I believe that Norwegian Wood, ultimately, is a selfish novel. Selfish in the sense that we spend most of the story inside Toru’s mind as he reflects, mourns, yearns, and attempts to grow. But also selfish for Murakami who uses the story to process his own grief. Of course, there’s no way to know for certain since we’ll never see inside his mind like we do in Toru’s but it certainly feels very personal and more tethered to reality than his other novels.
Another theme I noticed was the ability or inability of characters to move forward in time. For Toru and Naoko, most obviously, they are unable to move on from the death of Kizuki and so they become unable to grow into adults. They spend their 20th years alone, moving through the motions while the world moves around them. But for characters like Midori and Nagasawa, their ability to process feelings and move forward in their lives, their ability to live selfishly, is something envied by Toru. In Nagasawa’s case, this is certainly problematic but I think he’s meant to be the extreme example. For Midori, she spent her life caring for other people, struggling to get by. But once those responsibilities are gone, even though they were people she cared for deeply, she doesn’t hold on. She takes the opportunity to finally live for herself.
For Toru, it seems like he is (or was) unable to do this. Naoko and Toru’s existence, to each other, kept them tethered to a past neither one could move on from, leaving them in limbo until one person took the first step. Tragically this was Naoko taking her own life but it is what will allow Toru to continue on. We only see glimpses of Toru’s adult life in the story and while he seems somewhat melancholic reflecting on his past, he’s no longer the same boy who starves himself shut up in his own mind.
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