Blog #2 - On Norwegian Wood

Having now finished reading Norwegian Wood, I’m not exactly sure what to make of it, or how I feel about the ending. I think the story is one of tragedy— almost all of Toru’s relationships fall apart and are marred in some way, mostly by neglect or by sorrow. Toru exists as a completely passive character, and other side characters either move on with their life (like Nagasawa moving abroad) or unfortunately leave from their own (like Kizuki and Naoko). Although, perhaps, this is a consequence of the framing of the story— it is set as Toru taking the audience through memories of his past, and even he claims that his “memory has grown increasingly dim” (page 13) in the first chapter. Maybe his sense of passivity is from this reflection on life and his overall perception inferiority, seeing things as happening *to* him rather than taking action himself. Cynically, this would explain why so many women in the story seem to fall in love with him despite his less than ideal views about women and his withdrawn and impersonal demeanor. Considering him to be an unreliable narrator, taking in that he could be misremembering the events in a pessimistic manner would make the events of the story more realistic. 

In terms of pacing, Norwegian Wood moves in a somewhat dream-like way, spending almost full length chapters on some nights, and where whole months go by in one or two sentences. Time flies by in a hazy quality in the tenth chapter, when Midori stops spending time with him and Naoko is at the sanatorium. Toru barely addresses his life beyond his relationship with those two women, which makes the scenes with them in it feel slow and extensive, compared with the hustle of daily life. Therefore, the pacing makes the book feel, at some parts, mystical, despite the lack of any true supernatural elements.

As an aside, knowing Murakami’s tendency to reference western media, I thought the line “Life is a box of chocolates” from Midori on page 300 was a reference to Forrest Gump, but when I looked it up, Norwegian Wood was actually released before the movie came out. I thought it was just a funny coincidence!

- Maya Thiart