing that has me confused is that in the very beginning of the book Murakami described Crow physically: “Crow shakes his head” (4), “As always we are sitting beside each other on the old sofa… Now he’s toying with a bee-shaped glass paperweight” (4). Both of these descriptions seem to give a physical presence to “the boy named Crow” (3) making him seem real; maybe that is because he is real to Kafka. Maybe Murakami is telling the audience that the motivations, desires, consciences, etc. are real to every individual and even if they can’t actually be seen, they are real if the individual believes in them.

    Now moving on to later in the book when Nakata is in the truck with a random truck driver he gets into a very deep conversation about human nature, and I just wanted to bring it up. Nakata always says “I’m not too bright” so the truck driver really gets down to the essence of what he is trying to explain to Nakata and I thought it was a very interesting passage: “What I’m trying to get at is no matter who or what you’re dealing with, people build up meaning between themselves and the things around them. The important thing is whether this comes around naturally or not. Being bright had nothing to do with it. What matters is that your see things with your own eyes” (189). I think I completely agree with this logic, people think what they think and do what they do because of the interactions with the things around them, but it’s the reactions of each person that make them who they are.

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  7. I agree with you, Eva. To build off that scene, I remember while I read it one thing really stuck out to me. Nakata seems to have put down his guard while talking to Hagita, the truck driver, and even tells him that he can talk to cats when previously in the book, he said he never tells anyone. However, when Mr. Togeguchi was giving Nakata ride, Mr. Togeguchi let down his guard as well. By the end of the car ride Nakata, “[saw] the big picture of Togeguchi’s life” (187). Hagita also confessed to many things, and from what I gathered from these three people in pretty much the same scenario is that, people feel a the need to tell others who they will alter never meet things about themselves that have been secret for a long time. Murakami appears to really want to stress this issue with his reader because it is in this section so many times, which leads me to believe that Murakami thinks people need (similar to the Freudian theory) to talk about their lives with others and let them know their deepest secrets about their lives.

    This book is jammed packed with different critical theories, which I find really interesting. There has already been mention of the Freudian theory in multiple different scenarios as well as Marxist. I wonder what Murakami studied before and what motivates him to write with these theories obviously in mind?

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  8. I agree with you Livi, this book is filled with some of the theories we previously studied, especially with the Freudian theory. I also noticed feminism earlier in the book when the two women came to the library in order to study how public spaces look to women; and they tell Mr. Oshima that the library needs to have separate restrooms for male and female and that the authors of both genders should be mixed together, instead of placing the male authors first. I thought this part funny especially when they accuse Mr. Oshima of being a stereotypical sexist male, and he tells them that he is actually biologically female, but his mind is completely masculine.

    Besides the feminist theory however, Freudian theory is the most predominant in this book. Countless times Kafka and Mr. Oshima refer to Oedipus and how he killed his father and slept with his mother. (Which is kind of cool because we might read that story later in the year.) They make this connection partly because Kafka tells Mr. Oshima something he has never told anyone else before: that his own father prophesized when Kafka was only 4ish that he would one day kill his father and sleep with his mother and sister. Ironically Kafka’s father was murdered and Kafka did have the blood on him, but physically was nowhere near the seen of the crime. This prophecy directly relates to one of Freud’s principles about true human desires.

    Just one other quick thing I want to point out was the reference to religion in one of Nakata’s sections, which I completely believe, but found to be a very controversial choice for Murakami to make given how Religion is a very touchy subject for some people: The truck driver says, “’Listen—God only exists in people’s minds. Especially in Japan, God’s always ben a kind of flexible concept…they can be tweaked and adjusted…A very postmodern kind of thing. If you think God’s there, He is. If you don’t, He isn’t” (286).

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  9. While I was reading, I thought the same thing about what the truck driver said regarding religion. I think this probably has a lot to do with Murakami’s personal views on religion, or at least this probably heavily influenced him to take such a risk (although I don’t know what his religious views are, this is something we should definitely research later on).

    I remember when we were discussing in class about the different narrative styles for the two main characters (Kakfa’s sections are always in the first person whereas Nakata’s are in the third). However, a strange thing happened; during Kafka’s section, there was a sudden switch to the second person narrative style. It happened a couple times, only when Kafka was having sex with Ms. Saeki. I’m pretty sure that this occurs because it helps to show how Crow, his subconscious, is controlling him during these situations (I no longer think Crow is his conscious because Crow seems to be more “raw” and overtakes Kafka’s body at times and makes Kafka think certain thoughts). Of course, this hasn’t been confirmed, and it is just a theory (haha). However I think it is because of the constant references to fate, from the Oedipal prophecy made by his father to Miss Saeki’s reasoning for having sex with Kafka being because she was following the flow of the stream (319). This directly relates to Freudian theory.

    Now, I have concluded that the reason for Nakata’s sections using the third person is because of him, “being empty [as] a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want” (308). This is, of course, a side effect of the incident that occurred when he was young. But Murakami wanted to show how Nakata doesn’t have a soul (not meaning that he’s a bad person, just that he is empty), and he has decided to show this through the narrative style. This is probably also the reason why Nakata usually speaks in the 3rd person when referring to himself.

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  10. WOW so I loved this book so much!!!! There was so much in it; I felt like I was being given a lesson on how to live life, be strong and keep an open mind. I was kind of surprised that Nakata and Kafka never met up in person, I definitely thought they would, however “their paths crossed” even if it wasn’t physically. I liked the turn of events that Ms. Saeki and Nakata both died, even though that sounds kind of morbid. I really liked Nakata but it was an appropriate way to close the book. I think Murakami was in a way saying their spirits moved on, due to the fulfillment of their tasks. Earlier in the book Mr. Oshima and Kafka mentioned “loving spirits” and I think that is exactly what Ms. Saeki and Nakata were. Their souls had passed on before them but neither had actually died, which left them with “an empty shell” as Nakata put it, just a body living with no real desires inside.

    And speaking of an empty space, I wonder what that town in the middle of the woods was. Kafka walked there after losing sight of what he wanted, and the fact that the soldiers were there made it seem like an unreal space, “where time isn’t much of a factor” (417) but Kafka was real so I wonder what that space really was. He was able to meet and talk to both the 15yr old Ms. Saeki and the woman version, which makes me think the town was on the edge between life and death, where the souls of the “living spirits” reside. It was nice to finally know for sure that Ms. Saeki was his mother, which connects him to the painting in the library of “Kafka on the Shore.” But I thought it was interesting that Kafka was asking for the right to forgive his mother for abandoning him, “Mother, you say, I forgive you. And with those words, audibly the frozen part of your heart crumbles” (442). This is almost like in Beloved how Sethe needs to actually confirm the past by hearing Beloved sing in order to forget what she had been regretting, (or for Kafka, trying not to forget) in order to move on in the present.

    Lastly, just one of the things that jumped out at me was the irony when Hoshino was talking to the stone. Even though it’s such a basic, comical action, talking to an inanimate object (that might really hold a deep meaning) it seems like another of Murakami’s “life lessons.”

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  11. I really loved this book! Although, I was a little confused with some aspects of the book, I think if I read it again I would really understand every detail of this fantastic novel.

    I found Sada to be really interesting. He wasn’t really important, because he was barely in the book, but the fact that he, too, had gone into the entrance made me think that perhaps Sada is what Kafka will be like in the future. Perhaps Murakami wanted to end the book with a positive feeling about Kafka’s future, because if you think of him being like Sada you know that Kafka will be happy.

    Also, I wonder about Hoshino’s future. He began talking to cats, just like Nakata, which makes me think that perhaps he, too, has become an empty shell? Especially since his last words were, “‘it’s time to light my fire!’” (456), which is eerily similar to how Ms. Saeki lost her memory forever and then died. Or, does Hoshino want to start anew? I think the interpretation of this all depends on the person, which is definitely what Murakami would want – he doesn’t want for their to be a definite answer to these lurking questions. He wants his reader to, having finished this book, create their own theories on what will happen because, just like what you said, Eva, this book was like a lesson on life. Murakami wants to teach his reader the value of you and therefore the value of your ideas.

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