Murakami and His Music and food

 I think it's crazy how it's insanely easy to overlook a big detail in a story. When I see the name of musical pieces I don't even think about it or what it means or what it adds to a story. It has been insanely eye opening the way that Murakami uses music to convey a tone or moment or emotion in the story. I think it is interesting also how he similarly uses food as a means of bringing the audience into the story.

I believe that in Murakami, he uses food and music interchangeably - based on the situation- to allow the audience to relate to the characters in different ways. It is common knowledge that food brings people together, and in many situations Murakami uses food as a way to denote a character's social relationships. We see this in the year of spaghetti, he uses the process of making and earring food as a way to show how lonely the character is and how he is using the spaghetti as a way to both escape his loneliness and settle into his loneliness. Alternatively, he uses music as a way to show a character's inner state, their emotions, their thought processes and their mood. We see this in Norwegian Wood when Naoko explains how the song makes her feel as though she was in a forest walking alone, and this could be seen as an allegory for her actual state of mind and foreshadowing for how she would die.

 

                                                                                                                            Kashai