I sat in the library, next to my girlfriend, unmoving, for about two and a half hours, and binged the last half of Norwegian Wood. Not once did my concentration fade, but my emotions were a turbulent flurry. In that time, even though I was surrounded by activity and with my best friend, I managed to feel more alone and depressed than I have in a long while. In short, parts of Norwegian Wood destroyed me. Having been written from Watanabe’s perspective of adulthood looking back on his youth, the story is heavily nostalgic. Thus, I felt invited to remember my first love, lost friends, and the crushing weight of being young and uncertain. However, nostalgia is not the reason for me feeling destroyed. What really got to me was simply the amount of and the portrayal of loss.
Losing someone important to oneself is a devastating experience that causes physical and mental distress, as noted by Watanabe when Kizuki died “[death] was already here, within my being, it had always been here, and no struggle would permit me to forget that,” (31). In my opinion, the first death of a loved one is the worst one because it's when innocence is lost and death becomes pressingly real. You’re left alive with everything seemingly revolving around death while simultaneously “endlessly spinning in circles,” (31). And that “knot of air in [your] chest” does not go away, (31). What I described was Watanabe’s feelings about his first brush with death and it eerily mimics my own experience. While reading Norwegian Wood, it became very apparent that Murakami has been touched by the death of someone important, as he finds a way to describe the feelings I could only ever feel, not describe.
No comments:
Post a Comment